: The writing is just bad. Whoever wrote this has never served in any military,
: and WOW does it show. Particularly cringe-worthy is the dialogue of the
: marines in-game. Their idle dialogue and other lines are just... ugh. It
: was almost like someone held a contest to see who could lampoon military
: stereotypes in the most absurd way, and the 3rd place runner-up was chosen
: to write the dialogue for UNSC Marines in Halo Wars 2.
: It feels like it's written at a pre-teen's level.
: From Halo's best writing and universe-design to the writing and
: universe-design experienced here, it feels like going from this
: http://i.imgur.com/81HkO3K.jpg
: to this
: http://i.imgur.com/jWsEQTU.jpg

: And in some ways, it is even worse than that, though I don't want to go into
: that here.

I've never served in the military, so I don't particularly care about how much a military in a fictional world 500 years removed from our own tracks to what people today think sounds 'right'. I enjoyed the increased chatter from all the units in the game. It's also part of what makes RTS units distinctive; I remember which ones are which primarily through their attitudes and voice work.

: Regarding the voice-acting work, Cutter sounds good. Anders is plenty fine.
: Isabel and Red team, though... geeeeeeeeeeez...
: It's not that the voice actors were amateurs -- that's not what I'm talking
: about here, because they weren't: it's that what they were told to say,
: and how they were directed to say it, just makes me weep. It is *so* weak.
: Alice's voice in particular comes across as "try-hard tomboy" or
: "I built a shrine to Michelle Rodriguez in my attic" without
: interruption. Douglas sounds very unintelligent, though the entirety of
: Red Team sound like they would have to scratch their heads and have
: wrinkled-brow, confused expressions on their faces whenever anyone uses
: words greater than 4 syllables that aren't related to shooting things or
: blowing things up. It's entirely incongruous with the mythos surrounding
: SPARTAN-IIs.

I'm struggling to think of anything in the game that suggests the Spartans are dumb. You could argue Palmer showed more intellectual disdain, and she was far more eloquently spoken. The Spartans actually get personalities in this game, versus being blank slates aside from a few stray bits in the ancillary black boxes and timeline events.