- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
First, just because they are there doesn't mean you have to play them.
It's like knowing you could go kick some little kid's ass. You don't, because, honestly, what the hell? But it is still an option, an availability. You don't want to and you're doing the right thing, but for all those 28 year old men that weigh 100 lbs and can't pick on their Mothers or anyone else their age, they just may need to pick on some 6 year old. Just like I'm totally buying a second controller and XBL for H2, but it is a lot for Bungie to expect that people will have friends with XB's, TV's, and Link Cables, as well as 4 controllers a piece, to get together and play a big halo game, or even 4 controllers - That's $90 (XB comes with one.). I know that I'd have fun playing AI - AI doesn't have to be perfect, it can be programmed to miss. You play AI in single player, and it doesn't insta-kill you.
The reason people are so 'up on' bots, is that it wouldn't be that hard to implement into the engine apart from menus - they just need slightly modified single player AI models with Spartan/Elite skins. It would be a lot of work, but work that would be fantastically revered by players. The reason I don't play Halo 1 daily any more is because the standard single player missions only have a couple of good 'straight combat' or 'strategic death' areas, which is sometimes all I want. I don't always want to cart around a giant world in a Warthog for an hour, or wander around a spaceship for 40 minutes, just to kill 20 grunts. Sometimes you want to spawn, scream, shoot, and sever.
I have 1 friend with an XBox, he has 1 controller. I have 1 controller. Getting his or my XB and TV over to the others' house is pointless, and neither of us really enjoy 2 Player games, because our skill levels are different (he got the game a year before me..) And rather than -blam!- each other up on multiplayer, we want to go into blood gulch on one team and bash 14 covie bastards.
Is that such a heinous crime? Such a terrible want? For such an addition in replayability, and such a comparatively small amount of engine work, it would seem bots would be a given, but, we'll see. We'll see.