Spartan IVs: A lame legacy for Spartans?

Community Halo Universe
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As most should know, the Spartan 2 soldiers were kidnapped and trained from children then genetically modified and given awesome battle armor

Whats been cool about the Spartan’s is that they always carried a certain level of mystery and mystique…if you read the books or watched forward unto dawn or anything like that then you would know that the Spartan 2s were like walking myths…stoic , dignified, disciplined, intelligent killing machines

Halo at its core is about the fact that Spartans ( and one in particular) are special , not average by any stretch of the imagination …especially if you read the books then you know that Spartans are an elite yield of soldier with many dying or being injured just in the training process (halo 1 especially reinforced the whole “impossible odds for regular people but all in a days work for a super spartan” angle)

So I decided to watch all of spartan ops episodes the other day on youtube and its actually sad that what came of the spartan 2 program was eventually a Spartan 4 program that craps on the ideals set by the spartan 2s (even 3’s)

The spartan 4 soldiers are watered down “more human” and flawed but have access to similar gene mods and armor …
Hoya is undisciplined
Demarco is like a college frat boy
and Palmer…the worst of them all… is condescending , entitled, disrespectful and oblivious
…these spartans have character issues…like regular people

They literally represent what would happen if you let regular people be Spartans and they remove the mystique of the Spartans by showing how flawed and basic they are …Palmers lack of reverence and respect for master chief, halsey, and the “egg heads” is disgusting and shows that someone like her could only be a spartan if the bar for entry is lowered …they aren’t special

Halsey’s interactions with the S4s in my opinion was very close to my reaction…a spartan is more than a gene mod and power armor, it goes deeper than just that but the S4s prove that being a spartan is pretty much just that…

Its even more unfortunate that the angle 343 is trying to go is by making MC and the concept of a S2 seem “outdated” in favor of this new imitation spartan, like the whole “lack of humanity” angle and the “im in love with cortana and now depressed that shes rampant” (when he actually faced harder losses than that when he was younger but thats another topic)

so are the S4s a worthy evolution of the spartan program or a blasphemy in your opinion?
(i think a blasphemy)

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these are real people, that’s the point of the program. and how is Palmer disrespectful to the Chief? It’s not like she tried to arrest him when Del Rio gave the order.

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> …these spartans have character issues…like regular people
>
> <mark>They literally represent what would happen if you let regular people be Spartans</mark> and they remove the mystique of the Spartans by showing how flawed and basic they are …Palmers lack of reverence and respect for master chief, halsey, and the “egg heads” is disgusting and shows that someone like her could only be a spartan if the bar for entry is lowered …they aren’t special

This is exactly what the Spartan-IVs are supposed to be: average people. The program is a very natural evolution of the Spartan Program, and likely a reflection of what the ORION project candidates were like.

They are not classic Spartans, and they are not supposed to be. I think the problem is that people are trying to fit the IVs into the Spartan-II model, and the two aren’t meant to fit together. I love the concept of the Spartan-IV program, and while it was not well executed in Halo 4, it could turn out to be an interesting story concept.

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> They literally represent what would happen if you let regular people be Spartans and they remove the mystique of the Spartans by showing how flawed and basic they are

despairingly buries head in hands

This is the point.

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I think you guys are missing my point

I get that the point was to have regular people…obviously i get that

what I’m saying is thats a lame evolution of the spartan program …I think its a lame choice

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> I think you guys are missing my point
>
>
> I get that the point was to have regular people…obviously i get that
>
> what I’m saying is thats a lame evolution of the spartan program …I think its a lame choice

Once again, you are missing the point that this is the point of the Spartan-IV program. Just redoing the story of the IIs and IIIs would be pointless and a waste of potential, the IVs have a name to live up to which links to Halsey’s statement that her Spartans are “our destiny as a species”.

It gets hard to take what you say seriously when you say things like:

> “im in love with cortana and now depressed that shes rampant”

THIS IS NOT WHAT HALO 4 WAS ABOUT, THIS IS NOT THE ARC THAT OCCURRED BETWEEN JOHN AND CORTANA.

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OP I like everything you typed and share very similar feelings. Not only should spartans be more disciplined and not act the way they did in Spartan ops but much of their behavior would have been intolerable if they were regular low on the totem pole marines. And seeing that the spartan IVs are supposed to be the best of the best the UNSC has to offer outside of already existing spartan programs I wonder how exactly we won the war with the covenant.

However we’ve only seen maybe half a dozen of the spartan IVs and there’s 700 or so? So I think we can lay blame to poor character writing and development instead of the actual program itself.

Also the evolution of the spartan program was to have thousands of them produced until they were the norm. Atleast that’s what I took from reading Ghosts of Onyx when they implemented the Spartan III program. So they’d have to be regular soldiers. Conscripting thousands of children en masse is just not practical anymore.

Edit: I think the SIV program is a necessary evolution of the spartan program but the ones we’ve seen so far other than Thorne maybe aren’t fit for the job.

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I personally don’t consider them to really be Spartans, but they’re undeserving of the hate that they have received.

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you’re right, regular people can’t be Spartans. As a illusionary colonel said, “they’re trying to something they’re not, a Spartan”

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> I personally don’t consider them to really be Spartans, but they’re undeserving of the hate that they have received.

Thorne is pretty close though. Halsey said it herself: “Some of you are closer than others…”

What exactly ‘defines’ a Spartan? This has been asked before and many opinions were given. Halsey probably has her own view on what makes a Spartan as well, and she implied (IMO) that amongst the IV’s she’s had the pleasure of seeing thus far, Thorne came the closest to what she envisioned a Spartan to behave like.

The tech and resources that went into the original Spartans are becoming easier to reproduce and access, and often without most of the potential crippling side-effects of the augmentations in the II’s - barring the occasional accident.
Of course they’re going to start using ‘normal’ people for this. It’s less expensive and less time consuming than the SII’s. That’s how I see it anyway.

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My problem with the SIVs isn’t so much that they act like normal people in their time off or conversations, it’s how damnably unprofessional they act when on the job. They may not be raised from childhood as paragons of soldiering, but they’re still supposed to be the best the UNSC has.

Palmer is a perfect example of this. I may be annoyed by her brainless attitude and snide comments, but I could just accept her as an unlikable character. What I can’t handle, however, is that she’s supposedly the best of the SIVs yet goes into battle with no helmet while waving around twin pistols and, when given the opportunity, chooses to shoot a defenseless old woman rather than the enemy commander. No professional soldier would act like that. When the commander of the SIVs is this bad, what does it say about the rest of them?

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I think the S-IVs main purpose is to represent humanity beginning to fully realize their past glory. We know that the forerunners are armored from birth, perhaps ancient humanity was similar. The librarians goal was to give humanity back what forerunners had taken from them: outfitting them in advanced battle armor that significantly increases their resistance to the flood sees like a good step.

Still no excuse for the acting like fools. When you see the lord of admirals and his crew operating in the terminals, the way the IVs act makes you facepalm.

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Can you really expect them to be similar to AH? The Humans during that time were the peak of Humanity in the Halo series. They rivaled the Forerunners in technology and were likely far more intelligent than the current humans in Halo are.

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> They literally represent what would happen if you let regular people be Spartans and they remove the mystique of the Spartans by showing how flawed and basic they are …

You can keep trying to push Spartans into the role of the space-robotic-superhero-marine-cliche that Bungie used throughout their games for their protagonists if you want, (BTW, the books disagree with you. They abolish any sort of “mystery” around the II’s and humanize them completely, and they’ve done it from the get-go. So much for “Halo at it’s core, blah-blah-blah”. ) but I think that’s a pretty boring and uninspired viewpoint to tell a story from. Not to mention unrealistic.

Hey, it’s your life though.

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> Once again, you are missing the point that this is the point of the Spartan-IV program. Just redoing the story of the IIs and IIIs would be pointless and a waste of potential, the IVs have a name to live up to which links to Halsey’s statement that her Spartans are “our destiny as a species”.
>
> It gets hard to take what you say seriously when you say things like:
>
> > “im in love with cortana and now depressed that shes rampant”
>
> THIS IS NOT WHAT HALO 4 WAS ABOUT, THIS IS NOT THE ARC THAT OCCURRED BETWEEN JOHN AND CORTANA.

The IV’s seem like a perfectly natural evolution to me. I mean, where else could 343 have gone with the story?

Halo CE through 3 was lame because he’s like “im the Master Chief and I blow all the bad things up”.

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I don’t really know how a bunch of kidnapped kids we know a fair bit about count as mysterious.

I will say the S-IV’s act far too unprofessional though. They could come off more like Buck’s team, but they don’t.

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This was a cute, if not headache-inducing read.

slow claps

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> I don’t really know how a bunch of kidnapped kids we know a fair bit about count as mysterious.
>
> I will say the S-IV’s act far too unprofessional though. They could come off more like Buck’s team, but they don’t.

Buck’s team really isn’t any better or worse than Majestic.

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> I don’t really know how a bunch of kidnapped kids we know a fair bit about count as mysterious.
>
> <mark>I will say the S-IV’s act far too unprofessional though. They could come off more like Buck’s team, but they don’t.</mark>

Uh, yeah… No. slow sigh
Where did you get the idea that Buck’s ODSTs act professional even compared to the Spartan-IVs?
Their behavior during H3:ODST wasn’t particularly impressive. They had absolutely none of the no-nonsense, ultra-efficient attitude the SPARTAN-IIs had. When Buck crashes into New Mombasa on a dangerous mission during what to all purposes could be humanity’s last battle, he spends a good two minutes or so arguing with his girlfriend (Dare) about her being an ONI spook instead of actually getting in the fight. The team is in their final briefing before dropping into New Mombasa and all they seem to be capable of doing is teasing Buck about Dare- the Rookie was asleep! Why would you let a soldier take a nap five minutes before a crucial, last-ditch battle?
The whole ODST campaign felt a little slapstick to me thanks to the goofy behavior of Buck’s team during cutscenes and their completely casual, flippant approach to serious, life-or-death situations. Of course, most of Bungie’s characters had this problem, so maybe it’s not just them.

That being said, I do think that the more unprofessional, relaxed attitudes of the SPARTAN-IVs make sense. For the most part, they’re just ordinary UNSC Marines with enhancements and MJOLNIR armor, and not many of them are the highly exceptional, handpicked individuals the SPARTAN-IIs were. Accordingly, they lack a lot of the highly focused, mission-oriented and disciplined mindset the IIs had; don’t forget that the IVs weren’t raised in a boot camp from six years of age, so they’re bound to feel a lot more “normal”.

Of course, I still found Palmer to be an insufferable jerk, but that has a lot less to do with her being a Spartan and a lot more to do with her simply being an idiot.
Ideally, all IVs would be more like Thorne; however, that can’t really happen.

EDIT: I just had to mention this. This is my 117th post, and it brings my average to 1.17 posts per day. The Master Chief would be amused…

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Wow. Things seem to have changed a lot since the last time I was in a thread regarding the IVs. There’s an awful lot of SIV love in this thread and I love it!

I like the SIVs. Even if people don’t like them right now it wont matter later because they’re just going to prove themselves worthy later in the games so I think it’s kind of a waste of time. Just my opinion though.

There are a lot of aspects to the nature to the SIVs that I really like.

There’s the contrast between them and the SIIs which could go in some interesting directions later on.

like how Chief is supposed to be discovering his humanity while the SIVs are supposed to be the future and have shown to display more humanity than any other Spartan generation. I think they may have gone a bit over board with displaying that humanity in S ops though.

Or how Majestic are a team of four Spartans in Blue armor which I’m sure has nothing to do with the fact that the SIIs have a four man team called Blue team. It’d be really cool if these teams were to ever come face to face. It’d be a chance to show some real contrast while also showing their similarities. There could also be a point where a member from each team could pair up and the SIIs can have some mentor time with their successors while also learning some tricks from them too.

Another cool little aspect about the IVs is that as 343 introduced Spartans that were meant to be real everyday people and not genetic bulls eyes the multi player was made cannon where we, every day people will play as the SIVs. It gives me a stronger sense of connection to the SIV which is an aspect of them that I really liked.

Their connection to the Librarian’s geas is also a wonderful trait of the program. I know Halsey meant the SIIs when she was talking about Humanities next step but Chief’s next step is finding his humanity so the SIVs have got to have something to do with it right? I’d also really like to see history repeat itself a little bit with the modern Spartan program compared to that of the Warrior servants. Maybe the Spartans will suffer a great disgrace at some stage and ONI will swoop in and use the disgraced Spartans desperate for a purpose for their own means, not unlike how the disgraced Warrior servants were taken in by the Builders. I’d like to see a lot of moments like this but hopefully humanity will have a different result.

And they’ve just got so much to prove! That has potential and I hope 343 goes places with it.