: I'll disagree a little with that, if I may. I don't think it was ever
: suggested that the Rookie determined much from the bits and pieces he
: encountered. For instance, his finding the activation plate from one of
: the det charges within sight of the burning ONI building only told him
: that it was the UNSC blew up the bridge and may have also been responsible
: for destroying the ONI building. From there he simply moved on about the
: city. Now we, the player, got to relive the actual encounter with Mickey
: and Dutch at the bridge and ONI building, but I wouldn't suggest that the
: Rookie knew the details of that info as well.

So it wasn't really a detective story because the mechanics didn't support that.

: The Rookie ultimately is reunited with the team underground and he's led
: there by the Superintendent who was privy to most of what went on with
: Buck and the squad whenever a portion of the cutscene involved a security
: or traffic camera.

We never saw him watch any footage.

My point still stands that having PK memory tech gives us the mechanics we need to actually experience the flashbacks for real. It also lets us play as very different PK units, to adapt to whichever body we happen to acquire, and still fight as humans via flashbacks. If our squad was a mixture of Spartans and ODST then we get variety even when fighting as a human. They could accentuate the differences between ODSTs and Spartans.

There is a degree of randomness because we can only grab a body of a unit that has recently been killed and their soul-fires don't last forever. So there is variation and chance at play between different playthroughs. Though we can influence things by choosing to let a valuable unit's body live until we are ready to kill and possess it. maybe the possession mechanism needs more thought. Do we roam around as a Stubbs style hand? ;-)