: While "I hate you for killing my dad (even though he was already Flood
: food and you did it to save the universe)" would have been a bit
: tired and cliche, I have always been a fan of exploring the less-than-nice
: side of the UNSC in something other than the novels, and I think having a
: main character who is at odds with Chief would have been an interesting
: wrinkle for 2, especially paralleling the Arbiters' own navigation of the
: politics of the Covenant (I guess we kind of got some of that in 4 with
: Del Rio, but he mostly just seemed like a guy in over his head and it
: wasn't exactly a dynamic I think we as players were supposed to care about
: except in that someone's stopping Chief from Doing What Needs to Be Done,
: and jeopardizing Cortana.)

Are you thinking of having some sort of Mass Effect conversation options in order to navigate the story?

Or is the story fixed and an NPC tells you not to do stuff and what's left for you is to work out what the game actually wants you to do and then you do it and when you have pressed enough buttons the story becomes resolved.

What is the difference between an antagonist and an enemy? What is the difference between the Didact and annoying top brass person?

I could maybe get behind an ODST style game where you have domestic strife with Newtana and Brohammer - they pick on you but you can pick options where you side with one or an other to split them up and get what you want - cunning use of social dynamics to achieve a quiet life and... save the galaxy.

It appeals to my sense of humour and, boy, brohammer was such a nag.

Joe would have to write it, of course.

At least you would have some agency and, I think, that it would be better than some, ineffectual character saying, "don't go there or there will be trouble, mark my words, boyo!" and you just go there, shoot a lot of baddies and then the story resolves.

But whatever happens, I think we need more than the normal Halo way of interacting with the story (punch it, shoot it, press a button, or run past it)