: 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.

I'm going to have to disagree with a lot of this. I always thought it was silly that only Grunts and Jackals were the only ones to be encountered, in part due to the Elites' martial nature and storytelling potential to show the Covenant itself as utterly, terrifyingly devoted to their religion, and because Grunts are the comic relief of the Halo universe. We've demanded (and got!) plushies of them.

As for Spartans, I think they are just victims of a writing quirk when too many authors get ahold of him, of showing different ways the character is, but I don't mean it in a bad way. For me, it doesn't feel right to hear the Chief curse, even say "damn", but I've thought that multiple writers can also be interpreted as multiple facets of a single, complete personality, which is the reason I find the Master Chief to be a fascinating character. Over ten years of character development, and he's still a character open for interpretation.