: I was snowed in for the last couple days, and spent a good chunk of the time
: playing H2A and H3 back to back. Looking at the story as a whole, the new
: terminals add an interesting wrinkle in that ONI had been observing and
: tracking Thel 'Vadamee for years. They knew that he was the single most
: deadly and destructive shipmaster at the Covenant's disposal, and tried
: many times to take him out.

: This makes me wonder whether anybody knew that the Arbiter who offered his
: allegiance to humanity at the end of the war was the same guy. At the
: beginning of Halo 3, the Arbiter seems to have full run of Crow's Nest.
: Other than some funny looks from marines, he's trusted completely, even
: though this is one of the UNSC's last secure bastions on Covenant-occupied
: Earth. So did Cmdr. Keyes et al. know the Arbiter was Thel 'Vadamee,
: Destroyer of Worlds, and just not care? Maybe only a handful of ONI
: operatives made the connection, and opted not to share? Maybe the
: Arbiter's real name never came up.

: Hood's choice of words at the end of H3 is interesting: "I remember how
: this war started, what your kind did to mine." He says "your
: kind", not "you", thus avoiding placing blame specifically
: on the Arbiter. Perhaps he was being tactful, or perhaps he was/is truly
: unaware that this particular Elite was responsible for more human deaths
: than any other.

: Basically, I'm still hoping all these years later that we'll be told the
: story of Arbiter, Keyes, and Johnson returning to Earth after H2. That
: must have been a spectacularly, fascinatingly awkward moment.

Not to be a downer, but I'd guess the big reason Hood says(in 2007) "your kind" instead of "you" is that they didn't think up the idea of ONI knowing about Thel until 2013/2014..