: I've been watching the cutscenes of all the Halo's and including H2A's since
: I don't have an Xbox One just yet to play it myself, and I'm noticing
: something that never really matched up to how Nylund wrote Spartans and
: other characters.

: Nylund tried to depict the Spartans as emotionally broken, not smiling or
: laughing. They'd hold their index and middle fingers to their faceplate as
: a way to simulate it, because if I remember correctly the act of smiling
: would 'open the floodgates to all sorts of emotions', if I remember
: correctly.

: I remember the section with Linda in First Strike and her actually smiling
: and laughing taking John by surprise and looking back at it I think that
: is something that has never really matched up with how Bungie wrote the
: character in subsequent appearances.

: Clearly, I don't think it's disputed that the canonicity of The Fall of Reach
: is tenuous at best considering it was written before the universe became
: fleshed out and even before Halo CE, but even in Halo CE the Master Chief
: cracked jokes and made one-liners in a way that never really matched up
: with how Nylund tried to write him.

: Personally, I think that at least the events of The Fall of Reach should be
: retold with 'modern' events in mind. Hell, the book at first said Elites
: were rarely seen on the ground and that most of the forces seen were
: Grunts and Jackals, and thats just crazy.

I'm going to disagree with your last point. If you recall the early work in The Fall of Reach and The Flood, plus the Conversations From The Universe booklet, it had been well established that the Covenant (particularly the Elites) actually felt that humanity was WAY beneath them, not even deigning to legitimize them as intelligent life, but mere animals. They were appalled that they desecrated holy sites and showed no understanding of the Forerunners at all.

As honor-bound warriors, Elites only fought legitimate enemies, so throughout most of the Human-Covenant war, Elites wouldn't lower themselves to fight humans directly, but would just exterminate them from orbit. When ground action was required, it fell to the lesser Covenant species to do so, like Grunts and Jackals (whom the Elites didn't care for much either, but merely tolerated).

It was when the Grunts and Jackals were really unable to win against deployments of Spartans that Elites began to really be in on the fight with humans. I think it was written well with truly unique alien cultures in mind before the Covenant seemed to just be different takes on human traits.

I think it would have been good to continue with the story with that beginning in mind.