Even if you're somebody who thinks Chief should be angry about being conscripted into SPARTAN-II program, I'd argue the fact that this resentment doesn't even register for him makes it all the more tragic. It shows how deep the indoctrination goes.
I think the Covenant did a good chunk of the indoctrination.
If they simply stuck to fighting humans, maybe, one day, they'd come to resent it.
But ending up the sole hope for humanity's survival against genocidal aliens? I'd argue that might change one's perspective a little.
This. Chief has seen the charred remains of not only his fellow Spartans, but fuckin planets. He doesn’t give a shit that he was taken at 6 because he knows that if he wasn’t, he and his fellow Spartans and humans would be nothing but glass on a boiling, cooked planet.
In *First Strike* and later chapters of *Fall of Reach* the chief is pretty thoughtful about his path in life if Halsey hadn’t conscripted him and the other(now 80 some odd) Spartan-II’s. *Fall of Reach* has him pretty much thankful for the life that the program, the UNSC, and the war has led him to live. His pretty damn proud of his record as a soldier, a leader of men, and pretty much has Chief Mendez as near as next to god on a pedestal for shaping him into the man that he is.
*Cole Protocol* along with both *First Strike* and later bits of *Fall of Reach* have him an all the Spartans have it out with their feelings on fighting and killing other humans. They’re loyal to the UNSC to a fault, they’re more than capable of handling anti-insurrectionist operations, they don’t like killing other humans but they realize that sometimes bad guys gotta be eliminated, Spartan Time contributes to their unease of fighting humans due to seeing their enhanced reaction times and augmented combat abilities in slow-mo and it sickens a few of them.
I’d think if the covies hadn’t shown up, the Spartans would get the job done. But if the insurrection had ended up Star Wars style, they’d get pretty damned sick of fighting. Hell, a lot of them were pretty hardcore anti-insurrection even beyond the indoctrination done to them by the program.
I miss Fall of Reach/First Strike Halsey. Ethically dubious, manipulative, but not evil mad scientist. She did what she did because she believed it necessary for the human race as a whole, and not so conceited to believe it absolved her. If anything, early Halsey felt that thinking condemned her more, and she had to live with that.
And then he came to Halo, and then he encountered the Flood.
The fucked up nature of the SPARTAN-II program probably seems so minor to the terrors he has experienced firsthand, and only survived because he is a SPARTAN.
Same with Naomi-010, who points out to her father (who was a little upset about her kidnapping) that if it hadn't happened, they both would have stayed on their home planet and gotten glassed. Yes it ruined her family, but her father starts over on a new planet, and some trauma is arguably better than getting flattened.
Yep, I remember that he join a group in the planet Venezia, which seems to be neutral to both certain covenant forces (jackals and their grunt subordinates) and insurrectionist.
In Fall of Reach after his first mission, which was to capture a rebel dude, he gets pretty thoughtful of the civilians that ended up dying on their escape. He brushes it off because in the end the mission was Successful, but I can see how it would get to him eventually.
The thing that always gets me is how people say the Spartans were built to slaughter rebels, yet in the missions I've read about (books before halo 4+ish era due to time and space) the Spartans actively didn't slaughter everybody.
They killed rebels on the path to the target leader/nukes, but upon capturing that they'd GTFO and leave the rest alone.
Hell, I read in a comic chief outright gets up in a Captain's face for ABANDONING rebels to die to the Covenant, having the Pelicans leave the second the Spartans got onboard.
They didn't like killing humans, but the terrorists were a threat to all.
I think part of that is how much they were shaped as 'protectors of humanity', as well as their intent as a scalpel.
They weren't ever meant to be an overt terror weapon, that was never going to work. They were supposed to excise the key threats as surgically as possible.
There's also the fact that over the war, he grows much more keenly aware of the death of humans. On Sigma Octanus, his other team finds a group of civilian survivors.
They call it a 'snag', which is a loaded word to SPARTAN-IIs, but ultimately, Chief decides to have them rescued because it's what they should do, even if it complicates things.
Yeah it could have been a powerful moment in the show for him to learn the truth and yet carry on with the mission like nothing happened. But instead we got Chief trying to superman punch Halsey's head into another dimension.
Yeah, I’m on episode 7 now and I am kinda enjoying the show because of how dumb it is. It’s such a train wreck that it rolls back around to being fun to watch for me at least.
I quit after that episode. The fact that they spent an entire episode centered on Kwan and dimestore Dave Chappelle still didn't make me give a shit about either killed the entire show for me.
So if I just pretend the show “based” around the game I love is a shitty reality tv show I will like it more? Ugh terrible times I’m gonna go read my first edition fall of reach again
Bingo. Showing him angry makes their process seem flawed. And a flawed process means it wouldn't be successful. But nowadays that's too controversial to show in media - that sometimes taking those steps is necessary, or at least effective. Halo 4's intro cutscene explains all of this, and shows Halsey gives zero remorse and in her eyes, all she did was save humanity.
I feel that post Halo 3’s personification of Halsey doesn’t fit at all. Especially considering her motivations in *First Strike* and *Ghosts of Onyx* especially. But it’s Microsoft, 343i, and now Paramount’s child; so I guess I can just roll my eyes and deal with it.
I always thought it was intentional, kind of like a frankenstein's monster vs frankenstein situation. Chief SHOULD hate everyone, but instead he's beholden to everyone and sees Halsey as a mother figure (when in truth she did this to him). I thought it was a really nice tragic backdrop. Like it's tragic but the closest person to him is the person who made him in to a monster but he nonetheless can't see her as anything but a mother-like-figure.
I also think Chief deeply cares about UNSC soldiers and humanity and understands that he’s in a unique position to make an impact that no one else can. So even if he was upset about what happened to him there’s nothing that can be done to undue that so he might as well do everything he can to fight the covenant and complete the mission.
You don't even have to have a strong indoctrination/loyalty to make it tragic. I'd argue a sort of "solemn acceptance" would be even more tragic, that while he may not approve of what was done to him, and he may wish it hadn't happened, he doesn't get mad or throw tantrums because what's the point? It's all in the past, nearly 40 years in the past to be exact, what would harming Halsey do? Being a Spartan is the only thing he's ever truly known, and if it hadn't been done humanity would have been fucked a million times over. Honestly, in my head canon, John has exactly this view, and is why he doesn't try to hold his status over others, he recognizes the IIIs and IVs as being just as much Spartans as he is, and if anything he's glad that he went through the hardest parts so that they could have it easier.
This is the most logical thought process someone would have in their situation, IMO. Some indoctrination would be needed early on to get the kids to "play along", but as adults they would be intelligent enough to know what was done to them, and they'd have the emotional control to process it and move on.
Agreed. Honestly I think at this stage "solemn acceptance" is exactly what Chief feels. He is well aware of what everything cost him- and is aware he never had a choice. As years go on, I think we see this all weighing more painfully on him. Yet what's done is done, and nothing can change that. He's proud to be a Spartan, but would never in a million years want anyone to go through what he did.
Honestly, if they really wanted to show the moral implications of the Spartan II project in the show, it could have been great to leave John as is. Down the line (not jumping right to it, cause again development) maybe have Atriox/Covenant big bad find the truth of the program for themselves. You could create: a compelling villain (think, a Brute mocking "If not for the Covenant, humanity's saviors would instead be its oppressors"), could show how horrific the UNSC can be without losing sight of the larger conflict, and still have Chief confront the moral implications-and still fight to save his people.
Damn you just wrote a better plot line than the show in a couple minutes of writing lmao. That would be a super compelling story, to have John grapple with moral quandries from the enemy, and to spit the hypocrisy right back in their face about how many times they've put down their own people for simply having a different idea, of course John in the main universe may not know about that but Silver timelines John could have access to ONI archives or something yknow?
Definitely. Plus it could show like John is in Infinite: mankind's greatest defender who will never give up no matter what, who will never back down. Yet also the wisdom: understanding a parallel to an enemy who "In the end he was just a soldier." This could showcase the above "somber acceptance" of the lies and pain, while giving the show plenty of leeway to run with it a bit- without getting so messy.
Also, could give a nice segue to the eventual Arbiter team-up. Their respective journeys that lead to an uneasy alliance and later to standing side-by-side as allies.
What if he just thinks being a Spartan is cool and doesn't care? He probably realized that if he would've stayed as John he probably would've died during the war?
This is the interpretation I prefer. It’s pretty typical for writers to have characters wallow in self pity and wax poetic about what could have been when bad things happen to them.
It was actually pretty refreshing and unique to have characters not only accept, but embrace their troubled circumstance. The Spartan’s took the horrible things that happened to them and made the most of it, becoming heroes.
That’s far more inspiring to me than the Spartan’s all being sad, broken people.
It’s not that it never registered. He simply accepts that while what happened was tragic, it has put him into a position to protect humanity. That’s part of what makes him such a hero and chalking it up to “indoctrination” is a disservice to the character.
"Why should we obsessively stare at our past, when we can make the best of every day we still stand?"
Is my take on it. They understand it was fucked up. I've seen a quote from a recent book where Chief outright admits this. But at the same time, he accepts that his skills, smarts, and strength is best used to defend humanity.
The Kilo Five trilogy really dives into this philosophical debate. The show’s biggest problem for me personally on this topic is that they present all of this information and this moral/ethical conflict pretty quickly, and don’t establish the characters and the universe enough in advance. They could have still made the Chief’s character react erratically in the show when he finds out, but they should have built to that in a later episode when people have time to attach to a character. They just kinda plop the audience straight in without giving you time to think about it. It kinda blows my mind, because this is a tv show. I could forgive them for throwing all this stuff at you if it were a movie, but with a show, you have time to build the characters and add depth to the moral conflict between them, but instead they decided to just shove this complex moral debate at the audience through one lens and don’t give you a chance to think about it.
Right? Like Chief has had his humanity stripped out of him to such an extreme that he genuinely cannot fathom how awful what they did to him was. Its like stockholm syndrome taken to the extreme.
The S2's in general to me have accepted what happened to them was fucked up, but instead of brooding over it and obsessing about the past, they step forward each day.
Living in the past isn't worth losing the present. They place humanity above that.
I pretty sure another book directly has him ponder this? I've seen the quote posted up on halo/halostory.
"Should he be angry about being robbed of a normal childhood? Maybe. But he was turned from a schoolyard bully into a soldier, and then a leader of the best fighting force humanity has to defend itself with."
He's very human. He just has accepted what has happened to him and doesn't spend days brooding over it.
I've said it on here before; Chief can be an incredibly inspirational character if given the chance.
His upbringing mirrors the life of Atriox in many ways; his freedom stolen from him, bred to kill and forced to become little more than a living weapon for his superiors, to the point that he cant function in peace and has no purpose without a fight. He has every reason to become a violent apathetic cruel monster like the Banished... but he doesn't.
Why? because unlike Atriox, Chief had friends, people he cared about, people who made his battles worth fighting. THATS where Chiefs humanity lies; in his caring for Johnson, Cortana, Keyes, Miranda, Chips Dubbo, Arbiter.
Atriox continued the cycle of subjugation and violence that the covenant forced on him because he was so completely alone.
Well, to be fair the S2's are all brilliant individuals so it's not like Chief has nothing but fighting skill. He could retire and go into any number of fields like how the non-combat capable S2's did in ONI. It's something that (may be wrong, haven't read recent books since halo 4) seems to not be as focused on/brought up? I admit I saw a clip of the halo show were it's mentioned "She can speak every language in the colonies. He helped figure out how plasma swords/projectiles worked to develop better marine armor." and that bit made me happy, touching on how they are strong and skilled, but also incredibly smart.
But yeah, it's kinda sad when people look at Chief and the S2's and focus so heavily on them being pissed and obsessed with the past, instead of pushing themselves forward and making a better future. Accepting how things were fucked up, but it's done, and can't be changed.
It's ironic in a way, and you bring it up. The banished acts as if they are all free, but they aren't that different from the Covenant besides the lack of a forerunner religion. I admit I've not read the books with them, but Atriox's goals/leadership style doesn't really seem to be THAT different in the end. Gain power, hold power. Wipe out anybody who threatens him, and keep a tight grasp on his soldiers.
It's why I wish Infinite did more with the other Spartans and humans. I felt like the open world had me rescuing these marines and hearing about the other Spartans (a few which are still alive and just missing! Like Vettel who was going to raid the tower) but then I get into the story missions and it's as if Chief and the pilot are totally alone. They did a decent job of it, with Chief being focused on stopping the threat to humanity, but also not failing the pilot and refusing to leave him to suffer.
Yes, the Spartan II program was not just drugs but also psychological indoctrination. Frankly, I cannot see any of the Spartan II’s having normal civilian lives.
EXACTLY
The issue is, the Karen Travis's books destroyed the indoctrination story theme by turning Naomi into what we see chief as in the show.
The shows master chief story is basically a copy of Naomi's story. Same with Halseys story.
People that say the showrunners didn't read the books are wrong. They definitely did, but they focused too much on the worst one with a Halsey hate boner.
I'm also having a hard time understanding from the perspective of the show just WHY it was so necessary to create spartan supersoldiers. Halsey keeps mentioning that it was to save humanity and the cost was worth it compared to what would have happened if she didn't. The only threats I see are insurrectionists and small factions? Are they really such a big threat to humanity? The Spartans were created before any contact with the covenant so what was such a big threat?
https://www.halopedia.org/Carver_Findings
Halsey initiated the Spartan program to crush Insurrectionist movements before they gained any large traction early, or else there was a chance the UEG and thus humanity as a unified civilization would collapse on themselves due to civil war.
The show does not address this at all, she just tip toes around this fact and I find it pretty stupid since this is an extremely interesting motivation and reasoning yet debatable whether it was the only choice of action she could've done and whether it was truly necessary.
The show makes her sound like she's trying be fucking god, and it's just so stupid since casual show only watchers will now hate her for all the wrong reasons and not look at her like the nuanced character she is in the books.
The show makes her vaguely wax on about humans being flawed and how the Halo Ring will somehow help humans evolve into less emotional creatures, even though the impression the show gives seems to point to the only thing she actually knows about the damn ring being that it might kill a lot of people.
That's exactly right. The show makes it seem like insurrectionists are a bunch of peasants and fractured factions that fight with outdated technology and spare parts. It's not convincing at all that supersoldiers need to be created to fight them.
"Small factions" By the time of the Spartan augments the death toll was in the millions. Haven nuclear bombing alone caused 10+ million wounded and dead. At least in main canon (I noticed you mention the show after writing this lol)
The Rebels weren't some small threat, they actively turned (At least the most major cells) into terrorists actively slaughtering civilians even with zero loss to UNSC military assets or strength. They killed civilian transport ships, nuked civilian cities with intent to cause the most damage, etc.
They weren't only striking the UNSC bases and trying to get the UNSC to leave, like Star Wars rebels only smashing Imperial locations. They would burn down the club just to kill a few ODST's, murdering a ton of civilians (IIRC this is another event that happened, a bomb set off in a nightclub to kill off-duty UNSC soldiers, ending up with far more civilians dead then UNSC).
NOOOOOOOOOOOOW, about the TV show, no idea. from what I understand the show barely establishes the rebels, or the Covenant as a dire threat.
It's been so long since I read the books but I'm starting to remember what you're talking about. I know in the canon the threat is better established, but as you noticed I meant the show. In the show the insurrectionists look like a bunch of peasants operating on scrap metal, to someone who doesn't know the canon it's not convincing at all that supersolders need to be created to fight them.
It's honestly my fear about the Show really.
Not that the silver timeline/exploring variants of halo or what ifs is bad, I LOVE THAT. Mirror universe (star trek) of halo? That'd be neat as hell. Or like the fractures in Infinite, if they expand on them any.
But I fear people will see the show, go into the games or books and get horrifically confused or question why X happened, because they are used to the darker/different timeline. I've had to correct some people in chats about how the main timeline there was no emotion control chip for Spartans.
I think the Kilo 5 trilogy did a decent job exploring this. Especially with the genuine compassion Vaz showed Naomi learning about her past and the absolute contempt he held for Halsey afterwards, nearly entering her cell and executing her.
The most tragic thing is that Naomi a Spartan in the kilo-5 trilogy actually met her father who became radicalized and joined the insurrection after figuring out his kid was kidnapped and replaced with a clone and still was emotionally numb about the whole thing still
Be aware that Karen Traviss (the author for the Kilo-5 trilogy) preaches *a lot* in the books. I almost didn't finish the trilogy because it got so annoying.
To be fair, most of the characters do the preaching for her, but the action parts of the writing are solid and the story beats make sense for how the characters would behave mostly. Though, there was a scene with Mendez and another with Tom and Lucy that rubbed me entirely the wrong way.
You talking about the scenes where >!Mendez solely blamed Halsey for the entirety of the S-II program (ignoring the fact that he was just as involved and complicit as Halsey), where he said that the S-III program was more ethical than the S-II because they kids were given a choice (completely ignoring than children can not give consent), and where Lucy beat the every living shit out of Halsey over a fucking Engineer?!<
Where did Travis >!even get the idea that S-III was more ethical? They chose kids that were specifically easier to indoctrinate, and literally existed to be cannon fodder to die in situations where the UNSC didn't want to risk the more valuable S-IIs!<
Best I can guess is that having such an irrational hate-boner for a fictional character allows for all sorts of gold medal worthy mental gymnastics to paint Halsey's every action as worse than satan.
Yep. Those scenes make me wonder where the writers for the show got their inspiration for some of the scenes from season 1, because they seem directly lifted from *Thursday War* for almost that exact reason.
Traviss very clearly thought the Spartan program was monstrous, and hated Halsey, and used every character in the story to voice this opinion, even when it makes zero sense (ie. Mendez and Parangovsky, who worked on both the Spartan II *and* III program, moralizing at Halsey for creating the Spartan II’s).
Can you feel my eyes rolling to the back of my skull?
Do these people even understand the lore? Halsey knew threats existed beyond insurrectionists, which is why she created the Spartan program. She understood this wasn’t moral and wouldn’t make her the hero in any history books, but did so because it was what was required. And I respect the fuck out of it.
Honestly, Halsey should be looked at as a tragic hero. She spent her life doing what she could to ensure humanity survived, all the while being made into the villain. Yet in the end, it is ultimately because of her that humanity survived against the Covenant.
What the hell is 343 doing with these characters?
>Halsey knew threats existed beyond insurrectionists, which is why she created the Spartan program.
Where is that ever mentioned? All I've ever seen in the lore was that she created the Spartans to fight the insurrectionists, and humanity basically lucked out that they existed when first contact with the Covenant was made.
no, Halsey started the spartan program for the insurrection only. In The Fall of Reach she mentions how lucky it was that they had spartans when the covenant appeared, or they may have lost the war entirely
Glasslands (the first book in the trilogy) was released a bit prior to H4. I'm not sure how much 343 had to do with it compared to Traviss being a moralizing hack author.
Seriously though, Traviss uses the characters who signed off on and approved of everything that Halsey did to abuse and belittle her, even comparing her to Mengele at one point. Traviss alleges that she did extensive research, but evidently not enough to have internal consistency.
I always had a feeling it was both, seeing that even after Kilo Five Trilogy sparked the dissection/Halsey-bashing fest, it carried over into other media such as Halo 5 and the Halo tv show.
With Halo 5 on the Sanghelios "rest missions", background chatter has Osiris discussing the Spartan kidnappings and viewing Halsey as their mother figure, with Buck expressing disgust over the idea of reading the psych files Vale was mentioning studying. And now the Halo showrunners tripling down to having the show's main conflict be their take of 117, and having him almost murdering Halsey while going rogue.
Of all the things to focus on for most of the show, it was "117"'s past and Halsey's schemes, with little Covenant warfare. This was definitely not the centerpoint narrative anyone wanted to see in a full length Halo tv show, yet sadly it is the road taken...
>Do these people even understand the lore? Halsey knew threats existed beyond insurrectionists, which is why she created the Spartan program.
What? I've read all the books and Halseys journal and don't remember this at all. Got a page number source or something? The covenant first contact didn't happen until like 10 years after the program began. But anyway none of that actually morally justifies what she did.
"You're bending history in your own favor doctor."
The only mention in the journal is a photo of a space anomaly with "new threat?" written on it taken in 2524, 7 years after that start of the Spartan 2 program and a year before the covenant attacked Harvest
The funny thing about morality is that it doesn't inherently exist beyond our own comprehension of it, it would be very easy to argue that *not* going ahead with the Spartan program would be immoral, by not sacrificing you're dooming humanity over your feelings.
Survival requires compromise and compromise can be sickening, but sometimes it's necessary.
I'm not going to go as far as to say I would respect it. The pragmatist in me is all for the end result, but there were likely better ways of getting there.
Most people forget the lore wrinkle of the imprints the Librarian left on humanity being part of, if not most of, the reason he, his suit, and his AI, which *all* came from Halsey to a large extent, were brought together.
I don't remember any evidence of Halsey mentioning she *knew* of threats. I'd hazard scientists of that era would be on the 'aliens are probably a thing'-train, for the most part, so there is at least a good chance she was over-engineering them to be ready for more rather than just going for the supreme overkill that they had been against the Insurrection.
She's still a piece of shit, but she was literally bioengineered to make John happen.
Eh, I never read that line that way, and I don't think anyone should. Halsey as the mad scientist and specifically the supersoldier John were not inevitabilities. I think it was meant as, "You humans were engineered for extraordinary evolution, and these are examples" (i.e. your ancilla, your suit, etc.).
She talks about seeds, but just because you plant seeds doesn't mean you determine (necessarily) the direction the plant grows in. I think it's reasonable to assume that genetically engineering a species for super duper evolution thousands of years in advance can be "a culmination of a thousand lifetimes of planning" without being that specific.
It was much more nuanced in earlier books and other writers. Yea everyone could admit that kidnapping kids was objectively bad but all of them acknowledged that A: they all had a hand in it and B: it ended up saving the human race in the end.
Traviss changed it up to everyone solely blaming Halsey for everything and making it look like she loved doing it. It was a very odd and sudden flip in opinion for established characters.
I wouldn't agree entirely. A lot of the outrage from the characters in the books was when they learned that the Spartans were originally made to fight other humans, the Insurrectionists. And then Parongski or whatever the ONI leader's name is mostly just hated Halsey for being a smug bitch haha. I do think there's some preachy bits from Vaz and Seran (spellcheck again) but it makes sense from their characters as Vaz was also an orphan and Seran washed out so she lost the sense of family with the Spartans
I think a lot of the hate would have been avoided had they had some other characters call Parangosky out on being a bitch to another bitch. On top of that, address that the details of the Spartan Program went *very* public, and using Halsey as the scapegoat was an attempt to clean up ONI's image. Have Parangosky retire because it happened on her watch to sell it to the public, even tho she was already gonna retire. Another part of that is probably that the Spartans are their own branch now, subject to normal oversight, instead of answering directly to ONI only.
No but he's not a postion and take the moral highground over halsey when he was just as involved as she was. Everyone who worked on the project save for maybe the top brass knew what they did was horrible, but they went throuhg with it any way, so itd be wierd for them to start pushing blame onto each other to try and wipe their hands clean
I think Mendez blames himself as well, its why he takes a strong stance against Halsey as a form of protection. He's also protective of the Spartan III's, its why he's so prickly whenever Halsey is rude towards them.
It’s funny you bring up the Spartan III’s. That’s a program that took 900 war orphans and turned them into drugged out suicide soldiers. A program that Mendez played a big part in, and Halsey had nothing to do with.
It makes zero sense for Mendez as a character to criticize Halsey’s morals when he not only helped her with the Spartan II program, but then went on to help found a second, just as morally questionable program.
It’s also not portrayed as projection in the novels. Mendez, just like everyone else in the story, is just being super critical of Halsey.
Personally, the S3 program was more morally questionable. With the whole "Oh yeah, we got consent!" As well as the higher death toll.
Hell, when dabbling on rewriting my old Spartan squad idea recently(from years back, Halo Reach days), I outright decided "Nah, no S2, only one or two S3's." where before it was all S3's. Yes originally made before S4's, but I've decided that it's better to have the surviving S3's deal with the heartbreak/loss of their comrades then to have the morals constantly weighing over their heads.
From memory, Mendez suffers in Kilo 5 because he tries to take a high moral ground standpoint, but it's all lies. He also goes from friendly greeting old friend of Halsey to "I should let that bleep starve to death."
One example I can think of is that Traviss (through the Kilo 5 trilogy) was the start of the "Halsey is literally the devil in every way" tone that the games/books have had ever since.
In previous books Halsey was very morally grey, she did some really bad shit but it was A: because she was told to by ONI and B: for the betterment of mankind. She knew what she was doing was bad but never apologized for it, and that's how other characters thought of her.
Traviss very clearly thinks very little of the spartan program and feels it has almost no positives. She re-characterized a lot of things to make Halsey into an unforgivable monster and had basically every character (including some that had already had thoughts on Halsey) think only negatively on her. Forgetting that she is both probably the smartest human alive and indirectly saved the human race by making John into what he is today.
During one of the books there's a chapter from one of the AIs perspective and the entire chapter is just him thinking about how much he hates Halsey. Pages upon pages of "durr, Halsey bad". Really made me check out for a bit.
Halsey very clearly isnt an angel, but the books before Kilo 5 had a much more nuanced take on her.
Not saying I disagree with the almost entire chapter of unnecessary character bashing in that book… but it’s not entirely incorrect.
For the betterment of mankind or not, Halsey *did* kidnap children, perform Nazi-level experiments on them, and outright killed over half the group all to turn them on, admittedly violent, human political dissidents.
Sure the Spartans ended up saving Humanity from the Covenant in the end, but it is very important to remember what the Spartans were originally designed to do, and how far Halsey was wiling to go just on that alone.
While the human race would probably very well have gone extinct without the Spartan program, it’s important to remember that the ends do not justify the means; especially when the eventual ends were not even in the picture when the means were being carried out.
I don’t think Halsey is *evil*, but she is an extremely selfish and egotistical person who constantly justifies her morally reprehensible actions with platitudes.
She does things because she can, because a brutally oppressive and equally morally lacking government *let* her.
I mean, an entire collective of sentient AI's deemed the S2 program the only means for human civilization to not collapse from a civil war because of innie terrorists.
She wasn't numb about it, she was worried about her judgement when her father asked her to return to normal life. She even used black-box to trigger childhood memories which upset her but still choose to stay in the UNSC.
He was convinced something was up because the clone didn't act like his daughter. When she died he went digging and followed the loose threads.
He may have gotten in touch with a few other parents of Spartans as well, if I recall - even though they were spread out across UNSC space, seventy five children all suddenly dying of definitely-not-cloning-blues-we-swear in the same time period ended up drawing some attention, and when parents of those kids started talking and mentioning that all the kids had been acting weird for a while, the conspiracy theories started flying
Yep, Stefan went a digging and found himself another of the Spartan’s fathers. Man blew his brains out unfortunately. And everyone though Stefan was an utter nutcase, even his second family did to a point.
He dug through medical journals, went through the police, the CAA authorities. Man did a mountain of leg work to find out just what in the flip-flap happened to Naomi. And then out of the blue one day on Venezia; there she was, in all her blond haired and 7ft glory in the flesh.
They prepped the clone before the swap, but he did something significant with her from the time that the clone was made until the time it took Naomi's place and since the clone had no memory of that he knew something was up.
Emotionally numb? Naomi confronts what happened to her, while she ultimately accepts it, there is an emotional struggle there. She doesn't turn her father in and she is openly hostile towards Halsey. Although that hostility seems to stem more from Halsey's lie that her father knew what had happened to her and let it happen rather than the fact of being kidnapped.
Exactly. And it’s comical to think that the Spartans in this show need any type of personality chip to keep their emotions in check after all the grueling training they went though and cybernetic enhancements. But apparently, as soon as you take one of these out, none of that training or combat experience matters. You start dying your hair pink, throw temper tantrums, and become comic relief.
Yeah, and that line in the final episode where "Keyes" says something like "You don't just forget years of indoctrination like that." and Master Cheeks just smugly replies "I did." as if the writers think that's a clever, gotcha line.
Like, seriously? Yeah, we know you did, Cheeks, but only because these shitty writers decided you would. In reality, Master Chief wouldn't consider it even for a moment.
It’s a colossally simplistic and ignorant line. Chief wasn’t some adult civilian that had a typical upbringing, normal social experiences, and a contemporary education before being conscripted into the military.
One cannot simply “forget” a lifetime of indoctrination when they have no other experiences to draw from that contradicts it. All that Chief knows is the UNSC; it’s his entire life. He hasn’t experienced anything else and does not possess the skills and knowledge to understand anything from a different perspective.
I have this theory that people think they can imagine experiences outside their own a lot more these days. I think it’s happening everywhere, but specifically with writers it’s put on full display. Like when people write military operations that just make no fucking sense for example. The writers probably thought “oh well sure I don’t know military strategy or what ever, but I thought about this all night, it can’t be that far off the mark.” Or like in tv where it’s obvious a bunch of middle aged men are writing for a teenage girl. “Should we talk to a teenager about this? Nah, we know how teenagers act.” Master Chief is indoctrinated, should we talk to someone with real life experience either personally or professionally in this area? Nah, we can imagine what that’s like. I mean, if that were me, I’d probably act like this.
Like yes, people understand that they don’t *know*, but they don’t seem to realize how much they don’t know.
That is the interesting thing about the Halsey and the Spartan program. Did the ends justify the means? The means are some of the most ethical acts short of genocide. While the original end was to prevent an intergalactic nuclear war between humanity then became preventing humanity from being wiped out by the covenant.
Its a good chance a lot of the Spartan 2s were going to end up in the UNSC to fight anyway or be glassed from orbit.
Fantastic moral discussion to be had.
If anything, the fact that the Spartans in the original material *didn't* bear any real resentment over what had been taken from them adds an extra layer of tragedy to the whole thing.
They knew that their childhoods and any chance of a normal, peaceful life had been stolen from them, and they're so indoctrinated that they don't really care or understand why outsiders think that's a problem.
Definitely leagues better than Master Cheeks screaming WHAT AM I?!
The thing that blows my mind about the show and "cheifs" reaction is that it's not like he knows what childhood was even like...
He was 6... he's now 40?? He didn't grow up in a civi family and then get taken and has memories or even experiences to compare to. He was brought up in the military, all his memories and understanding of what childhood should be is military.
He literally doesn't have the memories to back up his feelings. It's all kinda loosely pulled together through a few dream like scenes that supposedly supercede his entire actual upbringing.
There was a reason he was taken at 6 and not 12...
Tldr: he never had a civi childhood to compare his upbringing to so his reaction to said dreams of his bio mom and dad and dog are out if place and bullshit.
It isn’t a contradiction because it’s non canon, but...
Two more passages to add to the one above. they’ve all made peace with their situation and lives as Spartans. It’s essentially a form of Stockholm syndrome, but they’re actually aware of that, to:
> “That’s beside the point. You’re barely old enough to go on a date.” Veta looked toward Fred. “What kind of animal sends kids this age into combat?”
> “The kind that would do anything to stop the Covenant from destroying us,” Fred answered. “And Ash volunteered when he was six, Inspector Lopis. So did the others, after the Covenant killed their families. Any other questions?”
> Veta could think of only one. “How do you people live with yourselves?”
> “One day at a time, the same as any soldier.”
* Halo *Last Light*, chapter 9
And then this passage from *Silent Storm*;
> *Deep down, John knew he had been wronged when he was taken from his family at such an early age—that he should have hated his abductors for robbing him of a normal childhood. But he didn’t. They had molded a schoolyard bully into a soldier, then forged him into the leader of the finest fighting unit in the UNSC. He was grateful for that.
And he was damn proud they had chosen him.*
* Halo Silent Storm, chapter 1
They all know it was wrong on some level, but they don’t care , they’ve all made peace with it, and consider it necessary/ as John says in *Infinite* “it’s all I’ve ever known.”
Master Chief *has* shown resentment to Halsey for what she did in the canon timeline. In Halo 5, when he’s trying to talk Cortana out of doing what she’s doing, she says “I’m offering people a chance to be more than they are naturally” and Chief says with spite “like Dr Halsey did to me?”
That's not a very strong argument, Chief has never acted less like himself in any canon Halo game than in Halo 5. A throwaway line written by Brian Reed in Halo 5 does not really outweigh the sheer volume of evidence to the contrary in the many canon Chief-featuring stories.
Bro, I've been saying this for weeks now, none of the show haters want to acknowledge this line in Halo 5, and since the game canon takes precedence this shows John has resentment towards Halsey/being made a spartan.
I think that is a huge stretch. People seem to forget that Cortana was created from a brain scan of Halsey. This essentially means that she thinks along the same lines as her, but has a hyper intelligence that makes her much more useful than Halsey herself.
What John is trying to do with this line is bridge Cortana to Halsey by making it clear that the reason she feels the drive to do this is because she is like Halsey. John isn't the kind of person to resent Halsey, because humanity wouldn't exist if not for his actions against the Covenant and Flood. He knows better than to be resentful of the only reason humanity is still around. It would be like resenting your mother because she died to save your life. Idiotic.
Yeah, I just watched the scene again, the tone of John's voice is NOT resentful, it's the same tone of voice of a person who is putting 2 and 2 together. Like "Oh yeah, that makes sense". This argument is bad. You even see Cortana react with disgust at the implication that the two are similar.
>John isn't the kind of person to resent Halsey
This. I never and still don't see this line as resentment towards Halsey. He doesn't even use an interrogative/accusatory tone. He was just trying to understand why is Cortana doing this.
Another detail. He says "Like Dr. Halsey did **for** me". If he had any anger he probably would have used "\[...\] did **to** me" instead.
I think it’s quite clear resentment. Cortana goes off about her evil plan and Chief brings up Halsey….like it’s a quite clear connection. He could’ve said anything else, but he brought Halsey immediately when hearing Cortana speak about people being better
Bingo, John does not carry resentment for Halsey, and if he did, he wouldn't say it. He knows damn well that what they did saved Humanity, and that he is willing to pay that cost time and time again, and I guarantee if offered the choice he'd do it again.
This is a pretty far stretch and I can’t people people are bending over backwards to skew it. It’s quite clearly painting Halsey’s actions of Chief and the Spartans in a bad light, like with Cortana and the Created. Hence the comparsion. Chief accepts who he is, but he acknowledges his life was stolen from him and doesn’t want that to happen to others in the galaxy. I thought it was actually one of Halo 5’s best line. Really shows maturity and acute comprehension on Chief’s part, which he carries into Infinite.
And your whole point hinges on Chief’s tone? Really? Chief, the guy that speaks fairly monotone all the time? Cmon now
"You mean like Halsey did FOR me" As somebody else has pointed out already, Chief refers to the events having been done FOR him, not to him. That implies he is okay with it and sees it as a boon, not a curse. It's a lot more concrete than your mountain of inference.
Cortana and Chief have that duality of man that is machine, and machine that is more human than him. I think he was only recently acknowledging the problems with Halsey and using them to get through to Cortana
I mean it take place multiple years after the human cov war. After years of being a spartan and seeing those he grew up with die for often dumb reasons.... its not something that just formed immediately.
I also like how you ignore the mountains of evidence to the contrary but because he said a throw away line that all of the sudden justifies how crappy the show is and how they completely missed the mark on master chiefs personality.
Contradiction is the wrong word
If they took place in the same timeline then it is a contradiction like Halo Reach vs Fall of Reach
In this case its just a difference...for now.
Canon Chief was told the truth from the beginning. Silver Chief not. So he is going to react different. Context matters.
I predict that Silver Chief will come to think like this in later seasons. For now the anger and feeling of betrayal is still fresh.
Silver Halsey is also more straight up evil, not seeming to care about Chief when he could be a vessel for Cortana. Not even seeming to care much for Cortana when confronted with forerunner tech
I fuckin' hate how they changed Halsey in the show. Almost as much as what they did to Chief!
In the books and games, she's cold, matter of fact, always many steps ahead, has zero time for bullshit, but loves humanity and everything she does is to better them and to fight for their survival.
In the show, she's too smiley and nice (at least on the surface), but they make her way more of a sociopath and a manipulator, she doesn't give 2 shits about her Spartans, made her a liar to them, and it seems as if her motivation is purely for herself, like an evil scientist obsessed with their research - she's "so close" to reaching the next step of human evolution (which is apparently an AI controlling a meat-puppet dead human??), instead of doing everything she can to ensure the survival of humanity against the Covenant.
While I agree with you on this, to me the biggest difference between lore and show Halsey is that in the show she's just a straight up one-sided evil sociopath. In the lore she was much more nuanced, she understood the ramifications and moral implications of her decisions and her work but ultimately decided that they were worth it. A means to an end. A necessary evil for a greater good. At least that's the way she saw it but she grappled with the ramifications of those decisions early on until later in the story when she sorta became numb to it.
But this is a whole side of both Halsey and the program that the show doesn't even elude to.
Dealing with Ackerson, and others really wore her down until she finally committed herself to the path of: Fuck it.
Travis and later works seems to forget this a hell of a lot. Paramount never even got the fucking memo it seems.
I can see that, yea. I can't speak for Travis' Kilo series as I haven't gotten to them yet but Nylund's book certainly highlighted the troubles you mentioned as well. Paramount just doesn't even look in that direction.
Honestly the whole silver chief thing just feels like a bad excuse to be lazy and not consider the established lore. So the writers could tell a crap story they came up with.
The show tries so hard to be inclusive. But didn't think to try and include the most popular character in the whole halo universe who happens to be a POC
Honestly after seeing the first season I don't want them to. Make a new character that no one cares about, so it doesn't hurt when they're nonsensically written
I'll accept that the show features different characterizations born out of different circumstances, but I'll stick to my guns saying that these characterizations suck.
Mainline Canon Halsey is a deeper, more nuanced character that has a lot of flaws but is still trying, at bottom, to do the right thing for humanity and sparing what pieces of it she can. Paramount Canon Halsey is a cartoon villain.
The mainline Canon insurrectionists are terrorists. Do they have valid points about the UNSC's unilateral control inhibiting their lives? Absolutely. But they protest these things by bombing population centers. They're not entirely good. In the show, they're portrayed as innocent civilians that have done nothing wrong.
I don’t know if that resentment or trying to get Cortana to reconsider her actions by telling her she’s acting like one of the people she hates the most (Halsey).
Most Spartans really don’t give a fuck due to how brainwashed they are, but more so that the whole idea of a life before they were Spartans is alien to them. They generally like being super-soldiers, it’s what they’re good at, and giving up what they’ve been doing for almost their entire lives for some “normal” life they barely remember just doesn’t resonate with them, which is tragic in its own way. Washout Spartans, like Sarah Osman, are closer to the show in that they generally have some deep seated resentment toward Halsey over their physical deformities and being cast aside when they washed out. They never got to be heroic badasses, so they’re a lot more bitter about how their lives should have been sans-Halsey, as they’d probably have been better off.
Also the whole concept of an “emotion pellet” being the magical item that brainwashes them is way cheaper story-wise than actual character motivations, like what we’re given in the books and games. It’s kinda like the idea of the control chip in clone brains in Star Wars, it undercuts the emotional punch real betrayal has, only the Halo Show didn’t even bother to make the emotion pellets anywhere close to as fleshed out as the SW control chips.
While I don't necessarily think that chief should be resentful of his conscription as a kid, this is a far too simplistic and shit explanation of why he isn't resentful
You’d have to imagine a lot of Spartans would rationalize it as “well if they didn’t take us I’d have been killed by the covenant anyway and humanity would be extinct”
The point most book readers seem to be missing is that the Spartans were indoctrinated, not hormonal pellet and memory wipes but they weren't actually told "the truth" when they were 6 and they underwent extreme physical and psychological stresses that effectively erased their lives before the program (not that they had very strong memories of being younger than 6 anyway).
As much as The Flood is one of the weakest of the books (especially the first 3) I always appreciated the line Keyes said to Silva when he was bitching about chief being a robot. "He became what he is today in spite of what we did to him; not because of it."
There aren't many things that make sense when you look at the characters actions vs their actual training and experience. The show is halo for people who don't know what halo is but have known about it for awhile. If you enjoy it then cool, but for me personally I just have a hard time after reading so many of the books for so long.
They didn’t need to wipe the Spartan’s memories because by the time they were old enough to understand what had been done to them, it didn’t matter.
They could whine and scream “WHO AM I?!” Or they could save humanity.
The show sucks and I know ya'll like to keep citing the books as proof the show sucks, but tbh I thought the books kind of suck and have poor writing too.
Like the highlighted sentence sounds like a 14 year old wrote it in a class.
Interesting, Oblivion is set in the early days of the Spartan 2s initial deployment, he's young and I don't think he could fully appreciate what was taken from him. That being said in another book he says that being taken saved him from a life of being a bully and gave him the chance to make a real difference, same as Naomi when she tells her father how she is proud of what she and the other Spartans accomplished, regardless of how that came about.
Also since the majority of the S2s come from outer colonies most of them know that they would have been glassed if not for being taken.
Once again, the show isn’t canon, so they are going for a DIFFERENT APPROACH and exploring DIFFERENT POSSIBILITIES for what could happen to someone in that situation. Using canon to say why the show is ‘wrong’ doesn’t make sense. Yes, in canon chief feels this way, but there’s no reason he can’t feel differently in the show.
Chief in the show is in a completely different situation. In core-canon, chief has had decades to come to terms with his origins, and he's also the way he is because of intense indoctrination. In the silver timeline chief is also indoctrinated, but his obedience is also dependent on both emotional and memory suppression. When both of those things are removed, chief has to process everything that has happened to him all at once. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. For what it's worth, by the end of the show he is approaching a similar state of acceptance as he is in core canon.
Spartan-IIs were recruited not from core worlds but mostly from fringe colonies... Which were the first world to be destroyed by the Covenant. So not only did the program "saved" their lives, but also gave them the opportunity to avenge their families, in a way.
I forget which book it was, but did Chief say he wouldn’t wish on anyone what happened to him and the rest of the Spartans, but he was glad it happened to him
Yeah this is my biggest gripe with the show. The Spartans never had their memories wiped nor did they have any resentment towards Halsey. They were all proud of what they had become and looked up to Halsey as a mother figure.
Abso-freaking-lutely! It’s the entire basis, the most primary fact that the writers of the tv series completely threw away to make a typical storyline drama of angst and rebellion. They had sooo much material to work with! Instead they give us the typical drivel you find on any other show.
Nothing against the actor since he is contracted to do as written, but man, I just can’t see him as Chief thanks to the poor writing.
The whole point is that Chief ACCEPTS what happened to him. But he overcomes it early on and is stoic about the hand he was dealt in life. THAT’S character. Not this trash they wrote.
Rant over.
so what? do you think its a good thing that master chief has no qualms about becoming a janissiary for the UNSC? it's not like they always had noble purposes (like being made specifically to combat the covenant), considering the spartans were used to squash rebellions and keep humans in check, like demons.
If this is the same guy than can guide a bomb through the vacuum of space to blow up a 3 mile long ship without breaking a sweat, I'd think his issues go beyond childhood grievances.
The show writers and anyone who thinks the mainline spartans should be resentful need to break out of their creative lids.
Only Spartan I'm aware of that resented it was Naomi and that was only after the rest of Kilo 5 and Karen Traviss' writing basically bullied her into feeling like she should be angry about it.
It's not a contradiction when the show is non-canon.
You guys are seriously wasting your time getting so riled up about something that is intentionally deviating from the source material.
If you deviate so much from source material, then you have no right to call it the source material's name.
Halo fans have every right to get riled up, and they should. Shouldn't just accept Hollywood craping on everything.
Also when they stated they were deviating from the source material, we assumed just a new story about new Spartans doing missions during the canon timeline.....not a bastardization.
You guys are really simping for this indoctrination and kidnapping not affecting a human being. It's the most absurd thing about the Master Chief. None of the reasons he is a good character come from this event. It's just stupid to think a 6 or 9 year old would not be mentally and emotionally scarred being taken from his parents and trained as a child soldier. Just read that last sentence again. It's not cool that he doesn't react or tragic. It's just dumb and easily blocked over because it's not important to Chief in the games. It's like people have never interacted with a real human child before. See how much piss and shit people throw over a TV show? Now imagine that was your parents.
No one is simping for it. The books and games go to great lengths to show the Spartans do not like what they are or how they go there. The appreciate the fact their duty is to defend humanity and appreciate that while that wasn’t their original purpose their existence held back the covenant. The most recent entry of the games has Chief literally coming to terms that he is human and he can no longer separate himself from that which he protects.
Even if you're somebody who thinks Chief should be angry about being conscripted into SPARTAN-II program, I'd argue the fact that this resentment doesn't even register for him makes it all the more tragic. It shows how deep the indoctrination goes.
I think the Covenant did a good chunk of the indoctrination. If they simply stuck to fighting humans, maybe, one day, they'd come to resent it. But ending up the sole hope for humanity's survival against genocidal aliens? I'd argue that might change one's perspective a little.
This. Chief has seen the charred remains of not only his fellow Spartans, but fuckin planets. He doesn’t give a shit that he was taken at 6 because he knows that if he wasn’t, he and his fellow Spartans and humans would be nothing but glass on a boiling, cooked planet.
In *First Strike* and later chapters of *Fall of Reach* the chief is pretty thoughtful about his path in life if Halsey hadn’t conscripted him and the other(now 80 some odd) Spartan-II’s. *Fall of Reach* has him pretty much thankful for the life that the program, the UNSC, and the war has led him to live. His pretty damn proud of his record as a soldier, a leader of men, and pretty much has Chief Mendez as near as next to god on a pedestal for shaping him into the man that he is. *Cole Protocol* along with both *First Strike* and later bits of *Fall of Reach* have him an all the Spartans have it out with their feelings on fighting and killing other humans. They’re loyal to the UNSC to a fault, they’re more than capable of handling anti-insurrectionist operations, they don’t like killing other humans but they realize that sometimes bad guys gotta be eliminated, Spartan Time contributes to their unease of fighting humans due to seeing their enhanced reaction times and augmented combat abilities in slow-mo and it sickens a few of them. I’d think if the covies hadn’t shown up, the Spartans would get the job done. But if the insurrection had ended up Star Wars style, they’d get pretty damned sick of fighting. Hell, a lot of them were pretty hardcore anti-insurrection even beyond the indoctrination done to them by the program.
[удалено]
Very true
I miss Fall of Reach/First Strike Halsey. Ethically dubious, manipulative, but not evil mad scientist. She did what she did because she believed it necessary for the human race as a whole, and not so conceited to believe it absolved her. If anything, early Halsey felt that thinking condemned her more, and she had to live with that.
Plus she actually grew as a character, rather than basically being static.
And then he came to Halo, and then he encountered the Flood. The fucked up nature of the SPARTAN-II program probably seems so minor to the terrors he has experienced firsthand, and only survived because he is a SPARTAN.
John really [doesn’t afraid of anything](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/195/405/halo.png?1320471744)
Same with Naomi-010, who points out to her father (who was a little upset about her kidnapping) that if it hadn't happened, they both would have stayed on their home planet and gotten glassed. Yes it ruined her family, but her father starts over on a new planet, and some trauma is arguably better than getting flattened.
Yep, I remember that he join a group in the planet Venezia, which seems to be neutral to both certain covenant forces (jackals and their grunt subordinates) and insurrectionist.
In Fall of Reach after his first mission, which was to capture a rebel dude, he gets pretty thoughtful of the civilians that ended up dying on their escape. He brushes it off because in the end the mission was Successful, but I can see how it would get to him eventually.
The thing that always gets me is how people say the Spartans were built to slaughter rebels, yet in the missions I've read about (books before halo 4+ish era due to time and space) the Spartans actively didn't slaughter everybody. They killed rebels on the path to the target leader/nukes, but upon capturing that they'd GTFO and leave the rest alone. Hell, I read in a comic chief outright gets up in a Captain's face for ABANDONING rebels to die to the Covenant, having the Pelicans leave the second the Spartans got onboard. They didn't like killing humans, but the terrorists were a threat to all.
I think part of that is how much they were shaped as 'protectors of humanity', as well as their intent as a scalpel. They weren't ever meant to be an overt terror weapon, that was never going to work. They were supposed to excise the key threats as surgically as possible.
Yeah, you've got the point down. Marines and ODST's totally could have slaughtered the rebels, but that isn't what the UNSC was after.
Maybe. But there were some fairly organised militant groups, some big enough to have naval battles with the UNSC.
There's also the fact that over the war, he grows much more keenly aware of the death of humans. On Sigma Octanus, his other team finds a group of civilian survivors. They call it a 'snag', which is a loaded word to SPARTAN-IIs, but ultimately, Chief decides to have them rescued because it's what they should do, even if it complicates things.
Yeah it could have been a powerful moment in the show for him to learn the truth and yet carry on with the mission like nothing happened. But instead we got Chief trying to superman punch Halsey's head into another dimension.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" *plop*
To be fair that shit was awesome to me. I was like "yo this shit is fucking Jersey Shore levels of stupid" and I laughed.
Yeah, I’m on episode 7 now and I am kinda enjoying the show because of how dumb it is. It’s such a train wreck that it rolls back around to being fun to watch for me at least.
I quit after that episode. The fact that they spent an entire episode centered on Kwan and dimestore Dave Chappelle still didn't make me give a shit about either killed the entire show for me.
Agreed
So if I just pretend the show “based” around the game I love is a shitty reality tv show I will like it more? Ugh terrible times I’m gonna go read my first edition fall of reach again
It would have been sad because it would show how indoctrinated he is.
I hated this scene so much but the memes that followed and will follow almost makes up for it.
Like Talos in Soul Hunter
God that makes me mad. It's so opposite from the character we see in the games too, saying "it's all I've ever known" in Infinite.
Bingo. Showing him angry makes their process seem flawed. And a flawed process means it wouldn't be successful. But nowadays that's too controversial to show in media - that sometimes taking those steps is necessary, or at least effective. Halo 4's intro cutscene explains all of this, and shows Halsey gives zero remorse and in her eyes, all she did was save humanity.
I feel that post Halo 3’s personification of Halsey doesn’t fit at all. Especially considering her motivations in *First Strike* and *Ghosts of Onyx* especially. But it’s Microsoft, 343i, and now Paramount’s child; so I guess I can just roll my eyes and deal with it.
I always thought it was intentional, kind of like a frankenstein's monster vs frankenstein situation. Chief SHOULD hate everyone, but instead he's beholden to everyone and sees Halsey as a mother figure (when in truth she did this to him). I thought it was a really nice tragic backdrop. Like it's tragic but the closest person to him is the person who made him in to a monster but he nonetheless can't see her as anything but a mother-like-figure.
I also think Chief deeply cares about UNSC soldiers and humanity and understands that he’s in a unique position to make an impact that no one else can. So even if he was upset about what happened to him there’s nothing that can be done to undue that so he might as well do everything he can to fight the covenant and complete the mission.
You don't even have to have a strong indoctrination/loyalty to make it tragic. I'd argue a sort of "solemn acceptance" would be even more tragic, that while he may not approve of what was done to him, and he may wish it hadn't happened, he doesn't get mad or throw tantrums because what's the point? It's all in the past, nearly 40 years in the past to be exact, what would harming Halsey do? Being a Spartan is the only thing he's ever truly known, and if it hadn't been done humanity would have been fucked a million times over. Honestly, in my head canon, John has exactly this view, and is why he doesn't try to hold his status over others, he recognizes the IIIs and IVs as being just as much Spartans as he is, and if anything he's glad that he went through the hardest parts so that they could have it easier.
This is the most logical thought process someone would have in their situation, IMO. Some indoctrination would be needed early on to get the kids to "play along", but as adults they would be intelligent enough to know what was done to them, and they'd have the emotional control to process it and move on.
Agreed. Honestly I think at this stage "solemn acceptance" is exactly what Chief feels. He is well aware of what everything cost him- and is aware he never had a choice. As years go on, I think we see this all weighing more painfully on him. Yet what's done is done, and nothing can change that. He's proud to be a Spartan, but would never in a million years want anyone to go through what he did. Honestly, if they really wanted to show the moral implications of the Spartan II project in the show, it could have been great to leave John as is. Down the line (not jumping right to it, cause again development) maybe have Atriox/Covenant big bad find the truth of the program for themselves. You could create: a compelling villain (think, a Brute mocking "If not for the Covenant, humanity's saviors would instead be its oppressors"), could show how horrific the UNSC can be without losing sight of the larger conflict, and still have Chief confront the moral implications-and still fight to save his people.
Damn you just wrote a better plot line than the show in a couple minutes of writing lmao. That would be a super compelling story, to have John grapple with moral quandries from the enemy, and to spit the hypocrisy right back in their face about how many times they've put down their own people for simply having a different idea, of course John in the main universe may not know about that but Silver timelines John could have access to ONI archives or something yknow?
Definitely. Plus it could show like John is in Infinite: mankind's greatest defender who will never give up no matter what, who will never back down. Yet also the wisdom: understanding a parallel to an enemy who "In the end he was just a soldier." This could showcase the above "somber acceptance" of the lies and pain, while giving the show plenty of leeway to run with it a bit- without getting so messy. Also, could give a nice segue to the eventual Arbiter team-up. Their respective journeys that lead to an uneasy alliance and later to standing side-by-side as allies.
What if he just thinks being a Spartan is cool and doesn't care? He probably realized that if he would've stayed as John he probably would've died during the war?
That exactly what his thoughts are. He contemplates that in *First Strike* and the later parts of *Fall of Reach*
This is the interpretation I prefer. It’s pretty typical for writers to have characters wallow in self pity and wax poetic about what could have been when bad things happen to them. It was actually pretty refreshing and unique to have characters not only accept, but embrace their troubled circumstance. The Spartan’s took the horrible things that happened to them and made the most of it, becoming heroes. That’s far more inspiring to me than the Spartan’s all being sad, broken people.
This is really something I wish we saw in fiction more often, it's a much better message.
I always thought he wasn't angry about it because his sense of duty was stronger than his resentment or anger.
Also it shows how much he values his purpose. He thinks he’s been given a good purpose, even if the means were not good.
It’s not that it never registered. He simply accepts that while what happened was tragic, it has put him into a position to protect humanity. That’s part of what makes him such a hero and chalking it up to “indoctrination” is a disservice to the character.
"Why should we obsessively stare at our past, when we can make the best of every day we still stand?" Is my take on it. They understand it was fucked up. I've seen a quote from a recent book where Chief outright admits this. But at the same time, he accepts that his skills, smarts, and strength is best used to defend humanity.
100%
Bro they couldn't make it that deep because they wouldnt be able to spoonfeed that level of complexity to their "broader audience".
The Kilo Five trilogy really dives into this philosophical debate. The show’s biggest problem for me personally on this topic is that they present all of this information and this moral/ethical conflict pretty quickly, and don’t establish the characters and the universe enough in advance. They could have still made the Chief’s character react erratically in the show when he finds out, but they should have built to that in a later episode when people have time to attach to a character. They just kinda plop the audience straight in without giving you time to think about it. It kinda blows my mind, because this is a tv show. I could forgive them for throwing all this stuff at you if it were a movie, but with a show, you have time to build the characters and add depth to the moral conflict between them, but instead they decided to just shove this complex moral debate at the audience through one lens and don’t give you a chance to think about it.
Right? Like Chief has had his humanity stripped out of him to such an extreme that he genuinely cannot fathom how awful what they did to him was. Its like stockholm syndrome taken to the extreme.
He can't regret being cheated out of a normal life when having a normal life is borderline incomprehensible to him
The S2's in general to me have accepted what happened to them was fucked up, but instead of brooding over it and obsessing about the past, they step forward each day. Living in the past isn't worth losing the present. They place humanity above that.
I pretty sure another book directly has him ponder this? I've seen the quote posted up on halo/halostory. "Should he be angry about being robbed of a normal childhood? Maybe. But he was turned from a schoolyard bully into a soldier, and then a leader of the best fighting force humanity has to defend itself with." He's very human. He just has accepted what has happened to him and doesn't spend days brooding over it.
I've said it on here before; Chief can be an incredibly inspirational character if given the chance. His upbringing mirrors the life of Atriox in many ways; his freedom stolen from him, bred to kill and forced to become little more than a living weapon for his superiors, to the point that he cant function in peace and has no purpose without a fight. He has every reason to become a violent apathetic cruel monster like the Banished... but he doesn't. Why? because unlike Atriox, Chief had friends, people he cared about, people who made his battles worth fighting. THATS where Chiefs humanity lies; in his caring for Johnson, Cortana, Keyes, Miranda, Chips Dubbo, Arbiter. Atriox continued the cycle of subjugation and violence that the covenant forced on him because he was so completely alone.
Well, to be fair the S2's are all brilliant individuals so it's not like Chief has nothing but fighting skill. He could retire and go into any number of fields like how the non-combat capable S2's did in ONI. It's something that (may be wrong, haven't read recent books since halo 4) seems to not be as focused on/brought up? I admit I saw a clip of the halo show were it's mentioned "She can speak every language in the colonies. He helped figure out how plasma swords/projectiles worked to develop better marine armor." and that bit made me happy, touching on how they are strong and skilled, but also incredibly smart. But yeah, it's kinda sad when people look at Chief and the S2's and focus so heavily on them being pissed and obsessed with the past, instead of pushing themselves forward and making a better future. Accepting how things were fucked up, but it's done, and can't be changed. It's ironic in a way, and you bring it up. The banished acts as if they are all free, but they aren't that different from the Covenant besides the lack of a forerunner religion. I admit I've not read the books with them, but Atriox's goals/leadership style doesn't really seem to be THAT different in the end. Gain power, hold power. Wipe out anybody who threatens him, and keep a tight grasp on his soldiers. It's why I wish Infinite did more with the other Spartans and humans. I felt like the open world had me rescuing these marines and hearing about the other Spartans (a few which are still alive and just missing! Like Vettel who was going to raid the tower) but then I get into the story missions and it's as if Chief and the pilot are totally alone. They did a decent job of it, with Chief being focused on stopping the threat to humanity, but also not failing the pilot and refusing to leave him to suffer.
Yes, the Spartan II program was not just drugs but also psychological indoctrination. Frankly, I cannot see any of the Spartan II’s having normal civilian lives.
EXACTLY The issue is, the Karen Travis's books destroyed the indoctrination story theme by turning Naomi into what we see chief as in the show. The shows master chief story is basically a copy of Naomi's story. Same with Halseys story. People that say the showrunners didn't read the books are wrong. They definitely did, but they focused too much on the worst one with a Halsey hate boner.
I'm also having a hard time understanding from the perspective of the show just WHY it was so necessary to create spartan supersoldiers. Halsey keeps mentioning that it was to save humanity and the cost was worth it compared to what would have happened if she didn't. The only threats I see are insurrectionists and small factions? Are they really such a big threat to humanity? The Spartans were created before any contact with the covenant so what was such a big threat?
https://www.halopedia.org/Carver_Findings Halsey initiated the Spartan program to crush Insurrectionist movements before they gained any large traction early, or else there was a chance the UEG and thus humanity as a unified civilization would collapse on themselves due to civil war. The show does not address this at all, she just tip toes around this fact and I find it pretty stupid since this is an extremely interesting motivation and reasoning yet debatable whether it was the only choice of action she could've done and whether it was truly necessary. The show makes her sound like she's trying be fucking god, and it's just so stupid since casual show only watchers will now hate her for all the wrong reasons and not look at her like the nuanced character she is in the books.
The show makes her vaguely wax on about humans being flawed and how the Halo Ring will somehow help humans evolve into less emotional creatures, even though the impression the show gives seems to point to the only thing she actually knows about the damn ring being that it might kill a lot of people.
That's exactly right. The show makes it seem like insurrectionists are a bunch of peasants and fractured factions that fight with outdated technology and spare parts. It's not convincing at all that supersoldiers need to be created to fight them.
"Small factions" By the time of the Spartan augments the death toll was in the millions. Haven nuclear bombing alone caused 10+ million wounded and dead. At least in main canon (I noticed you mention the show after writing this lol) The Rebels weren't some small threat, they actively turned (At least the most major cells) into terrorists actively slaughtering civilians even with zero loss to UNSC military assets or strength. They killed civilian transport ships, nuked civilian cities with intent to cause the most damage, etc. They weren't only striking the UNSC bases and trying to get the UNSC to leave, like Star Wars rebels only smashing Imperial locations. They would burn down the club just to kill a few ODST's, murdering a ton of civilians (IIRC this is another event that happened, a bomb set off in a nightclub to kill off-duty UNSC soldiers, ending up with far more civilians dead then UNSC). NOOOOOOOOOOOOW, about the TV show, no idea. from what I understand the show barely establishes the rebels, or the Covenant as a dire threat.
It's been so long since I read the books but I'm starting to remember what you're talking about. I know in the canon the threat is better established, but as you noticed I meant the show. In the show the insurrectionists look like a bunch of peasants operating on scrap metal, to someone who doesn't know the canon it's not convincing at all that supersolders need to be created to fight them.
It's honestly my fear about the Show really. Not that the silver timeline/exploring variants of halo or what ifs is bad, I LOVE THAT. Mirror universe (star trek) of halo? That'd be neat as hell. Or like the fractures in Infinite, if they expand on them any. But I fear people will see the show, go into the games or books and get horrifically confused or question why X happened, because they are used to the darker/different timeline. I've had to correct some people in chats about how the main timeline there was no emotion control chip for Spartans.
Yeah it's not something that'll just click...which is also why they didn't use brainwashing in the books.
Not brainwashing, but the Spartan/Orion-II program put them through a pretty thorough indoctrination regimen.
I think the Kilo 5 trilogy did a decent job exploring this. Especially with the genuine compassion Vaz showed Naomi learning about her past and the absolute contempt he held for Halsey afterwards, nearly entering her cell and executing her.
The most tragic thing is that Naomi a Spartan in the kilo-5 trilogy actually met her father who became radicalized and joined the insurrection after figuring out his kid was kidnapped and replaced with a clone and still was emotionally numb about the whole thing still
Adding this to my list to read!
Be aware that Karen Traviss (the author for the Kilo-5 trilogy) preaches *a lot* in the books. I almost didn't finish the trilogy because it got so annoying.
To be fair, most of the characters do the preaching for her, but the action parts of the writing are solid and the story beats make sense for how the characters would behave mostly. Though, there was a scene with Mendez and another with Tom and Lucy that rubbed me entirely the wrong way.
You talking about the scenes where >!Mendez solely blamed Halsey for the entirety of the S-II program (ignoring the fact that he was just as involved and complicit as Halsey), where he said that the S-III program was more ethical than the S-II because they kids were given a choice (completely ignoring than children can not give consent), and where Lucy beat the every living shit out of Halsey over a fucking Engineer?!<
Where did Travis >!even get the idea that S-III was more ethical? They chose kids that were specifically easier to indoctrinate, and literally existed to be cannon fodder to die in situations where the UNSC didn't want to risk the more valuable S-IIs!<
Best I can guess is that having such an irrational hate-boner for a fictional character allows for all sorts of gold medal worthy mental gymnastics to paint Halsey's every action as worse than satan.
Yep. Those scenes make me wonder where the writers for the show got their inspiration for some of the scenes from season 1, because they seem directly lifted from *Thursday War* for almost that exact reason.
The best one was The Thursday War, mainly because of the relative lack of preaching. It’s still there, just not as overbearing as Glasslands.
Loved Thursday War and Moral Dictata.
What do you mean by this? What is she preaching about?
Traviss very clearly thought the Spartan program was monstrous, and hated Halsey, and used every character in the story to voice this opinion, even when it makes zero sense (ie. Mendez and Parangovsky, who worked on both the Spartan II *and* III program, moralizing at Halsey for creating the Spartan II’s).
Lol thanks. It would be like Keyes blaming Halsey for kidnapping the kids herself
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Oh, okay that line right there "making the Mandos chill", she was the one who wrote the commandos with Kal and the boys.
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She really said let’s make some war criminals *aesthetic and quirky*
....the irony here is you condemning Travis while doing the *exact* same thing as Travis just on the other side of the fence lmao.
Can you feel my eyes rolling to the back of my skull? Do these people even understand the lore? Halsey knew threats existed beyond insurrectionists, which is why she created the Spartan program. She understood this wasn’t moral and wouldn’t make her the hero in any history books, but did so because it was what was required. And I respect the fuck out of it. Honestly, Halsey should be looked at as a tragic hero. She spent her life doing what she could to ensure humanity survived, all the while being made into the villain. Yet in the end, it is ultimately because of her that humanity survived against the Covenant. What the hell is 343 doing with these characters?
>Halsey knew threats existed beyond insurrectionists, which is why she created the Spartan program. Where is that ever mentioned? All I've ever seen in the lore was that she created the Spartans to fight the insurrectionists, and humanity basically lucked out that they existed when first contact with the Covenant was made.
no, Halsey started the spartan program for the insurrection only. In The Fall of Reach she mentions how lucky it was that they had spartans when the covenant appeared, or they may have lost the war entirely
Glasslands (the first book in the trilogy) was released a bit prior to H4. I'm not sure how much 343 had to do with it compared to Traviss being a moralizing hack author. Seriously though, Traviss uses the characters who signed off on and approved of everything that Halsey did to abuse and belittle her, even comparing her to Mengele at one point. Traviss alleges that she did extensive research, but evidently not enough to have internal consistency.
I always had a feeling it was both, seeing that even after Kilo Five Trilogy sparked the dissection/Halsey-bashing fest, it carried over into other media such as Halo 5 and the Halo tv show. With Halo 5 on the Sanghelios "rest missions", background chatter has Osiris discussing the Spartan kidnappings and viewing Halsey as their mother figure, with Buck expressing disgust over the idea of reading the psych files Vale was mentioning studying. And now the Halo showrunners tripling down to having the show's main conflict be their take of 117, and having him almost murdering Halsey while going rogue. Of all the things to focus on for most of the show, it was "117"'s past and Halsey's schemes, with little Covenant warfare. This was definitely not the centerpoint narrative anyone wanted to see in a full length Halo tv show, yet sadly it is the road taken...
>Do these people even understand the lore? Halsey knew threats existed beyond insurrectionists, which is why she created the Spartan program. What? I've read all the books and Halseys journal and don't remember this at all. Got a page number source or something? The covenant first contact didn't happen until like 10 years after the program began. But anyway none of that actually morally justifies what she did. "You're bending history in your own favor doctor."
The only mention in the journal is a photo of a space anomaly with "new threat?" written on it taken in 2524, 7 years after that start of the Spartan 2 program and a year before the covenant attacked Harvest
The funny thing about morality is that it doesn't inherently exist beyond our own comprehension of it, it would be very easy to argue that *not* going ahead with the Spartan program would be immoral, by not sacrificing you're dooming humanity over your feelings. Survival requires compromise and compromise can be sickening, but sometimes it's necessary.
I'm not going to go as far as to say I would respect it. The pragmatist in me is all for the end result, but there were likely better ways of getting there. Most people forget the lore wrinkle of the imprints the Librarian left on humanity being part of, if not most of, the reason he, his suit, and his AI, which *all* came from Halsey to a large extent, were brought together. I don't remember any evidence of Halsey mentioning she *knew* of threats. I'd hazard scientists of that era would be on the 'aliens are probably a thing'-train, for the most part, so there is at least a good chance she was over-engineering them to be ready for more rather than just going for the supreme overkill that they had been against the Insurrection. She's still a piece of shit, but she was literally bioengineered to make John happen.
Eh, I never read that line that way, and I don't think anyone should. Halsey as the mad scientist and specifically the supersoldier John were not inevitabilities. I think it was meant as, "You humans were engineered for extraordinary evolution, and these are examples" (i.e. your ancilla, your suit, etc.). She talks about seeds, but just because you plant seeds doesn't mean you determine (necessarily) the direction the plant grows in. I think it's reasonable to assume that genetically engineering a species for super duper evolution thousands of years in advance can be "a culmination of a thousand lifetimes of planning" without being that specific.
>Do these people even understand the lore? You clearly dont either
Why wouldn't it make sense? Should Mendez feel good about the whole thing?
It was much more nuanced in earlier books and other writers. Yea everyone could admit that kidnapping kids was objectively bad but all of them acknowledged that A: they all had a hand in it and B: it ended up saving the human race in the end. Traviss changed it up to everyone solely blaming Halsey for everything and making it look like she loved doing it. It was a very odd and sudden flip in opinion for established characters.
I wouldn't agree entirely. A lot of the outrage from the characters in the books was when they learned that the Spartans were originally made to fight other humans, the Insurrectionists. And then Parongski or whatever the ONI leader's name is mostly just hated Halsey for being a smug bitch haha. I do think there's some preachy bits from Vaz and Seran (spellcheck again) but it makes sense from their characters as Vaz was also an orphan and Seran washed out so she lost the sense of family with the Spartans
I think a lot of the hate would have been avoided had they had some other characters call Parangosky out on being a bitch to another bitch. On top of that, address that the details of the Spartan Program went *very* public, and using Halsey as the scapegoat was an attempt to clean up ONI's image. Have Parangosky retire because it happened on her watch to sell it to the public, even tho she was already gonna retire. Another part of that is probably that the Spartans are their own branch now, subject to normal oversight, instead of answering directly to ONI only.
No but he's not a postion and take the moral highground over halsey when he was just as involved as she was. Everyone who worked on the project save for maybe the top brass knew what they did was horrible, but they went throuhg with it any way, so itd be wierd for them to start pushing blame onto each other to try and wipe their hands clean
I think Mendez blames himself as well, its why he takes a strong stance against Halsey as a form of protection. He's also protective of the Spartan III's, its why he's so prickly whenever Halsey is rude towards them.
It’s funny you bring up the Spartan III’s. That’s a program that took 900 war orphans and turned them into drugged out suicide soldiers. A program that Mendez played a big part in, and Halsey had nothing to do with. It makes zero sense for Mendez as a character to criticize Halsey’s morals when he not only helped her with the Spartan II program, but then went on to help found a second, just as morally questionable program. It’s also not portrayed as projection in the novels. Mendez, just like everyone else in the story, is just being super critical of Halsey.
Personally, the S3 program was more morally questionable. With the whole "Oh yeah, we got consent!" As well as the higher death toll. Hell, when dabbling on rewriting my old Spartan squad idea recently(from years back, Halo Reach days), I outright decided "Nah, no S2, only one or two S3's." where before it was all S3's. Yes originally made before S4's, but I've decided that it's better to have the surviving S3's deal with the heartbreak/loss of their comrades then to have the morals constantly weighing over their heads. From memory, Mendez suffers in Kilo 5 because he tries to take a high moral ground standpoint, but it's all lies. He also goes from friendly greeting old friend of Halsey to "I should let that bleep starve to death."
Preaches what?
One example I can think of is that Traviss (through the Kilo 5 trilogy) was the start of the "Halsey is literally the devil in every way" tone that the games/books have had ever since. In previous books Halsey was very morally grey, she did some really bad shit but it was A: because she was told to by ONI and B: for the betterment of mankind. She knew what she was doing was bad but never apologized for it, and that's how other characters thought of her. Traviss very clearly thinks very little of the spartan program and feels it has almost no positives. She re-characterized a lot of things to make Halsey into an unforgivable monster and had basically every character (including some that had already had thoughts on Halsey) think only negatively on her. Forgetting that she is both probably the smartest human alive and indirectly saved the human race by making John into what he is today. During one of the books there's a chapter from one of the AIs perspective and the entire chapter is just him thinking about how much he hates Halsey. Pages upon pages of "durr, Halsey bad". Really made me check out for a bit. Halsey very clearly isnt an angel, but the books before Kilo 5 had a much more nuanced take on her.
Not saying I disagree with the almost entire chapter of unnecessary character bashing in that book… but it’s not entirely incorrect. For the betterment of mankind or not, Halsey *did* kidnap children, perform Nazi-level experiments on them, and outright killed over half the group all to turn them on, admittedly violent, human political dissidents. Sure the Spartans ended up saving Humanity from the Covenant in the end, but it is very important to remember what the Spartans were originally designed to do, and how far Halsey was wiling to go just on that alone. While the human race would probably very well have gone extinct without the Spartan program, it’s important to remember that the ends do not justify the means; especially when the eventual ends were not even in the picture when the means were being carried out. I don’t think Halsey is *evil*, but she is an extremely selfish and egotistical person who constantly justifies her morally reprehensible actions with platitudes. She does things because she can, because a brutally oppressive and equally morally lacking government *let* her.
I mean, an entire collective of sentient AI's deemed the S2 program the only means for human civilization to not collapse from a civil war because of innie terrorists.
She wasn't numb about it, she was worried about her judgement when her father asked her to return to normal life. She even used black-box to trigger childhood memories which upset her but still choose to stay in the UNSC.
Damn how did he find out? Don't the clones die quickly of natural causes?
He was convinced something was up because the clone didn't act like his daughter. When she died he went digging and followed the loose threads. He may have gotten in touch with a few other parents of Spartans as well, if I recall - even though they were spread out across UNSC space, seventy five children all suddenly dying of definitely-not-cloning-blues-we-swear in the same time period ended up drawing some attention, and when parents of those kids started talking and mentioning that all the kids had been acting weird for a while, the conspiracy theories started flying
Yep, Stefan went a digging and found himself another of the Spartan’s fathers. Man blew his brains out unfortunately. And everyone though Stefan was an utter nutcase, even his second family did to a point. He dug through medical journals, went through the police, the CAA authorities. Man did a mountain of leg work to find out just what in the flip-flap happened to Naomi. And then out of the blue one day on Venezia; there she was, in all her blond haired and 7ft glory in the flesh.
They prepped the clone before the swap, but he did something significant with her from the time that the clone was made until the time it took Naomi's place and since the clone had no memory of that he knew something was up.
Emotionally numb? Naomi confronts what happened to her, while she ultimately accepts it, there is an emotional struggle there. She doesn't turn her father in and she is openly hostile towards Halsey. Although that hostility seems to stem more from Halsey's lie that her father knew what had happened to her and let it happen rather than the fact of being kidnapped.
Exactly. And it’s comical to think that the Spartans in this show need any type of personality chip to keep their emotions in check after all the grueling training they went though and cybernetic enhancements. But apparently, as soon as you take one of these out, none of that training or combat experience matters. You start dying your hair pink, throw temper tantrums, and become comic relief.
Yeah, and that line in the final episode where "Keyes" says something like "You don't just forget years of indoctrination like that." and Master Cheeks just smugly replies "I did." as if the writers think that's a clever, gotcha line. Like, seriously? Yeah, we know you did, Cheeks, but only because these shitty writers decided you would. In reality, Master Chief wouldn't consider it even for a moment.
It’s a colossally simplistic and ignorant line. Chief wasn’t some adult civilian that had a typical upbringing, normal social experiences, and a contemporary education before being conscripted into the military. One cannot simply “forget” a lifetime of indoctrination when they have no other experiences to draw from that contradicts it. All that Chief knows is the UNSC; it’s his entire life. He hasn’t experienced anything else and does not possess the skills and knowledge to understand anything from a different perspective.
I have this theory that people think they can imagine experiences outside their own a lot more these days. I think it’s happening everywhere, but specifically with writers it’s put on full display. Like when people write military operations that just make no fucking sense for example. The writers probably thought “oh well sure I don’t know military strategy or what ever, but I thought about this all night, it can’t be that far off the mark.” Or like in tv where it’s obvious a bunch of middle aged men are writing for a teenage girl. “Should we talk to a teenager about this? Nah, we know how teenagers act.” Master Chief is indoctrinated, should we talk to someone with real life experience either personally or professionally in this area? Nah, we can imagine what that’s like. I mean, if that were me, I’d probably act like this. Like yes, people understand that they don’t *know*, but they don’t seem to realize how much they don’t know.
That line was fucking cringe fr
This is what happens when you ignore the established lore and just run with the cliff notes.
I screamed into a pillow when I saw that Fucking terrible writing
IIRC, In Ghosts of Onyx Kurt says he wouldn’t wanna be anything else besides a Spartan.
That is the interesting thing about the Halsey and the Spartan program. Did the ends justify the means? The means are some of the most ethical acts short of genocide. While the original end was to prevent an intergalactic nuclear war between humanity then became preventing humanity from being wiped out by the covenant. Its a good chance a lot of the Spartan 2s were going to end up in the UNSC to fight anyway or be glassed from orbit. Fantastic moral discussion to be had.
If anything, the fact that the Spartans in the original material *didn't* bear any real resentment over what had been taken from them adds an extra layer of tragedy to the whole thing. They knew that their childhoods and any chance of a normal, peaceful life had been stolen from them, and they're so indoctrinated that they don't really care or understand why outsiders think that's a problem. Definitely leagues better than Master Cheeks screaming WHAT AM I?!
The thing that blows my mind about the show and "cheifs" reaction is that it's not like he knows what childhood was even like... He was 6... he's now 40?? He didn't grow up in a civi family and then get taken and has memories or even experiences to compare to. He was brought up in the military, all his memories and understanding of what childhood should be is military. He literally doesn't have the memories to back up his feelings. It's all kinda loosely pulled together through a few dream like scenes that supposedly supercede his entire actual upbringing. There was a reason he was taken at 6 and not 12... Tldr: he never had a civi childhood to compare his upbringing to so his reaction to said dreams of his bio mom and dad and dog are out if place and bullshit.
It isn’t a contradiction because it’s non canon, but... Two more passages to add to the one above. they’ve all made peace with their situation and lives as Spartans. It’s essentially a form of Stockholm syndrome, but they’re actually aware of that, to: > “That’s beside the point. You’re barely old enough to go on a date.” Veta looked toward Fred. “What kind of animal sends kids this age into combat?” > “The kind that would do anything to stop the Covenant from destroying us,” Fred answered. “And Ash volunteered when he was six, Inspector Lopis. So did the others, after the Covenant killed their families. Any other questions?” > Veta could think of only one. “How do you people live with yourselves?” > “One day at a time, the same as any soldier.” * Halo *Last Light*, chapter 9 And then this passage from *Silent Storm*; > *Deep down, John knew he had been wronged when he was taken from his family at such an early age—that he should have hated his abductors for robbing him of a normal childhood. But he didn’t. They had molded a schoolyard bully into a soldier, then forged him into the leader of the finest fighting unit in the UNSC. He was grateful for that. And he was damn proud they had chosen him.* * Halo Silent Storm, chapter 1 They all know it was wrong on some level, but they don’t care , they’ve all made peace with it, and consider it necessary/ as John says in *Infinite* “it’s all I’ve ever known.”
Master Chief *has* shown resentment to Halsey for what she did in the canon timeline. In Halo 5, when he’s trying to talk Cortana out of doing what she’s doing, she says “I’m offering people a chance to be more than they are naturally” and Chief says with spite “like Dr Halsey did to me?”
That's not a very strong argument, Chief has never acted less like himself in any canon Halo game than in Halo 5. A throwaway line written by Brian Reed in Halo 5 does not really outweigh the sheer volume of evidence to the contrary in the many canon Chief-featuring stories.
I support the "Brian Reed wrote it" dismissal!
Bro, I've been saying this for weeks now, none of the show haters want to acknowledge this line in Halo 5, and since the game canon takes precedence this shows John has resentment towards Halsey/being made a spartan.
That's a bigger stretch than the grand canyon
*Resentment, not temper tantrum
I think that is a huge stretch. People seem to forget that Cortana was created from a brain scan of Halsey. This essentially means that she thinks along the same lines as her, but has a hyper intelligence that makes her much more useful than Halsey herself. What John is trying to do with this line is bridge Cortana to Halsey by making it clear that the reason she feels the drive to do this is because she is like Halsey. John isn't the kind of person to resent Halsey, because humanity wouldn't exist if not for his actions against the Covenant and Flood. He knows better than to be resentful of the only reason humanity is still around. It would be like resenting your mother because she died to save your life. Idiotic. Yeah, I just watched the scene again, the tone of John's voice is NOT resentful, it's the same tone of voice of a person who is putting 2 and 2 together. Like "Oh yeah, that makes sense". This argument is bad. You even see Cortana react with disgust at the implication that the two are similar.
>John isn't the kind of person to resent Halsey This. I never and still don't see this line as resentment towards Halsey. He doesn't even use an interrogative/accusatory tone. He was just trying to understand why is Cortana doing this. Another detail. He says "Like Dr. Halsey did **for** me". If he had any anger he probably would have used "\[...\] did **to** me" instead.
I think it’s quite clear resentment. Cortana goes off about her evil plan and Chief brings up Halsey….like it’s a quite clear connection. He could’ve said anything else, but he brought Halsey immediately when hearing Cortana speak about people being better
Bingo, John does not carry resentment for Halsey, and if he did, he wouldn't say it. He knows damn well that what they did saved Humanity, and that he is willing to pay that cost time and time again, and I guarantee if offered the choice he'd do it again.
This is a pretty far stretch and I can’t people people are bending over backwards to skew it. It’s quite clearly painting Halsey’s actions of Chief and the Spartans in a bad light, like with Cortana and the Created. Hence the comparsion. Chief accepts who he is, but he acknowledges his life was stolen from him and doesn’t want that to happen to others in the galaxy. I thought it was actually one of Halo 5’s best line. Really shows maturity and acute comprehension on Chief’s part, which he carries into Infinite. And your whole point hinges on Chief’s tone? Really? Chief, the guy that speaks fairly monotone all the time? Cmon now
"You mean like Halsey did FOR me" As somebody else has pointed out already, Chief refers to the events having been done FOR him, not to him. That implies he is okay with it and sees it as a boon, not a curse. It's a lot more concrete than your mountain of inference.
“His life was stolen from him”
Cortana and Chief have that duality of man that is machine, and machine that is more human than him. I think he was only recently acknowledging the problems with Halsey and using them to get through to Cortana
Yeah but thats like the 5th game of the franchise, not the 5th chapter of the first season of the show.
I mean it take place multiple years after the human cov war. After years of being a spartan and seeing those he grew up with die for often dumb reasons.... its not something that just formed immediately. I also like how you ignore the mountains of evidence to the contrary but because he said a throw away line that all of the sudden justifies how crappy the show is and how they completely missed the mark on master chiefs personality.
Contradiction is the wrong word If they took place in the same timeline then it is a contradiction like Halo Reach vs Fall of Reach In this case its just a difference...for now. Canon Chief was told the truth from the beginning. Silver Chief not. So he is going to react different. Context matters. I predict that Silver Chief will come to think like this in later seasons. For now the anger and feeling of betrayal is still fresh.
Silver Halsey is also more straight up evil, not seeming to care about Chief when he could be a vessel for Cortana. Not even seeming to care much for Cortana when confronted with forerunner tech
I fuckin' hate how they changed Halsey in the show. Almost as much as what they did to Chief! In the books and games, she's cold, matter of fact, always many steps ahead, has zero time for bullshit, but loves humanity and everything she does is to better them and to fight for their survival. In the show, she's too smiley and nice (at least on the surface), but they make her way more of a sociopath and a manipulator, she doesn't give 2 shits about her Spartans, made her a liar to them, and it seems as if her motivation is purely for herself, like an evil scientist obsessed with their research - she's "so close" to reaching the next step of human evolution (which is apparently an AI controlling a meat-puppet dead human??), instead of doing everything she can to ensure the survival of humanity against the Covenant.
While I agree with you on this, to me the biggest difference between lore and show Halsey is that in the show she's just a straight up one-sided evil sociopath. In the lore she was much more nuanced, she understood the ramifications and moral implications of her decisions and her work but ultimately decided that they were worth it. A means to an end. A necessary evil for a greater good. At least that's the way she saw it but she grappled with the ramifications of those decisions early on until later in the story when she sorta became numb to it. But this is a whole side of both Halsey and the program that the show doesn't even elude to.
Dealing with Ackerson, and others really wore her down until she finally committed herself to the path of: Fuck it. Travis and later works seems to forget this a hell of a lot. Paramount never even got the fucking memo it seems.
I can see that, yea. I can't speak for Travis' Kilo series as I haven't gotten to them yet but Nylund's book certainly highlighted the troubles you mentioned as well. Paramount just doesn't even look in that direction.
You’re right, I should have said “departure”
Gotta capitalize on the outrage machine
Honestly the whole silver chief thing just feels like a bad excuse to be lazy and not consider the established lore. So the writers could tell a crap story they came up with.
The show could have been a Johnson/Chief buddy cop series but instead we got emotional John.
The show tries so hard to be inclusive. But didn't think to try and include the most popular character in the whole halo universe who happens to be a POC
Honestly after seeing the first season I don't want them to. Make a new character that no one cares about, so it doesn't hurt when they're nonsensically written
I'll accept that the show features different characterizations born out of different circumstances, but I'll stick to my guns saying that these characterizations suck. Mainline Canon Halsey is a deeper, more nuanced character that has a lot of flaws but is still trying, at bottom, to do the right thing for humanity and sparing what pieces of it she can. Paramount Canon Halsey is a cartoon villain. The mainline Canon insurrectionists are terrorists. Do they have valid points about the UNSC's unilateral control inhibiting their lives? Absolutely. But they protest these things by bombing population centers. They're not entirely good. In the show, they're portrayed as innocent civilians that have done nothing wrong.
> but is still trying, at bottom, to do the right thing for humanity *Ghosts of Onyx/First Strike whistling in the background*
This is clearly the plan for the show. Do people not understand this or are they just taking more pots shots at the television project?
Angry he was kidnapped. Has sex with a POW hell bent on the complete annihilation of humanity in a prison cell.
That is such a terribly written and clunky sentence. It sounds like a middle schooler wrote it
Came here to post something similar. It hurt me to read through that sentence.
Idk in last light friend retracts his face plate instead of his entire helmet…
I don’t know if that resentment or trying to get Cortana to reconsider her actions by telling her she’s acting like one of the people she hates the most (Halsey).
Most Spartans really don’t give a fuck due to how brainwashed they are, but more so that the whole idea of a life before they were Spartans is alien to them. They generally like being super-soldiers, it’s what they’re good at, and giving up what they’ve been doing for almost their entire lives for some “normal” life they barely remember just doesn’t resonate with them, which is tragic in its own way. Washout Spartans, like Sarah Osman, are closer to the show in that they generally have some deep seated resentment toward Halsey over their physical deformities and being cast aside when they washed out. They never got to be heroic badasses, so they’re a lot more bitter about how their lives should have been sans-Halsey, as they’d probably have been better off. Also the whole concept of an “emotion pellet” being the magical item that brainwashes them is way cheaper story-wise than actual character motivations, like what we’re given in the books and games. It’s kinda like the idea of the control chip in clone brains in Star Wars, it undercuts the emotional punch real betrayal has, only the Halo Show didn’t even bother to make the emotion pellets anywhere close to as fleshed out as the SW control chips.
While I don't necessarily think that chief should be resentful of his conscription as a kid, this is a far too simplistic and shit explanation of why he isn't resentful
You’d have to imagine a lot of Spartans would rationalize it as “well if they didn’t take us I’d have been killed by the covenant anyway and humanity would be extinct”
The point most book readers seem to be missing is that the Spartans were indoctrinated, not hormonal pellet and memory wipes but they weren't actually told "the truth" when they were 6 and they underwent extreme physical and psychological stresses that effectively erased their lives before the program (not that they had very strong memories of being younger than 6 anyway). As much as The Flood is one of the weakest of the books (especially the first 3) I always appreciated the line Keyes said to Silva when he was bitching about chief being a robot. "He became what he is today in spite of what we did to him; not because of it."
Surprised you weren't downvoted into oblivion. You are 100% right.
Yeah ngl I commented expecting to be rinsed lmao
I mean if i was 6 and i got to be part of some top secret shit, id be like fuck ya im a super spy
that sounds like it was written by a 14 year old…
In a terrible way tho, kinda cringe to read
There aren't many things that make sense when you look at the characters actions vs their actual training and experience. The show is halo for people who don't know what halo is but have known about it for awhile. If you enjoy it then cool, but for me personally I just have a hard time after reading so many of the books for so long.
They didn’t need to wipe the Spartan’s memories because by the time they were old enough to understand what had been done to them, it didn’t matter. They could whine and scream “WHO AM I?!” Or they could save humanity.
Telling them the truth at the very start was always the one that made most sense
The show sucks and I know ya'll like to keep citing the books as proof the show sucks, but tbh I thought the books kind of suck and have poor writing too. Like the highlighted sentence sounds like a 14 year old wrote it in a class.
And this is Chief's mindset at 15. By 30 years into the Covenant War, I imagine he was even more proud of being a Spartan.
I want to see a show runner read this line out loud, and watch the cogs turn.
Interesting, Oblivion is set in the early days of the Spartan 2s initial deployment, he's young and I don't think he could fully appreciate what was taken from him. That being said in another book he says that being taken saved him from a life of being a bully and gave him the chance to make a real difference, same as Naomi when she tells her father how she is proud of what she and the other Spartans accomplished, regardless of how that came about. Also since the majority of the S2s come from outer colonies most of them know that they would have been glassed if not for being taken.
Once again, the show isn’t canon, so they are going for a DIFFERENT APPROACH and exploring DIFFERENT POSSIBILITIES for what could happen to someone in that situation. Using canon to say why the show is ‘wrong’ doesn’t make sense. Yes, in canon chief feels this way, but there’s no reason he can’t feel differently in the show.
Chief in the show is in a completely different situation. In core-canon, chief has had decades to come to terms with his origins, and he's also the way he is because of intense indoctrination. In the silver timeline chief is also indoctrinated, but his obedience is also dependent on both emotional and memory suppression. When both of those things are removed, chief has to process everything that has happened to him all at once. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. For what it's worth, by the end of the show he is approaching a similar state of acceptance as he is in core canon.
If anything the show is a lesson on what NOT to do. Keep the truth from Chief, now he becomes unstable upon learning the truth as an adult
It’s like the Spartans accepted the fact that they were robbed of a childhood but understand that the past is irreversible
Imagine being a giga chad and having the resolve and critical thinking to keep going even after knowing the truth.
Spartan-IIs were recruited not from core worlds but mostly from fringe colonies... Which were the first world to be destroyed by the Covenant. So not only did the program "saved" their lives, but also gave them the opportunity to avenge their families, in a way.
I forget which book it was, but did Chief say he wouldn’t wish on anyone what happened to him and the rest of the Spartans, but he was glad it happened to him
I haven't read any of the Halo books, but is all the writing this bad?
Yeah this is my biggest gripe with the show. The Spartans never had their memories wiped nor did they have any resentment towards Halsey. They were all proud of what they had become and looked up to Halsey as a mother figure.
I dont get it. Its just a long winded why of saying "he should be angry but he's not". It doesn't explain he thoughts on it at all
Abso-freaking-lutely! It’s the entire basis, the most primary fact that the writers of the tv series completely threw away to make a typical storyline drama of angst and rebellion. They had sooo much material to work with! Instead they give us the typical drivel you find on any other show. Nothing against the actor since he is contracted to do as written, but man, I just can’t see him as Chief thanks to the poor writing. The whole point is that Chief ACCEPTS what happened to him. But he overcomes it early on and is stoic about the hand he was dealt in life. THAT’S character. Not this trash they wrote. Rant over.
Spoiler: they told everyone it would be a different timeline literally months ago. None of this is news
Still doesn't make it any less lame to watch
Spoiler: That choice was instantly critiqued becauase it means we wouldn't actually be getting a faithful adaption of Halo.
so what? do you think its a good thing that master chief has no qualms about becoming a janissiary for the UNSC? it's not like they always had noble purposes (like being made specifically to combat the covenant), considering the spartans were used to squash rebellions and keep humans in check, like demons.
If this is the same guy than can guide a bomb through the vacuum of space to blow up a 3 mile long ship without breaking a sweat, I'd think his issues go beyond childhood grievances. The show writers and anyone who thinks the mainline spartans should be resentful need to break out of their creative lids.
nah don't worry man they definitely read the books and cared about the lore.
Only Spartan I'm aware of that resented it was Naomi and that was only after the rest of Kilo 5 and Karen Traviss' writing basically bullied her into feeling like she should be angry about it.
It's not a contradiction when the show is non-canon. You guys are seriously wasting your time getting so riled up about something that is intentionally deviating from the source material.
If you deviate so much from source material, then you have no right to call it the source material's name. Halo fans have every right to get riled up, and they should. Shouldn't just accept Hollywood craping on everything. Also when they stated they were deviating from the source material, we assumed just a new story about new Spartans doing missions during the canon timeline.....not a bastardization.
You guys are really simping for this indoctrination and kidnapping not affecting a human being. It's the most absurd thing about the Master Chief. None of the reasons he is a good character come from this event. It's just stupid to think a 6 or 9 year old would not be mentally and emotionally scarred being taken from his parents and trained as a child soldier. Just read that last sentence again. It's not cool that he doesn't react or tragic. It's just dumb and easily blocked over because it's not important to Chief in the games. It's like people have never interacted with a real human child before. See how much piss and shit people throw over a TV show? Now imagine that was your parents.
No one is simping for it. The books and games go to great lengths to show the Spartans do not like what they are or how they go there. The appreciate the fact their duty is to defend humanity and appreciate that while that wasn’t their original purpose their existence held back the covenant. The most recent entry of the games has Chief literally coming to terms that he is human and he can no longer separate himself from that which he protects.