Massive fan of Arbiter as well, one reason Halo 2 sits just maybe a tiny bit above H3 (H3 has some awesome missions and encounters and more polish, but man that story and music in H2, and it did have almost all components of 3, just a bit rougher around the edges).
I’ve never read the books, I know they are hugely important for a lot of fans. For me, H1-2-3-ODST have a shared tone and style, they had mostly the same writers after all across all of those games. So when I played Reach, Halo 4, and saw a playthrough of 5, I felt they veered drastically in a direction I did not like, storybeats, tone, flow.
Throughout 1-2-3 Master Chief is just a great enhanced soldier, simple cheesy action hero with dumb one-liners, the tone is like the original Star Wars trilogy, a rebellion fighting a big evil, you have a sassy AI hacker, a gruff Sergeant, wise measured captains, comic relief enemies, scarier elements that don’t color everything in the same monotone black tone in the story…
But then I get to learn in later games that apparently Master Chief simply was in the lore a brainwashed child supersoldier in a man’s body blindly following the orders of an oppressive militaristic galactic police state which originally just designed spartans to squash poor rebellious factions across the system, and it only appeared that we played as the good guys because we had a bigger threat, Covenant wanting to fire rings and the Flood.
As a player, audience, I was apparently rooting all along for fascism? What’s the incentive again to play as MC anymore to help a police state?
It’s Starship troopers without the satire, no humor.
At least Warhammer 40k has the excessively cheesy dumb tone right in your face so that you don’t feel dirty when you’re playing as any one of the every single horrible faction it has.
The Arbiter in H2, started as a believer, a blind follower of a dangerous cause, and then learned the truth and decided to turn against that, and sided with humans to stop the death of countless of lives.
If we are stuck with the lore that exists, which leaves a sour taste in my mouth as a person who just loves the games, then I think that Master Chief should basically have the same realization, arc, as the Arbiter had, if we as an audience are supposed to root for him again.
Picture it, with MC maturing, having fought the Covenant, seeing them change, seeing the importance of the rebellion against an oppressive regime, having the words from Cortana echoing in his mind about how human he is, he starts to think that maybe he should try save the people he was designed to squash originally. MC gains the trust of a rebellion faction on some remote system, tries to unite them across the systems, and realizes he needs help.
He contacts the Arbiter, explains how he finds himself now in a similar situation that the Arbiter once was in, and asks for help. They both unite once again, fighting both now on the battlefied of defeating the remnant on Arbiter’s homeworld, as well as against the UNSC.
Hows that for an overarching story coming back around?
And I just have to say, Halo 5 and possibly Infinite, having AI turn crazy and against humanity is SO SO overdone and lazy and just appealing to that same superstitious instinct where we fear the novel, unknown, artificial. Just dump that storyline please. Cortana was fun and never had any hint of that in the trilogy, let her be a character, not a plot device.
