In the manual for CE, it says “You are the Master Chief-all that remains of a classified military project to build a series of genetically enhanced super-soldiers.”
In Reach, they introduce Spartan-IIIs, which are different and weaker, and 4 introduces Spartan-IVs. These are not the same “classified military project”, so up through that point, the manual was still technically correct. However, in 5, they bring back Blue Team, showing that other Spartan-IIs are alive. When was the CE manual retconned? Did 343 just completely forget about it?
Hmm, I just think bungie still didn’t know what they wanted to do with the story for Halo CE at the time.
CE positioned Chief as the last Spartan, but that as the only game to really do that in its marketing. First Strike novel that came out in 2003 went on to bring background to what happened to the other Spartans (which were first mentioned in the Fall of Reach novel that came out prior to CE releasing). 343 actually fixed a few inconsistencies with the FoR novel with a re-release back in 2010.
I think the main thing is that nobody at Bungie back then knew just how big Halo was going to be, so a lot of this stuff was expanded on later in external media.
Also, in Halo 3’s manual it says that Master Chief is the last surviving spartan. Bungie probably didn’t know of the direction the franchise was going to take when they printed those manuals.
I mean the movie kind of summed up his background and Halo CE was the franchises first introduction of Halo.
Even if there is inconsistency in the halo story, the halo series remains awesome.