This is something that’s kind of bugged me for a decade. I’ve tried my best to explain it as much as possible but the word doesn’t really seem to get out too well.
Spartans are extremely powerful warriors but not gods of war. Buck jokes about this, he wasn’t literally saying that they were. It was made very clear that demon wasn’t a title for Spartans but MC and later on the greatest enemies of the Covenant. Most if not then all human soldiers went unnamed by the Covenant during the war. I doubt they just have an active rooster of all UNSC personal aboard their cruiser at all times.
Something I hear alot is that a single Spartan can kill thousands of covenant troops in a single battle. No one seems to remember that this was a ploy to over hype the Spartans because the UNSC was in a an extremely bad spot in terms of morale with their propaganda machine pulling out what they could. Reveal crazy powerful soldiers and make them them super hype was the objective and it seems like that propaganda machine was extremely effective if people in real life believe it.
To make it as clear as possible, Spartans don’t just fly into Covenant armies and make very last one of them regret existing. (looks at Halo5’s intro) That’s just 343i’s hype canon going full blast, ignroe that. They fight less like Superman and more like Batman. They only fight the battles they know they can win and even then after extremely carefully planning. Planning so precise that if literally any part of it fails death will ensue. That’s where their power comes from. Their armor, augmentations and training allow for their plans to go through in the most effective way. Any roided up marine can charge into a warzone and still be turned into puppy chow without proper planning. Johnson and Buck didn’t get as far as they did in the war because they just stood in the open fields screaming at the endless waves of grunts to,
“COME AT ME!”
The only time a dumb soldier ever makes it out of a war is because they have a smart soldier commanding them.
To give the best example of what I’m talking about. Halo Legends Prototype, a normal marine managed to hop into what is without a doubt the most powerful ground assault unit the USNC has ever made and still had fallen to no more than 30 Covenant troops. While that marine had a plan and it was to distract he still died during that battle because he was literally running around the battlefield beating people to death. I’m not saying he was blood or power drunk he just didn’t have a better plan for a distraction and died for it. No Spartan would immediately turn that battle into a win because they had that armor, only someone with proper planning could.
Even the first time we meet Spartans in the books they are in the fear of being overrun by grunts if their carefully laid out plan fails or just their plan itself killing them.
The only time I can think of where a Spartan just wings it is in game because you can do that in game. I don’t think there has ever been a point in lore where a Spartan has been meet with a group of elites by alone and won. They’ve always had some sort of plan ready because that’s what they needed to do. The covenant had a massive technological advantage over us. Without their religion holding them back during the war they’d of destroyed us in seconds.
I hope this adds some clarity to those who we’re unaware and I hope those who are aware of this help support this and spread the word.
In GoO one Spartan comments that 100:1 or 500:1 odds are possible with planning. Most often their discretion is an operational consideration given that they’re scalpels and not sledgehammers.
Halo 5 intro is well reasonable.
Spartans are demons, but John is The Demon.
Yes they do missunderstand spartans power. They often underrate their skills. I think the biggest skill they have is the speed they’re able to move on the battlefield. Even if they hadn’t shields they would still be hard to hit. The prototype was powerful but I don’t think it was nothing spartan couldn’t do with enough power weapons. It was also a big target and couldn’t do hit and run tactics like a spartan and was only useful in outdoors. It’s true spartans couldn’t kill thousands of enemies even because they would need serious firepower to do so.
They only kill like 10 covies in h5s intro. Most the damage is caused by the prometheans.
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> They only kill like 10 covies in h5s intro. Most the damage is caused by the prometheans.
To be fair it was a fast paced scene and most kills could have been off screen. I think a realistic estimate would be 50 kills.
…but, they can, have and do kill thousands of Covies.
They kill 10’s of thousands of Covies on Reach (Long Night of Solace, Fred’s and Co’ run on the Covie camp). The same again at the Unyielding Hierophant, Battle of Earth (giving the Covies back their bomb), Cote D’zure etc etc. A Spartan’s mind is far more deadly than their unearthly speed, strength and durability.
If you roll the best traits of Batman, Iron Man, and Captain America into one person, and then give that person even greater strength and speed, and advanced armor with a powerful shield, you’re getting pretty close to what Halo’s Spartans are. They are completely capable of killing thousands of aliens on their own, but what we see (such as in Halo 5’s opening) is that they know when to fight and when to blow through to get to their objectives. The Spartans were certainly capable of killing all of the aliens and Prometheans in that battle, but doing so would have likely made them too late to rescue Dr. Halsey. Instead they cut a path through the warzone like a knife through warm butter, leaving the aliens and Prometheans to kill each-other in the Spartans’ wake.
Gonna have to fall on the side of several of the others saying I don’t find the “superhero” portrayal of them that outlandish or unreasonable, sorry. I will concede it’s true that IF Spartans have the luxury of more subtle planning and strategizing, i.e. the kind of ops we usually see Blue Team using in the Nylund novels, they’ll go that route when possible. No sense in taking unnecessary risk if it can be avoided. But are they capable of what we see in H5’s intro, when they don’t have the time or the means to be more subtle and strategic? Yeah, absolutely they are, I think.
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> Halo 5 intro is well reasonable.
> Spartans are demons, but John is The Demon.
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> In GoO one Spartan comments that 100:1 or 500:1 odds are possible with planning. Most often their discretion is an operational consideration given that they’re scalpels and not sledgehammers.
Care to elaborate?
Propaganda in the Halo Universe does make it seem like Spartans are gods of war.
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> …but, they can, have and do kill thousands of Covies.
>
> They kill 10’s of thousands of Covies on Reach (Long Night of Solace, Fred’s and Co’ run on the Covie camp). The same again at the Unyielding Hierophant, Battle of Earth (giving the Covies back their bomb), Cote D’zure etc etc. A Spartan’s mind is far more deadly than their unearthly speed, strength and durability.
Wait, I’m confused. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me?
Disagreeing, sort of. I believe you meant people believe lone Spartans can kill thousands just by charging at them and firing, like we do in game - while they can kill a lot doing that, 1000’s is a bit over ambitious; however can Spartans cause the deaths of 10’s of thousands of Covies in one engagement? Yes, as I said a Spartan’s mind is their deadliest tool, the examples I showed have them killing 1000’s upon 1000’s of the enemy, with clever tactics e.g. Fred and Co. stealing banshees so they can throw a nuke into a Covie ship that blows up, killing all inside and the thousands in the camp below - yeah it isn’t Rambo run and gun but they did it.
I think the best example of this is reach. They had quite a few spartan fireteams on the planet and a single fireteam with the right planning can do alot.
But no. Spartans are not gods of war. They are in every respect, still human. They are quite simply the next evolutionary stage in our biological development. The spartan programs just speed the process of our evolutionary cycle a notch faster. Given about another million years. This is what we will be like naturally…maybe even more so.
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> > 2533274809220485;3:
> > Halo 5 intro is well reasonable.
> > Spartans are demons, but John is The Demon.
>
>
>
> > 2535411711152989;2:
> > In GoO one Spartan comments that 100:1 or 500:1 odds are possible with planning. Most often their discretion is an operational consideration given that they’re scalpels and not sledgehammers.
>
> Care to elaborate?
On what?
Maybe. If they take ONI’s propaganda for granted, then sure. But to those that designed the Spartan programs, those that know the Spartans personally, I doubt it. They know what they’re capable of.
On the subject of Halo 5’s intro cutscene, I personally thought it was an awesome way to start the game and show the lethality of Osiris. Remember the intro cutscene to Halo 4? With the Spartan II’s flying down to the battle? Same thing.
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> Maybe. If they take ONI’s propaganda for granted, then sure. But to those that designed the Spartan programs, those that know the Spartans personally, I doubt it. They know what they’re capable of.
> On the subject of Halo 5’s intro cutscene, I personally thought it was an awesome way to start the game and show the lethality of Osiris. Remember the intro cutscene to Halo 4? With the Spartan II’s flying down to the battle? Same thing.
Halo 4’s was awesome.
Uh… Their religion is one of the reasons they tried to destroy us…
Even if they didn’t want to use the rings to become like gods, but to kill humanity, they couldn’t because they weren’t humans.
Youre right about Spartan planning, but sorta wrong to a slight degree about them not being 500:1 army killers. See Halo:The Flood (Halo CE in book form) or Halo: First Strike. Yes, they had a plan, but those plans changed in both cases (Foehammer and several Spartans died, despite the plan being performed flawlessly, causing new plans)
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> > 2535463944460484;10:
> > > 2533274809220485;3:
> > > Halo 5 intro is well reasonable.
> > > Spartans are demons, but John is The Demon.
> >
> >
> >
> > > 2535411711152989;2:
> > > In GoO one Spartan comments that 100:1 or 500:1 odds are possible with planning. Most often their discretion is an operational consideration given that they’re scalpels and not sledgehammers.
> >
> > Care to elaborate?
>
> On what?
You said that discreation is to consideration but didn’t explain why.
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> Disagreeing, sort of. I believe you meant people believe lone Spartans can kill thousands just by charging at them and firing, like we do in game - while they can kill a lot doing that, 1000’s is a bit over ambitious; however can Spartans cause the deaths of 10’s of thousands of Covies in one engagement? Yes, as I said a Spartan’s mind is their deadliest tool, the examples I showed have them killing 1000’s upon 1000’s of the enemy, with clever tactics e.g. Fred and Co. stealing banshees so they can throw a nuke into a Covie ship that blows up, killing all inside and the thousands in the camp below - yeah it isn’t Rambo run and gun but they did it.
Ins’t that kind of cheating, as I said above. It’s like counting the nukes dropped in WWII was the pilots kill count. It also means that the Arbiter is the most lethal person in the entire galaxy since the moment he pressed a button to cleanse a planet, ithas him potentially killing millions of humans.
Also it’s not like only a Spartan can set off a nuke aboard a Covenant ship. Can’t that credit go to any pilot who bombs a destroy?