Well, like anything else you cut in a lathe, you'd have to keep a stream of liquid pouring onto the turd. It's just that, instead of cutting fluid, you'd have to keep spraying the turd with liquid nitrogen. You'd also need a damn good ventilation system in the workshop, or supplied-air respirator. Nitrogen and inert gasses will knock you out before you realize that anything is wrong. Ask me how I know.

: But it's not just the plot that I want to escape; it's the game-play! I would
: love to play a Halo campaign without, immortal, incompetent, allies
: tagging along to screw things up. In Reach you could drive Jorge off the
: cliff and jetpack back to safety but he still gave commentary for the rest
: of the level. Still, at least he couldn't shoot down the Banshees that I
: was trying to hijack.

: 343 if you want to insist on saddling us with them... then, at the very
: least, improve the AI. Teach them to understand: "NO! Bad Dog!"

: Map, "NO!" to (X) but I suspect that I'd be spamming that button
: all game. :-(

Yeah. Besides, it wasn't as if Blue Team was being used to their narrative potential. If 343i isn't going to do anything interesting with them because "They didn't have well-developed personalities" or something like that, might as well cut them out.

My question is, how good does the AI have to get before you accept it? If it's not good enough, might as well leave them out. If they are as good as your co-op friends are, then they're still not quite supersoldiers... and yet they can still beat the game without any help from you.

Maybe we have to accept that a game with Spartan allies has to be different from the Halo games we all know and love. The point is no longer to be a one-man army and take on entire armies at a time, but to manage a team that takes on armies at a time. It would be neat if we didn't have to manage a team. It would be neat if the AI was smart enough to cooperate with us like a true team player, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. So we have to cheat by making the player do the work of the AI and have him manage the Spartan team.

I don't know if this would be a game like Republic Commando, or more like XCOM. It certainly wouldn't play anything like the main Halo games.