So it’s recently come to my attention that Noble 6 was considered by Bungie and is considered by 343 to be male in canon. Apparently 6 is referred to with masculine pronouns in both The Essential Visual Guide and New Blood. Who thought this was a good idea? The entire purpose of 6 as a character was to be the ultimate vessel for the player, more so than Chief ever was. Whose idea was it to destroy the immersion and magic of Reach for some unfathomable reason? Would it have been so difficult to leave the canon ambiguous so everyone could continue to picture their own version of 6 occupying that incredible space in the Halo universe? The only positive outcome of this decision in my opinion is that male 6’s voice performance is widely considered to be better than female 6’s.
I anticipate that if this topic garners any interest at all, I’m going to get a lot of responses from people asking why it’s so important what the technical “canon” distinction is when things are unchanged in the game itself. I suppose that’s a reasonable position to have. To me, it just feels like a slap in the face from the studio(s) to convince the player in-game that their character is this towering figure in the lore of the universe, only to have one select version considered to be canon.
Respectfully I don’t quite see how Noble 6 having his gender defined detracts from his status.
Practically it would be pretty impossible to write a whole book without using a gender pronoun. Even if you could do it, it wouldn’t make for much of a reading experience. So keeping him gender-neutral would have been difficult, yes.
Noble 6 is supposed to be male and female , player can choose which -Yoink!- they want, like the appearence. In the book they decide to make Noble 6 a man. But us, we can choose.
To me, cananonically, it doesn’t make any difference. I know plenty of girls that enjoyed the game and their character in reach.
For them I think it made sense to actually define the gender rather than having to tip toe around it. People know who they were in that game and that’s what matters.
Six was a badass either way, and a few lines of text could never change that.
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> > Yeah if he didn’t have a chosen gender there would just be a hole in the lore.
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> Two words: Chief’s face.
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> Respectfully I don’t quite see how Noble 6 having his gender defined detracts from his status.
> Practically it would be pretty impossible to write a whole book without using a gender pronoun. Even if you could do it, it wouldn’t make for much of a reading experience. So keeping him gender-neutral would have been difficult, yes.
6 didn’t take up an entire book. They were mentioned once in New Blood and had a little description in The Essential Visual Guide. It wouldn’t have been that hard to stay ambiguous.
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> Respectfully I don’t quite see how Noble 6 having his gender defined detracts from his status.
> Practically it would be pretty impossible to write a whole book without using a gender pronoun. Even if you could do it, it wouldn’t make for much of a reading experience. So keeping him gender-neutral would have been difficult, yes.
6 doesn’t occupy an entire story. New Blood has one mention and The Essential Visual Guide just has some description. It wouldn’t have been that hard to maintain the ambiguity. And my problem with it is that by solidifying a single version of 6 into canon, the studio is rejecting the player’s role in forming and shaping the character, especially for female players or just people who played with a female 6 in general.
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> > > Yeah if he didn’t have a chosen gender there would just be a hole in the lore.
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> > Two words: Chief’s face.
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> What do you mean by that?
Beyond a tiny glimpse in Halo 4, we don’t know what the Master Chief looks like. Would you consider that to be a hole in the lore?
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> > > > Yeah if he didn’t have a chosen gender there would just be a hole in the lore.
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> > > Two words: Chief’s face.
> >
> > What do you mean by that?
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> Beyond a tiny glimpse in Halo 4, we don’t know what the Master Chief looks like. Would you consider that to be a hole in the lore?
We get to see his face when he is a child and in the Fall of Reach. Even if we didn’t get to see anymore of his face I don’t think it would create a hole because a face is just a face, it isn’t that important.
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> > > > > Yeah if he didn’t have a chosen gender there would just be a hole in the lore.
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> > > > Two words: Chief’s face.
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> > > What do you mean by that?
> >
> > Beyond a tiny glimpse in Halo 4, we don’t know what the Master Chief looks like. Would you consider that to be a hole in the lore?
>
> We get to see his face when he is a child and in the Fall of Reach. Even if we didn’t get to see anymore of his face I don’t think it would create a hole because a face is just a face, it isn’t that important.
So you dispute that Chief’s appearance qualifies as a hole in the lore, fine. But you’ve just admitted that you’re okay with certain lore holes. I’m arguing that neither Bungie nor 343 had any pressing reason to fill that void with a restrictive interpretation that harms the player’s immersion. Could you imagine the riots if Chief spent half of Halo 6 with his helmet off?
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> > > > > > Yeah if he didn’t have a chosen gender there would just be a hole in the lore.
> > > > >
> > > > > Two words: Chief’s face.
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> > > > What do you mean by that?
> > >
> > > Beyond a tiny glimpse in Halo 4, we don’t know what the Master Chief looks like. Would you consider that to be a hole in the lore?
> >
> > We get to see his face when he is a child and in the Fall of Reach. Even if we didn’t get to see anymore of his face I don’t think it would create a hole because a face is just a face, it isn’t that important.
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> So you dispute that Chief’s appearance qualifies as a hole in the lore, fine. But you’ve just admitted that you’re okay with certain lore holes. I’m arguing that neither Bungie nor 343 had any pressing reason to fill that void with a restrictive interpretation that harms the player’s immersion. Could you imagine the riots if Chief spent half of Halo 6 with his helmet off?
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> > > > > > Yeah if he didn’t have a chosen gender there would just be a hole in the lore.
> > > > >
> > > > > Two words: Chief’s face.
> > > >
> > > > What do you mean by that?
> > >
> > > Beyond a tiny glimpse in Halo 4, we don’t know what the Master Chief looks like. Would you consider that to be a hole in the lore?
> >
> > We get to see his face when he is a child and in the Fall of Reach. Even if we didn’t get to see anymore of his face I don’t think it would create a hole because a face is just a face, it isn’t that important.
>
> So you dispute that Chief’s appearance qualifies as a hole in the lore, fine. But you’ve just admitted that you’re okay with certain lore holes. I’m arguing that neither Bungie nor 343 had any pressing reason to fill that void with a restrictive interpretation that harms the player’s immersion. Could you imagine the riots if Chief spent half of Halo 6 with his helmet off?
While I can somewhat understand your frustration at this, I am guessing they felt enough time has passed to give the spartan a gender in case they were used in future lore.
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> > Respectfully I don’t quite see how Noble 6 having his gender defined detracts from his status.
> > Practically it would be pretty impossible to write a whole book without using a gender pronoun. Even if you could do it, it wouldn’t make for much of a reading experience. So keeping him gender-neutral would have been difficult, yes.
>
> 6 doesn’t occupy an entire story. New Blood has one mention and The Essential Visual Guide just has some description. It wouldn’t have been that hard to maintain the ambiguity. And my problem with it is that by solidifying a single version of 6 into canon, the studio is rejecting the player’s role in forming and shaping the character, especially for female players or just people who played with a female 6 in general.
"She pulled the trigger on the Rookie, and his brains blew out of the back of his skull in a fine mist that scattered all over the legislature’s floor. Then he crumpled backward, tumbling over the balcony’s railing. His body slammed right on the podium from which Draco III’s legislators gave speeches to the world. It splintered under his weight."Write that without a gender pronoun in a way that still makes engaging sense. Not so easy, whether or not he occupies a whole story.
Part of the point of an engaging lore is to build on a story, help people engage, immerse further than the games provides. This can often be different to the point of a game experience, because it removes your ability to create the entirety of a character in your head, by defining these characters for you instead. However, that’s just what happens when you cross from the game world to the lore world: you no longer define everything - some things are defined for you.
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> > > > > > Yeah if he didn’t have a chosen gender there would just be a hole in the lore.
> > > > >
> > > > > Two words: Chief’s face.
> > > >
> > > > What do you mean by that?
> > >
> > > Beyond a tiny glimpse in Halo 4, we don’t know what the Master Chief looks like. Would you consider that to be a hole in the lore?
> >
> > We get to see his face when he is a child and in the Fall of Reach. Even if we didn’t get to see anymore of his face I don’t think it would create a hole because a face is just a face, it isn’t that important.
>
> So you dispute that Chief’s appearance qualifies as a hole in the lore, fine. But you’ve just admitted that you’re okay with certain lore holes. I’m arguing that neither Bungie nor 343 had any pressing reason to fill that void with a restrictive interpretation that harms the player’s immersion. Could you imagine the riots if Chief spent half of Halo 6 with his helmet off?
Reminder we saw part of his face in Halo 4. His adult face has also been described in the novels. So really not a hole as we do know what he looks like, we just havent seen the full adult face. Just a really annoying thing the devs do for the audience who hasnt followed the books and so on.
Any time he/she is viewed outside the context of the game Halo:Reach, something isn’t going to add up. There is an image in Halsey’s Journal that shows Noble Six in the default armor on the SWORD base alongside Noble team (6 is male here). He also requisitioned the pre-order Recon helmet though we don’t know if he ever got it but he for sure wasn’t using it during the mission at the SWORD base.
Point being is that like Revan the specifics don’t matter but what does is the broad strokes. You’re always going to encounter this and Bungie just wasn’t thinking about it when it came to the marketing and lead-up. As a guy who was their for Halo:Reach I do remember them having to change his armor due to the fact it had player customization, the issue being is that Bungie had an idea for marketing and it clashed with this concept. Further compounding this was that game merchandise and tie-ins are locked in about a year in advance. So by the time it could be switched to the default we already had a canon Noble six. This issue actually started with Bungie not thinking it through.
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> > Yeah if he didn’t have a chosen gender there would just be a hole in the lore.
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> Two words: Chief’s face.
Face and gender are two VERY different things. Not seeing a character’s face doesn’t have implications for storytelling. A character’s gender however does.
For the sake of the canon, it has to be defined. Canonically Noble 6 cannot be both male and female; he’s not Schrödinger’s cat. It’s not like every player has their own canon; canon is defined by the story creators. Anything beyond that is just head canon. It’s not uncommon for gameplay experiences to deviate from canon in video games.
And Chief’s face isn’t a hole in the lore. He has one face that is his face; we just haven’t seen it. We do have some knowledge about his facial features from the lore: he’s white, has freckles, reddish-brown hair, and really pale skin. Also he has blue eyes. If 343i ever does show Chief’s face, it will be the same for every player. It’s not like they would say “ok, if you want your Chief to have blonde hair, he will; if you want your chief to have green eyes and a massive overbite, he will”.
In canon, he’s male. I remember reading a part of Halo: New Blood where Buck and Jun discuss Noble Six and his actions during the Fall of Reach.
“He was a good man”, I think he said lol it’s been a year since I read the book.
His adult face has also been described in the novels. So really not a hole as we do know what he looks like, we just havent seen the full adult face. Just a really annoying thing the devs do for the audience who hasnt followed the books and so on.