: The armor lineage, for me, is a confusing impossible mess to follow now. In
: my mind, Mark IV is Halo Wars. Mark V is Reach. Mark VI is Halo 2 and 3.
: Yet I go and look at the wiki pages for said Marks (Mark IV as an
: example), and I'm seeing Halo Wars, Legends, and Reach depicted.

: It's started becoming difficult, at any given time, to know exactly what
: someone is wearing just by appearances.

: Meh.

I believe Halsey's Journal was the first Halo production to reference that the MJOLNIR Armor was only designated in Mk. IV-VII in order to pacify certain bureaucrats within ONI who needed to reference different generations for record-keeping reasons. She mentions wanting to get her Spartans the best upgrades as soon as they were available. So while it definitely makes it much more frustrating to track visually, it makes a lot of sense in universe.

The only thing that irks me is that now the Mk. V appears to be much more bulky and difficult to maneuver in than many iterations of the Mk. IV. It does seem like somewhat of a step back. But I guess if you take into account that the shielding system included in Mk. V was still being perfected at the time, it might make sense that some of the technology involved with its application would be bulkier, which then got refined with the Mk. VI.

I still attribute Cortana choosing to downgrade the visual appearance of Chief's Mk. VI to her rampancy, explaining why the armor was changed but the damage was left.