By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Posted by: lime013
They weren't themselves in Halo 4.
Yes they were, there's absolutely nothing characteristically different about them beyond John having more dialogue - yet it retains the same comical sense of banter towards Cortana and gradually exposes John as a character rather than an archetype by the end.
And that last scene with the two of them made me gag.
Okay... Not exactly relevant to why the characters are supposedly so "bad".
Also, The Didact was pretty cliché in that game: he didn't seem to have enough screen time or an original motive. It felt like a fan fiction.
Just because something is cliche, that does not make it even remotely seem like a fan fiction. Look at EVERY villain in Halo, none of them have original motives or goals at all, so is every Halo game just a fan fiction? The Didact was developed for 5 years, he has A LOT more material and substance as a character than Truth, he's further explored in the Terminals too. Yes, it's not exactly ideal that we have to go to Waypoint to view them, or pick up 3 books and look at text from Halo 3 and wiki the IRIS Saga to get the full picture but the point is that all that information is still there at the player's fingertips which is no different to having a 20 minute long cutscene where every line of dialogue is exposition.
Truth had absolutely no motivation in the games, he was only ever developed in the novel Contact Harvest, yet people don't moan about that. In the game, Truth fulfils the generic, cliche "DEATH TO HUMANS" role with no explanation why or what his motivation is - unless you read the novel. At least the Didact was a step up from that by explaining his motivations (however briefly) when you meet the Librarian and gives you Terminals filling in some of his backstory.