: In the Reach game code, the armor (helmets specifically) are not named what
: we know them by (Recon, CQB, EOD, etc.), they're actually named for
: Spartans from the various fictions. Maybe it was Bungie's way to sort what
: each Spartan looks like.

Spartans wear the armor that they think will be necessary for the job, unless they have special needs like Emile. Preferences come into play of course, like how some choose EVA instead of CQB because it offers better peripheral vision, at the cost of armor protection.

Emile is one of the unfortunate casualties of this choice. A helmet designed for CQB may have saved him from injury entirely when he was deployed on [Redacted]. Unfortunately, the EVA visor shattered on impact, shredding the upper half of S-A239's face. Despite the UNSC's best attempts at reconstructive surgery, Emile was left blind without prosthetic implants.

Beneath his EVA helmet, he wears a specially-built OCULUS rig which feeds him a composite image from four cameras, granting a 270 degree view. When another helmet was damaged in an Insurrectionist ambush, he carved a demon's skull into the visor, leaving the glass over the cameras untouched.