One of the more pleasant surprises of Halo Infinite, now that it’s out in the wild, is that it’s leaned into the more comical aspects of the series. Ever since the original game the grunts have been a good laugh, their malevolence and well-placed stickies bound-up with pratfalls and comic cowardice. Infinite goes hard on this—perhaps even too hard at times—but it results in undeniably funny moments.
One of the best parts of it is that 343’s stuffed the world with ‘unexpected’ interactions, with enemies jabbering away almost all the time and having a huge amount of incidental dialogue and possible reactions. One of these, as player thebestpizzaever discovered, is that if a grunt kills you then there is a chance it will proceed to dole-out the ultimate galactic insult: it dabs on Master Chief’s corpse.
The grunts have so much dialogue folk have made entire videos about it. Some of the lines land in a big way and some don’t, but that was always the way with Halo: The fun is when the situation and the dialogue magically align, and the Master Chief becomes both demon and Benny Hill.
I’d be remiss not to include the following, albeit not a grunt but a fine moment of enemy articulacy.
Best line delivery I’ve heard in a game all year pic.twitter.com/kh88Jz5DRKDecember 9, 2021
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Absconded! Halo Infinite is really rather good, even if it’s launched in what feels like a fragmentary state: Co-op really should have been in at launch. Nevertheless you can see what 343’s spent the time on: This is as richly detailed and packed as a Halo should be. And dabbing grunts are a big part of that.
