: 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.

Nylund did an amazing job, but he was operating in a world where the series wasn't established as a franchise yet. As such, he made some interesting assumptions that neither 343 nor Bungie ever seemed interested in perpetuating. Leaving aside the retcons to the Battle of Reach in the larger scale, as referred to elsewhere above, Nylund treats CE as Master Chief's first full encounter will all the Covenant races--he hadn't seen Hunters till weeks before Sigma Octanus, and Elites at Reach. Essentially everything Bungie did from that point, especially with Contact Harvest, moved the conflict from "we fought mostly space battles and never saw the Covenant" to "we had lots of contact with them in numerous engagements".

And finally, there are the Spartans. I can see where 343 are sort of getting back into some of the stuff Nylund brought up, but yeah, I can't say I ever liked Nylund's portrayal of the Chief. In fact, I think Dietz nailed it in one passage of the Flood.