: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv81xI1JaBs
Oof.

There were a couple of really good episodes in Legends, and some really good moments in the episodes I didn't like. This was a case of the latter. Right up until they reach the "package," it's pretty good, though Arthur and Solomon die far too easily. And then it descends into a banter-off between John and the fifteen year old girl who's pretending to be Halsey. And it ends on a line that should be coming from the mouth of Goku, not the Master Chief.

Other than that, I'm with you on the Covenant. I wish they were a more intimidating presence again, but I understand and can accept why they're not.

I don't have a problem with Osiris. They feel professional without feeling faceless, characters without being Characters. But Majestic set the tone for the IVs, and starting out with a dudebro machismo-off in the first cutscene about making sure the colonists daughters are taken care off didn't endear me to them. Escalation has done much to "fix" that, with Thorne and Ray both stepping up and showing why they deserve to be Spartans, and I'm already more invested in Osiris as characters than I expected to be, but for the most part the IVs still come across as knockoffs.

We saw why the IIs could do what they could, and what they sacrificed to be able to do it. We saw the IIIs go through their own trials and tribulations. They all earned the right to be called Spartans in the eyes of the audience. The IVs feel like the ones who got it handed to them on a silver platter, without "earning" it. Which isn't true, lore-wise - they've all done things that marked them out, or they wouldn't be there. But we didn't SEE that process. 343i have been fixing that somewhat - we've seen Tanaka in action, proving why she deserves to be there; we've seen Vale prove her particular skillset is Spartan-worthy; and Buck, of course, goes without saying. And Locke is ONI's man through and through, so of course he'd get the augmentations, though I hear Nightfall wasn't as well-recieved as it could have been. But seeing Palmer and co. fail basic teamwork exercises in Initiation, not to mention the Ilsa Zane fiasco and the sheer number of defections compared to previous programs, don't give me confidence in them. Moreover, Palmer's behaviour reflects a fundamental flaw that the S-IVs need to have fixed - arrogance. I'm still half-convinced Palmer's being set up, narratively, for a fall that punishes her hubris, teaches her that singlemindedness and audacity do not a Spartan make.

Again, I'm just saying this to outline why Osiris are such a huge step forward in getting us to accept the IVs are, if not quite just as good as the IIs, then still good in their own right. Showing us their backstories, why they earned Spartan status, what they can do, and differentiating them, all goes a huge way to making them seem like the hypercompetent warfighters they're supposed to be. Also, I had that rant in me for a while, and it all came out at once.