> WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Halo has never been particularly big on sophisticated literary devices, the ‘hero’s journey’ and ‘full circle’ would be kicked around a bit in some of the previous games but it never seemed to have much substance to it.
And, bloody hell, that sure changed in Halo 4!
When they said they were going to explore John as a person, they really weren’t joking. The Prologue starts us off with the questioning of whether John was successful because he was, at his core, broken. It’s continued throughout the game, Cortana asking John to find out which one of them is really the machine, and culminates in Lasky’s dialogue at the end where he states that soldiers and humanity (machine and man) are no different.
On the subject of Lasky, his insistance that he’s “not about to let that man down” at the end of the game really brought to mind Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. There was an emotional motivation for Lasky in this scene, and there was an emotional motivation for myself as the Chief to not let him down.
John removing his armour in the Epilogue symbolises the exposure of his humanity for what’s really the first time in the series - and it took a machine who really was more human than him to make him realise who he is. The conclusion has finally been drawn that he wasn’t successful because he was broken at his core, but the “tools” which Halsey supplied (calling Cortana a tool itself being ironic) helped bring out the humanity in John and turned it into his greatest strength.
It’s beautifully poetic, and is infinitely more sophisticated development for a character who was treated as a sterile brick for so long.
Thank you to 343i and the voice/motion-capture actors for delivering a truly unique, spellbinding performance. I hope this level of quality continues throughout the Reclaimer Trilogy because the bar has been set extremely high.