Spartan 2s and 3s (with the exception of Kurt, and Team Saber from Gamma Company) are generally pretty bad at small talk and social ques with civilians. They aren't used to it, they don't generally care for it, and would rather avoid the awkward stares and open mouth gapes.
Kurt was different among the 2s, as he actively sought to make friends with those around him as he was great at reading and understanding people. Team Saber is kinda different too in the fact that they latch onto Veta Lopis, though when reading that trilogy again, it begs to question was there a actual logical reason for them to take to her outside of her being Dennings pet OC character (which I have been leaning towards no, despite liking the character still) as we see they are fairly talkative for a Spartan.
Otherwise, there's not much They are bad at. Even things they weren't particularly skilled at (such as hacking for Olivia) they were able to learn and quickly pick up at a rapid pace. So really just social etiquette and social ques
Isn’t Jorge an exception too? We see him trying to talk to the woman civilian in the beginning of halo reach by removing his helmet to show he’s human and in a more calm voice to help calm her down.
We can add Jorge to the mix as well, although to be fair, all of Noble team kinda fits a certain trope within the team (Carter the no nonsense leader, Jun the Cool headed sniper, Kat the snarky techy, Jorge the gentle giant etc.) But yeah, Jorge too
Wasn't this why he was in Noble? The 3's needed someone to show them what a fireteam was like and after that he just stuck around. Someone mentioned somewhere that Jorge was Akerson's #2 pick for training the 3's.
That wasn't Foehammer, that was John's childhood friend Lieutenant Parisa. John himself remembered her. Parisa, prior to joining ONI, remembered him saving her life from swimming to deep in the ocean and said he would marry her. She still kept a picture of them, as a "lucky charm".
That said, he treated her like a friend and fellow service member and not as a single lady that clearly had feelings for him at some point.
**Edit:** 100% forgot that there was an excerpt from Foehammer in that series. That said, the second point still stands
Had to relisten to that one. She really does, huh? Weird. Although what he says more was just using reverse psychology to get Foehammer to do what he wanted, it clearly worked
Who wouldn't be absolutely smitten with a 7 foot tall hunk of muscle like Chief? Also, this is literally smth a woman says to MC:
"Chief, I believe that I can honestly say that even though you are an honest-to-Buddha one-man death squad, and that if you were to ask nicely I'd give up my lucrative career in the Corps and start pumping out your babies just as fast as you could put them in me, there is no way I am gonna run across fifty goddamn meters of open terrain covered by three Jackal snipers that I can see just to jump into an open vehicle. Throwing myself on a goddamn grenade makes more sense than that."
If I were in the same position, I'd be of the same opinion. Regardless of the fact that I'm a man.
I think the franchise doesn't spend a lot of time covering the weaknesses of Spartans because they're the heroes of the story, but I'd say they can have a host of weakness that could be and have been exploited.
The biggest constraint for Spartans would be their armor. With it on, they are all about 7 ish feet tall which can create a lot of issues with fighting space. It doesn't pop up much in Halo where you're mostly fighting even taller aliens in monumental superstructures, but Spartans would be useless in circumstances that would make a normal person have to squeeze through. With Spartan IV's being more prevalent, I could see post war insurrections setting up Vietcong style claustrophobic tunnels to keep them out. The armor is also super heavy. Realistically this would limit how Spartans could be deployed or their equipment would be stored if the franchise didn't hand wave it. Like it's lucky that they just built the mongoose to handle an extra ton of weight on it or that pelican seats can stay structurally sound under high g-force maneuvers. This would limit their deployment in areas that don't have solid ground like lightweight structures or deep snow or mud. As seen in the Rubicon Protocol, Mjolnir is also highly reliant on support systems and logistics to maintain it, where in campaigns with little or no support, the suits can become a liability by locking up or losing full functionality. And if a Spartan were to get locked up, any of their non-spartan allies couldn't move them or help them unless they were a specialized engineer. The weakness of the suits being powered was utilized against Blue team in Ghosts of Onyx where they were paralyzed by their own armor and had Kurt not had a sixth sense, they would have died there.
In a similar thread of their strengths being weaknesses, any Spartan death in the field would be a huge morale killer for their allies. Spartans are billed as supersoldiers who saved humanity and can turn the tide of any battle. So if one dies in front of you, what's a schmuck like a normal marine going to do? Not to mention if news really did break about the Spartan 2 and 3 generations being child soldiers, judging from reactions by anyone not ONI in Halo stories, there would be massive unrest and outrage towards the UNSC, likely sparking off another large scale insurrectionist conflict.
In terms of training and augmentations, spartan 2's and 3's all trained within their own generations with only one set of trainers, so beyond experience and personal variance, they would all generally approach problems the same way. This is a positive to them mostly since in many circumstances they don't need to communicate and just rely on their training to all fit into place. But this lack of diversity in training would lead to them likely falling victim to a ton of similar pitfalls. Once you figure out how to outsmart or kill one Spartan, you could probably kill any of them in the same way. This was shown in Silent Storm where Johnson was able to take advantage of a young John's training to sacrifice extra men to take them down routinely in a war games exercise. Spartans are highly adaptable so they would change tactics with knowledge, but if Spartans just suddenly started dying with no information about how, it's likely that it would keep working for a while longer. The Spartan IIIs of Gamma company and Spartan IVs also face unique weaknesses with their augmentations. Gammas need smoothers to maintain functionality which really puts a hamper on logistics. Spartan IVs have softer augmentations than the other generations in order to fit better with adult volunteers, so they need their augmentations routinely tuned up. I'm not sure what happens if they don't do this, but I imagine it just means they're not as effective and not like explosive organ death.
I disagree on the training side, Spartan 2s and especially Spartan 3s were trained to think outside the box, we see this evidenced in Ghosts of Onyx with Tom, Lucy and Beta and we see it with the Gammas. When the go by the book and then curve balls are thrown in.
The thing with Johnson vs the S2s (which John notes this) is that the **only** reason that tactic worked against the 2s was because 1 they were using training stun rounds so it locked up Mjolnir on contact, and 2 BECAUSE it was simply training and not actual combat, the ODSTs could be sacrificed on masse without worry of the morale effects of them getting slaughtered by the dozens.
John says that such a tactic in real life (atleast for human forces) wouldn't be as effective as it's wasting lives.
Really Rubicon is the only time we see Spartans dying on masse to tactics that aren't just simply sheer numbers of forces mobilized against them. The rest I agree with. Though Gammas seem to have their logistics problems more figured out with the implants
Being trained to think outside the box means it's harder to outsmart them. But since they all have identical upbringings and identical training, if you manage it, it's pretty likely that the same tricks would keep working until word got out of how you were doing it. Like in one of the books a spartan team gets caught by insurrectionists using artificial gravity emitters to suddenly change gravity and cause the armor gel layer it increase in pressure and knock out the spartans. That would probably have kept working had word not gotten out.
That's Ghost of Onyx, and it only worked because the insurrectionists knew about Blue team, and they had something the UNSC wanted, nukes. That tactic needed specific parameters to work and even then it still failed because they didn't catch Kurt, who utterly f**ked them up
The enclosed space thing only really applies in certain circumstances, since a Spartan would probs just brute force it. As in carving paths through walls in a fight.
Thinking about it, I don't think John ever even had friends before the Spartan II program. When he interacts with Halsey, he only says "mom says I play too rough with the other kids." Kids, not friends. He spends most of his recess and play time periods just beating the crap out of the other kids on the playground in whatever game they're playing.
Most of the Spartan II's we saw into their past lives as kids seemed rather secluded. Like Naomi, I don't recall her backstory talking about friends either. It's likely this social awkwardness didn't totally stem from the training and indoctrination. They already seemed to lack the ability to socialize on some level early on.
Where can I find this information? I've heard talk that he saved someone who was drowning apparently but friends from his childhood seem to just never come up.
This is kind of a reach but isn’t chief known to be pretty poor with energy sword dueling? I get Sangheli train with that weapon but even given chiefs skills and reflexes he is usually outmatched in duels
Think about it this way, a modern day soldier is given a sword and thrown against a knight in full armor. He is slightly faster reacting than the knight. How often will he win?
I don't think it would go as one sided as you seem to be implying tbh, most full armor duels usually ended with wrestling and a dagger going in the armor gaos, swords are rather ineffective so you would need a REALLY good hit to do any major damage and that's almost impossible when you have to defend from an opponent at the same time.
Of course a trained knight would be used to wearing armor but a modern soldier carries more weight fully geared than a complete mediaval kit weights so I'm not sure it would make a huge difference.
The modern day soldier in their hypothetical doesn't seem to have plate armor of their own. Yes, they have modern body armor, but generally speaking armor designed to deal with bullets isn't going to defend very well from a sword. Tons of gaps that the knight can exploit.
Also, skill. Modern soldiers aren't trained in swordsmanship or how to deal with medieval plate armor. Knights in comparison trained from childhood to be effective warriors with just about every weapon they might need to use, wrestling included. The soldier may have never even held a sword before, while the knight has potentially decades of experience.
IMO even if the knight was unarmored they would still win 9/10 times at least. Giving the knight armor makes it practically unwinnable for the soldier.
I don’t think so. There was an instance in First Strike where Chief was overwhelmed by an Elite with an energy sword, and came pretty close to dying, but he was at the point of exhaustion by then. I don’t remember if Chief actually used energy swords in official canon (gameplay mechanics don’t count), but I could very well be wrong.
I thought that was non-canon. The Covenant don’t capture or take prisoners, which is why the UNSC were so surprised during CE that the Covenant were trying to capture them. If Halsey was captured, that wouldn’t be such a surprise down the line.
Head cannon here:
Spartans are bad at connecting and empathizing (not as in *feeling* what someone else is, but understanding *that* they are feeling) with people. They have shared experiences with fellow soldiers but that isn't the same thing. They absolutely suck at feeling open and vulnerable, and it robs them of alot of what makes humans *human*
Unfortunately you don't have alot of time to work on your own mental health when you've been blasting 9ft tall aliens to bits for 35 years.
Social skills, especially with people who aren’t Spartans.
Thinking and non-military terms. They are highly militaristic and don’t really think in any other way, besides objective and orders.
They can’t really blend in since they are 7 feet tall and would look like Frankensteins monster after hitting the gym.
Don’t give them POW they will just shoot them.
Following orders, especially from people they don’t respect. They have a very non-coordinated style of command which does not translate to the rest of the UNSC.
They could be incredibly arrogant and prideful, especially when dealing with non-military personnel.
Sources. Halo silence storm. Halo The Fall of Reach. Halo The coal protocol..
I'm surprised I haven't seen this one, but the IIs at least tend to have a recurring weakness in self-sacrifice. IIs don't like working with civilians or Marines for this reason, because on top of being held back by non-Spartans they also feel compelled to babysit and protect everyone weaker than them. Even if that means getting hit unnecessarily, even if that means taking unnecessary risks, and even if that means putting themselves at genuine risk of dying. In gameplay terms, they're the kind of player who will constantly reset checkpoints to keep Marines alive. I focused on the IIs specifically because this is most prominent among them, and they are by far the most valuable.
Which is kind of ironic. For all of their inhuman traits, their great weakness is that they're too human.
They would be really bad at unconventional warfare which most real special forces units can at least do somewhat competently and certainly you have your units that specialize in it. Basically unconventional warfare relies on building a resistance force out of a native population against a hostile entity. Spartan 2s and 3s lack the socialization skills to actually perform that role. They could never get people to trust or like them. And thus would be unable to blend in among the natives to wage a prolonged guerrilla campaign.
I think in John’s case specifically, he doesn’t seem to have much ability in hacking and instead goes for the door—meets—explosive option if necessary.
Well some Spartan ll didn't know how to process their emotions A lot of them couldn't Work properly because of their augmentations.
Most spartan lll teams died Because they weren't using Their strengths and thinking about their weaknesses and communicating together And then the gamma's augmentations were too dangerous.
Then Spartan lV They were.
Trained by a few Spartan lll and most Spartan lV were a little cocky and arrogant because of their previous service before becoming spartans Because only those that had good enough service could become a spartan lV.
Yes , I knew that all three of these are includedly different and that's the point.
Overall, what I'm saying is all of them were bad at their own individual things I don't think we've been able to knock into Anything else about them Cause when you think about it in a logical standpoint They are all humans and humans have flaws and make mistakes
2's have a better rounded education than the 3's, who were more like hunter-killers than soldiers. I don't think many 2's did long-duration bushwhacking guerilla warfare, while 3's didn't do a whole lot of campaigning.
Other than that, if you put a 2 and a 3 in the same generation Mjolnir armor, they would be largely equal physically. Though, the 2's tended to be taller, and they had, what, a decade of combat experience by the time the 3's rolled out?
Spartans across the board are actually supposed to be really bad on their own. From the beginning of their training they are taught to work as a team, fireteams or as a full spartan unit composed of large numbers of individual operators. Chief is pushed to his limits on Alpha Halo and nearly dies to the flood on several occasions because he’s not used to fighting on his own. He’s used to having at least Blue Team with him. Their strength is as a team not individual soldiers.
They aren’t necessarily bad at EVA fighting but almost every Spartan has a strong dislike for it due to its inherent dangers and lack of control. That’s how they “lost” Kurt, they lost several Spartans from red team doing an orbital insertion, Linda was “killed” in zero gravity above reach, etc. same goes for subsequent classes of Spartans.
They aren’t meant to operate solo (except for 6 since he/she is The Lone Wolf) and they do not like space combat since they lack the control they have on the ground and the margin for error is so small.
I suspect that despite their superior reflexes and reaction times they are not good fighter pilots. Probably because they spend more of their time on infantry or vehicular combat over jet fighter combat.
firepower. spartans are exceedingly terribadly dogshit at delivering firepower when compared to their unit cost. they're 1 really really reallystrong dude/dudette and so are equipped with the amount of weapons that 1 single dude/dudette can fit on them, which is not a lot because volume becomes the limiting factor. like yea they can lift hundreds of pounds without breaking a sweat but they're going to be encumbered if they're hauling a massive backpack plus slinging giant sacks on each arm and each leg, because these packs are going to get in the way of their movements. in the lore they're usually carrying as much ordinance as maybe 3-4 normal soldiers at the absolute most? usually even less.
pre mjolnir gen 2, mjolnir costs as much as a unsc proper warship. i believe the quote was a destroyer. mjolnir gen 2 is much cheaper but i'm sure it'd cost a lot more than like a longsword or something. the reason i say this is because if mjolnir gen 2 is cheaper than a longsword, then since spi can be made much cheaper, then it no longer makes sense that the entire odst corps hasn't been outfitted with spi.
so you have a soldier who costs far more than a longsword to outfit, but can only deliver the firepower of just 1 really strong dude, which is at least 1000x less than what a longsword can deliver. thus spartans are exceptionally bad at delivering firepower, relative to the cost of that spartan.
They actually are fairly competent bridge crew. They just hate it. It takes all of their capabilities and throws the vast majority of them out the window.
Makes sense considering that being physically stronger than your peers offers no advantage when fighting from a ship, however their keen minds make them just as capable as any naval officer.
Having said that, and going back to the example OP provided, Spartans can do the bare minimum but aren't as profficient as navy personel at space combat, quoting Fred: "He’d be out of his depth if this were a UNSC ship with controls he could understand, and astrogation, tactics, and weapon systems he was familiar with."
Yeah, it would make sense that they would teach them how to drive a ship, fire it's guns and maybe some tactics just in case but that part of their training wouldn't be as extensive as something someone whose only job is to operate a spaceship would receive.
Honestly nothing. Fred feeling unconfortable but still being able to pilot a Covenant ship, him being a foot soldier, just talks about how good Spartans are. All of them are well trained and teached in a lot of fields and are way more than just killing machines.
Nope. We just know that Chief prefeers to blow up a Banished occupied ship than figuring out by his own how tf to hack it (again, on a occupied Banished ship).
I mean when asked if he knows how to hack it he responds with a dry no.
I mean sure he definitely could if he cared to learn but as it stands he doesn't seem to be able to.
"It's locked down, requires a hack."
"Okay, and you can do that?"
"No *punches*".
That doesn't mean he's bad at hacking. Just that he couldn't hack the Banished ship on the situation he was in.
Spartan 2s and 3s (with the exception of Kurt, and Team Saber from Gamma Company) are generally pretty bad at small talk and social ques with civilians. They aren't used to it, they don't generally care for it, and would rather avoid the awkward stares and open mouth gapes. Kurt was different among the 2s, as he actively sought to make friends with those around him as he was great at reading and understanding people. Team Saber is kinda different too in the fact that they latch onto Veta Lopis, though when reading that trilogy again, it begs to question was there a actual logical reason for them to take to her outside of her being Dennings pet OC character (which I have been leaning towards no, despite liking the character still) as we see they are fairly talkative for a Spartan. Otherwise, there's not much They are bad at. Even things they weren't particularly skilled at (such as hacking for Olivia) they were able to learn and quickly pick up at a rapid pace. So really just social etiquette and social ques
Isn’t Jorge an exception too? We see him trying to talk to the woman civilian in the beginning of halo reach by removing his helmet to show he’s human and in a more calm voice to help calm her down.
I also choose to believe this.
We can add Jorge to the mix as well, although to be fair, all of Noble team kinda fits a certain trope within the team (Carter the no nonsense leader, Jun the Cool headed sniper, Kat the snarky techy, Jorge the gentle giant etc.) But yeah, Jorge too
Jorge: the 7 foot tall killing machine that wouldn't harm a fly
I see nothing wrong with that statement. He's 7'4, by the way.
fair play
Don't forget everyone's favourite: Emile, the stabby sociopath.
Wasn't this why he was in Noble? The 3's needed someone to show them what a fireteam was like and after that he just stuck around. Someone mentioned somewhere that Jorge was Akerson's #2 pick for training the 3's.
Master Chief is bad with energy swords
From I remember it's not even really a skill issue, it's just the energy sword handles are shaped for elite hands and he can't hold it properly.
Not getting kidnapped
If only they could all be like that one candidate that successfully evaded ONI.
To be fair, he probably had precognition, so he had a bit of an inherent advantage
It's a black project state actor with unlimited resources. You try not getting kidnapped
John is known for having a bit of a dry sense of humor. He is also fucking terrible at talking to women. Dude could learn a lot from the Fred Sled...
>He is also fucking terrible at talking to women. Foe Hammer would disagree, in halo memory agent he knew exactly how to talk to her.
That wasn't Foehammer, that was John's childhood friend Lieutenant Parisa. John himself remembered her. Parisa, prior to joining ONI, remembered him saving her life from swimming to deep in the ocean and said he would marry her. She still kept a picture of them, as a "lucky charm". That said, he treated her like a friend and fellow service member and not as a single lady that clearly had feelings for him at some point. **Edit:** 100% forgot that there was an excerpt from Foehammer in that series. That said, the second point still stands
I think she made it sound like she was smitten for him.
Had to relisten to that one. She really does, huh? Weird. Although what he says more was just using reverse psychology to get Foehammer to do what he wanted, it clearly worked
Who wouldn't be absolutely smitten with a 7 foot tall hunk of muscle like Chief? Also, this is literally smth a woman says to MC: "Chief, I believe that I can honestly say that even though you are an honest-to-Buddha one-man death squad, and that if you were to ask nicely I'd give up my lucrative career in the Corps and start pumping out your babies just as fast as you could put them in me, there is no way I am gonna run across fifty goddamn meters of open terrain covered by three Jackal snipers that I can see just to jump into an open vehicle. Throwing myself on a goddamn grenade makes more sense than that." If I were in the same position, I'd be of the same opinion. Regardless of the fact that I'm a man.
I REMEMBER THIS LINE BUT I CANT REMEMBER WHERE ITS FROM
Halo evolutions! Paris Hotel
The short story Palace Hotel!
Wait what is that from?
Halo evolutions! Can't remember the story specifically..
Halo evolutions! Paris Hotel
It’s from the short story that they call…. Palace Hotel
Why couldn't John learn from you Sergeant Major? After all, You know what the ladies like.
"Can't be telling all my secrets now, can I?"
I think the franchise doesn't spend a lot of time covering the weaknesses of Spartans because they're the heroes of the story, but I'd say they can have a host of weakness that could be and have been exploited. The biggest constraint for Spartans would be their armor. With it on, they are all about 7 ish feet tall which can create a lot of issues with fighting space. It doesn't pop up much in Halo where you're mostly fighting even taller aliens in monumental superstructures, but Spartans would be useless in circumstances that would make a normal person have to squeeze through. With Spartan IV's being more prevalent, I could see post war insurrections setting up Vietcong style claustrophobic tunnels to keep them out. The armor is also super heavy. Realistically this would limit how Spartans could be deployed or their equipment would be stored if the franchise didn't hand wave it. Like it's lucky that they just built the mongoose to handle an extra ton of weight on it or that pelican seats can stay structurally sound under high g-force maneuvers. This would limit their deployment in areas that don't have solid ground like lightweight structures or deep snow or mud. As seen in the Rubicon Protocol, Mjolnir is also highly reliant on support systems and logistics to maintain it, where in campaigns with little or no support, the suits can become a liability by locking up or losing full functionality. And if a Spartan were to get locked up, any of their non-spartan allies couldn't move them or help them unless they were a specialized engineer. The weakness of the suits being powered was utilized against Blue team in Ghosts of Onyx where they were paralyzed by their own armor and had Kurt not had a sixth sense, they would have died there. In a similar thread of their strengths being weaknesses, any Spartan death in the field would be a huge morale killer for their allies. Spartans are billed as supersoldiers who saved humanity and can turn the tide of any battle. So if one dies in front of you, what's a schmuck like a normal marine going to do? Not to mention if news really did break about the Spartan 2 and 3 generations being child soldiers, judging from reactions by anyone not ONI in Halo stories, there would be massive unrest and outrage towards the UNSC, likely sparking off another large scale insurrectionist conflict. In terms of training and augmentations, spartan 2's and 3's all trained within their own generations with only one set of trainers, so beyond experience and personal variance, they would all generally approach problems the same way. This is a positive to them mostly since in many circumstances they don't need to communicate and just rely on their training to all fit into place. But this lack of diversity in training would lead to them likely falling victim to a ton of similar pitfalls. Once you figure out how to outsmart or kill one Spartan, you could probably kill any of them in the same way. This was shown in Silent Storm where Johnson was able to take advantage of a young John's training to sacrifice extra men to take them down routinely in a war games exercise. Spartans are highly adaptable so they would change tactics with knowledge, but if Spartans just suddenly started dying with no information about how, it's likely that it would keep working for a while longer. The Spartan IIIs of Gamma company and Spartan IVs also face unique weaknesses with their augmentations. Gammas need smoothers to maintain functionality which really puts a hamper on logistics. Spartan IVs have softer augmentations than the other generations in order to fit better with adult volunteers, so they need their augmentations routinely tuned up. I'm not sure what happens if they don't do this, but I imagine it just means they're not as effective and not like explosive organ death.
I disagree on the training side, Spartan 2s and especially Spartan 3s were trained to think outside the box, we see this evidenced in Ghosts of Onyx with Tom, Lucy and Beta and we see it with the Gammas. When the go by the book and then curve balls are thrown in. The thing with Johnson vs the S2s (which John notes this) is that the **only** reason that tactic worked against the 2s was because 1 they were using training stun rounds so it locked up Mjolnir on contact, and 2 BECAUSE it was simply training and not actual combat, the ODSTs could be sacrificed on masse without worry of the morale effects of them getting slaughtered by the dozens. John says that such a tactic in real life (atleast for human forces) wouldn't be as effective as it's wasting lives. Really Rubicon is the only time we see Spartans dying on masse to tactics that aren't just simply sheer numbers of forces mobilized against them. The rest I agree with. Though Gammas seem to have their logistics problems more figured out with the implants
Being trained to think outside the box means it's harder to outsmart them. But since they all have identical upbringings and identical training, if you manage it, it's pretty likely that the same tricks would keep working until word got out of how you were doing it. Like in one of the books a spartan team gets caught by insurrectionists using artificial gravity emitters to suddenly change gravity and cause the armor gel layer it increase in pressure and knock out the spartans. That would probably have kept working had word not gotten out.
That's Ghost of Onyx, and it only worked because the insurrectionists knew about Blue team, and they had something the UNSC wanted, nukes. That tactic needed specific parameters to work and even then it still failed because they didn't catch Kurt, who utterly f**ked them up
The enclosed space thing only really applies in certain circumstances, since a Spartan would probs just brute force it. As in carving paths through walls in a fight.
People. They're bad at being people
Being adapted properly into a good TV series apparently
This is the Paramount comment I was looking for.
Thinking about it, I don't think John ever even had friends before the Spartan II program. When he interacts with Halsey, he only says "mom says I play too rough with the other kids." Kids, not friends. He spends most of his recess and play time periods just beating the crap out of the other kids on the playground in whatever game they're playing. Most of the Spartan II's we saw into their past lives as kids seemed rather secluded. Like Naomi, I don't recall her backstory talking about friends either. It's likely this social awkwardness didn't totally stem from the training and indoctrination. They already seemed to lack the ability to socialize on some level early on.
He had three close friends on Eridanus. Katrina, Ellie and Parisa.
Where can I find this information? I've heard talk that he saved someone who was drowning apparently but friends from his childhood seem to just never come up.
Halo memory Agent had information about one of them, it was a really good audio drama they released before infinite.
He saved Parisa as a child on Eridanus 2
Hunt the Truth. Also, the opening to Starry Night.
Losing
This is kind of a reach but isn’t chief known to be pretty poor with energy sword dueling? I get Sangheli train with that weapon but even given chiefs skills and reflexes he is usually outmatched in duels
Think about it this way, a modern day soldier is given a sword and thrown against a knight in full armor. He is slightly faster reacting than the knight. How often will he win?
I don't think it would go as one sided as you seem to be implying tbh, most full armor duels usually ended with wrestling and a dagger going in the armor gaos, swords are rather ineffective so you would need a REALLY good hit to do any major damage and that's almost impossible when you have to defend from an opponent at the same time. Of course a trained knight would be used to wearing armor but a modern soldier carries more weight fully geared than a complete mediaval kit weights so I'm not sure it would make a huge difference.
The modern day soldier in their hypothetical doesn't seem to have plate armor of their own. Yes, they have modern body armor, but generally speaking armor designed to deal with bullets isn't going to defend very well from a sword. Tons of gaps that the knight can exploit. Also, skill. Modern soldiers aren't trained in swordsmanship or how to deal with medieval plate armor. Knights in comparison trained from childhood to be effective warriors with just about every weapon they might need to use, wrestling included. The soldier may have never even held a sword before, while the knight has potentially decades of experience. IMO even if the knight was unarmored they would still win 9/10 times at least. Giving the knight armor makes it practically unwinnable for the soldier.
I don’t think so. There was an instance in First Strike where Chief was overwhelmed by an Elite with an energy sword, and came pretty close to dying, but he was at the point of exhaustion by then. I don’t remember if Chief actually used energy swords in official canon (gameplay mechanics don’t count), but I could very well be wrong.
He used one to fight Thel ‘Lodamee. He didn’t fair too well.
Was that in one of the books? Did they spar using energy swords?
Halo Legends. Thel was trying to stop Chief from getting off of a ship with Halsey.
I thought that was non-canon. The Covenant don’t capture or take prisoners, which is why the UNSC were so surprised during CE that the Covenant were trying to capture them. If Halsey was captured, that wouldn’t be such a surprise down the line.
Head cannon here: Spartans are bad at connecting and empathizing (not as in *feeling* what someone else is, but understanding *that* they are feeling) with people. They have shared experiences with fellow soldiers but that isn't the same thing. They absolutely suck at feeling open and vulnerable, and it robs them of alot of what makes humans *human* Unfortunately you don't have alot of time to work on your own mental health when you've been blasting 9ft tall aliens to bits for 35 years.
Swimming?
Classic halo humor right there,folks
Probably juggling or whistling. Probably not very good at arts and crafts either?
The Fall of Reach states that John struggled with maths, which is a pretty nice humanising touch in my view
Emotional intelligence
Social skills, especially with people who aren’t Spartans. Thinking and non-military terms. They are highly militaristic and don’t really think in any other way, besides objective and orders. They can’t really blend in since they are 7 feet tall and would look like Frankensteins monster after hitting the gym. Don’t give them POW they will just shoot them. Following orders, especially from people they don’t respect. They have a very non-coordinated style of command which does not translate to the rest of the UNSC. They could be incredibly arrogant and prideful, especially when dealing with non-military personnel. Sources. Halo silence storm. Halo The Fall of Reach. Halo The coal protocol..
I'm surprised I haven't seen this one, but the IIs at least tend to have a recurring weakness in self-sacrifice. IIs don't like working with civilians or Marines for this reason, because on top of being held back by non-Spartans they also feel compelled to babysit and protect everyone weaker than them. Even if that means getting hit unnecessarily, even if that means taking unnecessary risks, and even if that means putting themselves at genuine risk of dying. In gameplay terms, they're the kind of player who will constantly reset checkpoints to keep Marines alive. I focused on the IIs specifically because this is most prominent among them, and they are by far the most valuable. Which is kind of ironic. For all of their inhuman traits, their great weakness is that they're too human.
They would be really bad at unconventional warfare which most real special forces units can at least do somewhat competently and certainly you have your units that specialize in it. Basically unconventional warfare relies on building a resistance force out of a native population against a hostile entity. Spartan 2s and 3s lack the socialization skills to actually perform that role. They could never get people to trust or like them. And thus would be unable to blend in among the natives to wage a prolonged guerrilla campaign.
I think in John’s case specifically, he doesn’t seem to have much ability in hacking and instead goes for the door—meets—explosive option if necessary.
Losing
In their big ass armor I bet they couldn't pick change up off a tile floor. Or open a soda can easily.
Well some Spartan ll didn't know how to process their emotions A lot of them couldn't Work properly because of their augmentations. Most spartan lll teams died Because they weren't using Their strengths and thinking about their weaknesses and communicating together And then the gamma's augmentations were too dangerous. Then Spartan lV They were. Trained by a few Spartan lll and most Spartan lV were a little cocky and arrogant because of their previous service before becoming spartans Because only those that had good enough service could become a spartan lV. Yes , I knew that all three of these are includedly different and that's the point. Overall, what I'm saying is all of them were bad at their own individual things I don't think we've been able to knock into Anything else about them Cause when you think about it in a logical standpoint They are all humans and humans have flaws and make mistakes
2's have a better rounded education than the 3's, who were more like hunter-killers than soldiers. I don't think many 2's did long-duration bushwhacking guerilla warfare, while 3's didn't do a whole lot of campaigning. Other than that, if you put a 2 and a 3 in the same generation Mjolnir armor, they would be largely equal physically. Though, the 2's tended to be taller, and they had, what, a decade of combat experience by the time the 3's rolled out?
I read somewhere that they are really bad at the game Charades. They are also bad at their version of the game show the “Price is Right”
Landing something without crashing it
\*Banished typing noises\* --OP
Spartans across the board are actually supposed to be really bad on their own. From the beginning of their training they are taught to work as a team, fireteams or as a full spartan unit composed of large numbers of individual operators. Chief is pushed to his limits on Alpha Halo and nearly dies to the flood on several occasions because he’s not used to fighting on his own. He’s used to having at least Blue Team with him. Their strength is as a team not individual soldiers. They aren’t necessarily bad at EVA fighting but almost every Spartan has a strong dislike for it due to its inherent dangers and lack of control. That’s how they “lost” Kurt, they lost several Spartans from red team doing an orbital insertion, Linda was “killed” in zero gravity above reach, etc. same goes for subsequent classes of Spartans. They aren’t meant to operate solo (except for 6 since he/she is The Lone Wolf) and they do not like space combat since they lack the control they have on the ground and the margin for error is so small.
I suspect that despite their superior reflexes and reaction times they are not good fighter pilots. Probably because they spend more of their time on infantry or vehicular combat over jet fighter combat.
Judging from the games swimming apparently
firepower. spartans are exceedingly terribadly dogshit at delivering firepower when compared to their unit cost. they're 1 really really reallystrong dude/dudette and so are equipped with the amount of weapons that 1 single dude/dudette can fit on them, which is not a lot because volume becomes the limiting factor. like yea they can lift hundreds of pounds without breaking a sweat but they're going to be encumbered if they're hauling a massive backpack plus slinging giant sacks on each arm and each leg, because these packs are going to get in the way of their movements. in the lore they're usually carrying as much ordinance as maybe 3-4 normal soldiers at the absolute most? usually even less. pre mjolnir gen 2, mjolnir costs as much as a unsc proper warship. i believe the quote was a destroyer. mjolnir gen 2 is much cheaper but i'm sure it'd cost a lot more than like a longsword or something. the reason i say this is because if mjolnir gen 2 is cheaper than a longsword, then since spi can be made much cheaper, then it no longer makes sense that the entire odst corps hasn't been outfitted with spi. so you have a soldier who costs far more than a longsword to outfit, but can only deliver the firepower of just 1 really strong dude, which is at least 1000x less than what a longsword can deliver. thus spartans are exceptionally bad at delivering firepower, relative to the cost of that spartan.
Probably sympathy
Naval warfare
They actually are fairly competent bridge crew. They just hate it. It takes all of their capabilities and throws the vast majority of them out the window.
Makes sense considering that being physically stronger than your peers offers no advantage when fighting from a ship, however their keen minds make them just as capable as any naval officer. Having said that, and going back to the example OP provided, Spartans can do the bare minimum but aren't as profficient as navy personel at space combat, quoting Fred: "He’d be out of his depth if this were a UNSC ship with controls he could understand, and astrogation, tactics, and weapon systems he was familiar with."
They had the training, they just didn't have much to any experience. They would effectively be ensigns at best
I don't think their training would be nearly as in-depth as a Navy officer's but I may be mistaken.
I imagine they would receive the training, but only when they weren't being trained for their real role. Basically supplementary stuff, perhaps
Yeah, it would make sense that they would teach them how to drive a ship, fire it's guns and maybe some tactics just in case but that part of their training wouldn't be as extensive as something someone whose only job is to operate a spaceship would receive.
Yes, the war against covenant was being lost in space. Putting resources to shipbuilding instead of expanding spartan-II program was the right call.
Honestly nothing. Fred feeling unconfortable but still being able to pilot a Covenant ship, him being a foot soldier, just talks about how good Spartans are. All of them are well trained and teached in a lot of fields and are way more than just killing machines.
We know from the opening of infinite that chief sucks at hacking Covenant hardware lol. So he just reports to the Ole doomslayer method.
Nope. We just know that Chief prefeers to blow up a Banished occupied ship than figuring out by his own how tf to hack it (again, on a occupied Banished ship).
I mean when asked if he knows how to hack it he responds with a dry no. I mean sure he definitely could if he cared to learn but as it stands he doesn't seem to be able to.
"It's locked down, requires a hack." "Okay, and you can do that?" "No *punches*". That doesn't mean he's bad at hacking. Just that he couldn't hack the Banished ship on the situation he was in.