=.=

: Depends on your viewpoint. I view most people as prideful as the Didact as
: "stupid." They lack the ability to stop building themselves up
: and looking at things more objectivley.

And they usually don't make credible villains. I mean, they'll have the heroes bent over a barrel, and then they'll make some stupid mistake like 'giving the hero an even chance.' As an aspiring writer, I can attest that when you read that, the author has just thrown in the towel and said "I have no clue how to get the hero out of this. Enjoy."

Now, a villain can be prideful and still intelligent. Take Tarquin from Order of the Stick. He is extremely protective of his family, his approach to marriage is... horrifying, and nothing pleases him more than the idea that he'll be immortalized in history long after his death.
And here's his approach to security.

: As to this point and your point above, Vagueness already said what I was
: going to.

What about my counter-arguments?

: And honestly the Didact didn't have a wide variety of resources at his
: disposal. Just the Prometheans and Jul's remnant.

The Librarian stored the Didact in a Forerunner-built Halley World with the Mantle's Approach and a Promethean army. Forgive me for doubting that those were the only hardware she left behind. And even then, as I explained to Vagueness, there's stuff the Didact could have done with the terrain to kill the Chief.

And you know what the difference between a fabrication plant and maintenance units intended to keep a shell world intact for a hundred thousand years is?
Absolutely nothing.

: And like he said in the
: last level, the Didact was more focused on delaying the Chief so that he
: could fire the Composer, at which point the Didact would have succeeded no
: matter what the Chief did.

Uh-, no. Was he really going to 'delay' the Chief for the days or weeks it would take to 'Compose' all of Earth? And after that, what? Does the Chief lay down and die because Earth is destroyed? C'mon, where's the exit strategy?

: Well, considering this trope was used to tell a good story, I guess the trope
: isn't bad. :P

Sigh. Nein.

: No, no, that's pretty much too simplified. :)

No, no, it was pretty much spot on. =D

: Another alien empire trying to exterminate humanity? Yawn. :)

Hey, in the first game, the Covenant WERE pretty flat. They didn't become three-dimensional until Halo 2.
What made them so endearing was how their AI seemed to make them come alive. Especially the Grunts.

: If you start boiling story elements down to their barest meaning, you're not
: going to enjoy anything.

Oh, hey, I do enjoy fiction. It just has to be well-written.
And before I can appreciate a villain, he has to rise above the bare tropes.

: Um, pretty much what happened to Tillson and the others on Ivanoff Station?
: They were turned into Prometheans with fractured personalities and not
: really living. The Chief was spared because the Librarian was able to
: manipulate his genes and awaken his immunity to the Composer. Same kind of
: genetic manipulation introduced in Cryptum, really.

I have my own theory as to HOW the Chief was spared, but

: Yes, the Waypoint exclusivity of the Terminals was one of the game's worst
: parts for me. They should have been on-disc.

"Hey! Want to know why the Didact acts so differently from the books? Well, you're going to have to quit the game every level and watch a soap opera."

: As for being painful to watch... wuh? :) Perfectly fine with me.

I get the feeling that's a common reaction with you.
*Shrugs*

Some people enjoy a lot of stuff. Some people, well...
Take me. I can't stand anime. I absolutely loathe Star Trek. I'm finicky about what I enjoy.

: I was talking about the accomplishment of the goal of deactivating the Ark,
: not escaping the ensuing chaos. In that case Halo 3 has pretty much every
: other Halo game beat. :)

Truth is different from the Didact. The Covenant is spent from civil war, the UNSC and the Separatists have fought through the Loyalist ground armies, and now they've teamed up with the Flood. Truth was powerless, and the fact that there was nothing he could do as the Flood consumed him and the Chief deactivated the Ark drives that home.