: Remember, they're going as fast as they possibly can to get to the bunkers as
: a glassing is commencing and all hell is about to come down around them. A
: Zealot Spartan with a grudge in a zone that the team had just locked down
: was probably the least of their worries. It was a mistake - they should
: have seen that Phantom coming in, but I can see in that situation where
: that little mistake happened and you lose a soldier. It's a random
: incident, not a failed heroic, which is probably the most realistic of
: death for a soldier.

: From the wounds they showed at the beginning of the level, I'm pretty sure
: Carter was heading towards death. As a Spartan, I'm sure he would have
: wanted to go out with a bang than die from blood loss sitting somewhere,
: watching the battle from afar.

: On Reach, at that point, especially in that game's vision of the events, I
: don't think there WAS an 'elsewhere'. I think he might have been on track
: to link up with some resistance, but then his time was up, and he was
: surrounded.

: These are just my interpretations and supplemental thoughts, of course. After
: finishing A Fistful of Arrows, I toyed around with the idea of doing an
: anthology of the Noble Spartans - what they were thinking and doing before
: their deaths. Sort of an epilogue to the last of AFoA. But by then I think
: a lot of people's interpretations of Reach were set in stone and probably
: weren't interested.

: For me, these are the kinds of stories I tell in my head as I play Bungie
: games, even with nameless marines I'm trying to keep alive.

I see a couple of things with Carter. First, he's seriously wounded when the Banshees blast into the back of the Pelican and poke enough holes in him. Perhaps his shields weren't up or heavy Banshee plasma popped them and then some. I think we're meant to understand he's now on borrowed time and that he also realizes it:

Auntie Dot: "Sierra-259, you are alarmingly..."
Noble-6: "Sir?"
Carter: "You don't want to hear it."

Secondly, despite the physical wounds, I think there was a hint that there was a wee mental wound when the mission wasn't really his to command any longer. I felt there was some feeling of resignation that he wasn't chosen for what mattered most:

Carter: "Six? That AI chose you. She made the right choice."

Which made his ultimate sacrifice more heroic in my mind and gave him the death he would have wanted anyway if he felt his wounds were not something he'd recover from. And Scarabs should be much harder to combat and take down that we've all mastered in a video game.