Something that I have always loved about Halo, is that Master Chief, the main protagonist, has never shown his face. This gives the player the ability to imagine themselves as Master Chief. Although, there is one thing that personally ruins this for me. It’s the fact that we learned his name was John (it helps that they at least didn’t reveal his last name), and it’s a little worse (for immersion) now that they’re starting to call him John a lot more in game (although it does add a lot more emotional aspects to it). I [personally] feel it would’ve been great had they never revealed his name at all, leading to his name always being redacted. They could easily have just kept referring to him as Chief, or the Master Chief, etc.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. This is just my personal thought on the matter.
It wouldn’t have worked for the books that came before CE, it wouldn’t make sense for Nylund to say “they were family” and then have all 33 Spartan IIs never refer to their defacto leader by his first name while referring to each other by name and it would be illogical for the spartans to use numbers for names because its inefficient and quite disorienting for other field units which would raise way too many red flags.
I don’t think it would have been the best idea to never reveal his name but I will admit that they have been using his name excessively in the new games and would prefer chief be used more often.
As someone who has read all the books where hes actually a developed character, I’ve been hoping for him to not be treated as an empty vessel ever since. Halo 4 has done the best so far in that regard and would like to see them continue with that approach.
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> As someone who has read all the books where hes actually a developed character, I’ve been hoping for him to not be treated as an empty vessel ever since. Halo 4 has done the best so far in that regard and would like to see them continue with that approach.
Yeah me too.We already know he is male in his 50-s and we saw how he looks as a child and we saw a bit of his face when he takes his helmet in present in Halo 4.I was thinking now when his story might come to an end in 1 or 2 more games we should know much more about John 117.It was said that 343 are doubling down on Chief in Halo 6,so i wish that we get some flashback memories of his childhood and time spent as a Spartan during his gameplay.
I think the important thing is to know how this will end and what direction the master chief will take
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> > 2533274796080930;4:
> > As someone who has read all the books where hes actually a developed character, I’ve been hoping for him to not be treated as an empty vessel ever since. Halo 4 has done the best so far in that regard and would like to see them continue with that approach.
>
> Yeah me too.We already know he is male in his 50-s
He’s 50!!! Awwww, that ruins my mental image of him.
( T_T)
Btw, I like that Halsey, Blue Team, and Cortana call him John, but to everyone else he should be the Master Chief. They don’t know him! They’re not his friends! Only those close to him can call him by his name.
(–_-- )
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> > 2533274951753761;5:
> > > 2533274796080930;4:
> > > As someone who has read all the books where hes actually a developed character, I’ve been hoping for him to not be treated as an empty vessel ever since. Halo 4 has done the best so far in that regard and would like to see them continue with that approach.
> >
> > Yeah me too.We already know he is male in his 50-s
>
> He’s 50!!! Awwww, that ruins my mental image of him.
> ( T_T)
>
> Btw, I like that Halsey, Blue Team, and Cortana call him John, but to everyone else he should be the Master Chief. They don’t know him! They’re not his friends! Only those close to him can call him by his name.
> (–_-- )
I read here in forums before people saying he spent a lot of time in cryo and that that prevents aging.So you can take him couple of years back,so he could be in his 40-s.;D
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> > > 2533274951753761;5:
> > > > 2533274796080930;4:
> > > > As someone who has read all the books where hes actually a developed character, I’ve been hoping for him to not be treated as an empty vessel ever since. Halo 4 has done the best so far in that regard and would like to see them continue with that approach.
> > >
> > > Yeah me too.We already know he is male in his 50-s
> >
> > He’s 50!!! Awwww, that ruins my mental image of him.
> > ( T_T)
> >
> > Btw, I like that Halsey, Blue Team, and Cortana call him John, but to everyone else he should be the Master Chief. They don’t know him! They’re not his friends! Only those close to him can call him by his name.
> > (–_-- )
>
> I read here in forums before people saying he spent a lot of time in cryo and that that prevents aging.So you can take him couple of years back,so he could be in his 40-s.;D
Who knows precisely how much cryosleep we’re talking. Could literally be anything from mid-30s.
As an example: he’s about the same age as Buck (less than a year younger according to Halopedia). Given both have been majorly involved in frontlinr fighting you can probably assume an equivalent amount of cyrosleep - if not more for John as he would have started active service younger
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> > 2533274951753761;5:
> > > 2533274796080930;4:
> > > As someone who has read all the books where hes actually a developed character, I’ve been hoping for him to not be treated as an empty vessel ever since. Halo 4 has done the best so far in that regard and would like to see them continue with that approach.
> >
> > Yeah me too.We already know he is male in his 50-s
>
> He’s 50!!! Awwww, that ruins my mental image of him.
With the information we’ve been given, certain community members have put together rough estimates of his biological age. Evidence points to him being about 42, biologically. His chronological age is about 48 years old as of 2559.
Oh nice!! Mental image reaffirmed. He’s only 2 years older than Michael Fassbender!
( ^_^)/
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> > > 2533274951753761;5:
> > > > 2533274796080930;4:
> > > > As someone who has read all the books where hes actually a developed character, I’ve been hoping for him to not be treated as an empty vessel ever since. Halo 4 has done the best so far in that regard and would like to see them continue with that approach.
> > >
> > > Yeah me too.We already know he is male in his 50-s
> >
> > He’s 50!!! Awwww, that ruins my mental image of him.
>
> With the information we’ve been given, certain community members have put together rough estimates of his biological age. Evidence points to him being about 42, biologically. His chronological age is about 48 years old as of 2559.
Cheers that’s great that we have that. I guess my comment is that it’s incredibly likely that there are likely to be significant other cumulative periods of cryosleep of which we are not aware (both for Chief and Buck) given their extensive service throughout the war and since. So 42 (plus or minus any error caused by the First Strike time dilation) is the oldest Chief can be biologically, but he could be younger biologically.
ya, redacting his name from halo one to 5 would have been a little excessive in shrouding him in mystery.
wasnt his face shown in halo 4s legendary ending
I agree with the original post for this topic about us imagining ourselves as chief but also I disagree because although I like imagining that I’m the protagonist he is still a character and he has a name. he is john subject 117 aka master chief and him as a person is an important part of this story.
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> wasnt his face shown in halo 4s legendary ending
master chiefs face was shown in halo 4 legendary ending but only his eyes. honestly after looking at his face I wouldn’t want to be him, he’s pale, and he looks sad and old.
I’ll give you the fundamental principles of imprimatur style writing, at its basic level (a nameless faceless gun), it doesn’t work. Never has and never will. If it works for you then you are the only person who enjoyed Fireteam Crimson. For imprimatur to work the character cannot be a blank slate, they must have some basic character, carry some form of meaningful personality for the player to build off, that personality can be in itself bare bones but it must be there and that means that the character must have some fundamentals. These include, a name (first or last) because no one can identify with a person that is so anti-social that even his closest friends don’t know him by at least a first or last name (the exception to this is the rookie but that’s because of context, the context is supposed to make you feel like you’ve been thrown into the deep end, he’s the newest in a long line of meat bags thrown into the grinder by the UNSC, that doesn’t work for the Hero image that Bungie was building for the Master Chief) and secondly it requires a character to be around it, it requires them to have at least some sense of personality. In the case of the master chief its his reaction to his surroundings, its circumstantial gunslinger humour. Without those basic fundamentals imprimatur doesn’t work. The only cases where a nameless, voiceless character works (bar exception above) is when its a comedy. Halo is not a comedy, its comedic but its not a comedy.
Kinda off topic, i was wishing that in the Halo 4 legendary ending, instead of showing the Chief’s face, make there a helmet under the helmet (i really did NOT want to see his face)
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> I don’t think it would have been the best idea to never reveal his name but I will admit that they have been using his name excessively in the new games and would prefer chief be used more often.
I would defend it as part of their “John is representation of his human side and Master Chief is his soldier side” plot-point, but since Halo 5 abandoned that…
Yea I didnt like how he looks at the ending of Halo 4. If he looked really young, or least the oldest of a 30 year old, like an anime senpai, I think it couldve worked lol
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> > 2533274889282194;3:
> > I don’t think it would have been the best idea to never reveal his name but I will admit that they have been using his name excessively in the new games and would prefer chief be used more often.
>
> I would defend it as part of their “John is representation of his human side and Master Chief is his soldier side” plot-point, but since Halo 5 abandoned that…
I just don’t think about Halo 5, considering it was a completely different writer I just take all the great themes set up and defined by Chris Schlerf that were ignored by Brian Reed entirely as a separate entity.