I contest that. That's a reason it was common, but it also can be harder to tell a story with one, or easier.

: It's one reason why Duke Nukem 3D was widely praised when it was released.
: With a universe a fleshed out as Halo you can't keep playing as a blank slate character.

Why not?

: To be perfectly honest though we never truly had a blank slate character in
: Halo until ODST, which looking at this now is fairly ironic.

Well yeah, Chief had a semblance of character in Halo 1 and 2 and that was enough to make it work. Why mess with a good thing? I'll give Bungie and 343i credit (can't speak for the books because I haven't read them), they made the more fleshed-out Chief of Halo 3 and 4 work pretty well, but they idea that they had to confuses and infuriates bothers me.

: I'd hardly call the Spartan II project cartoonishly evil, it's not something
: you would see in a saturday morning cartoon aimed at kids or teens. The
: Fall of Reach was an excellent novel and the origins of the Spartan II's
: is damn dark.

I don't mean cartoonishly evil as in literally Saturday morning cartoons, I mean ridiculous.

: Can you imagine if a country in the present day attempted it?

No, that's my point. It's an unreasonable thing to do even for people with no morals.

: There would be hell to pay.

Exactly, it's a ton of resources put on the bet that it'll all pan out in the end, with a relatively high risk, especially over years and decades, that someone will blow their cover and get them all strung up on the highest yardarm.

I don't know, maybe it's explained better in the books, I know there's something about a report and there were people who supposedly felt they really needed the most elite hardcore assassins this side of Andromeda, but all those years, all that tech, all those chemicals, all that genetic engineering, when a bunch will wash out and the survivors may not be stable, it just seems ill-advised even though it worked out for them.

: The way I look at things it seems that without Microsoft Halo would not have
: turned into the great franchise it is today. It would not be as
: interesting as it is not going by what we now have with Destiny. Microsoft
: and people like Trautmann and Nylund deserve credit on helping to create
: an expanded universe that helps to make the Halo series more fresh and
: exciting to explore.

I agree there.