: It can be done right, don't get me wrong, but sometimes a blank slate avatar
: just seems like a poor cop out for not wanting to fully realize them and
: bring your character to life. Headcanon is great but it doesn't leave you
: with the same since of fulfillment that something imbedded in the game can
: provide. When you decide to make these characters an avatar but don't
: offer players the tools to make them their own outside of appearance and
: gameplay style that doesn't sit well with me. Role playing only goes so
: far in a universe where you expect your character to have more of an
: impact outside of shooting a gun, swinging a sword, or casting a spell.

Well said. I find it odd that Bungie was suddenly insisting on the Master Chief here sticking to the blank slate mold so closely. They had no problem in Halo 2 with giving the Arbiter a face, giving him a backstory, making him an entirely different species, putting him on the bad guys' side, etc. If they thought players wouldn't like the Master Chief having a defined backstory unlike their own, why did they think they would then suddenly flock to the Arbiter. Perhaps the jarring contrast is why it took some years for Arby to become beloved after all.

Even in Marathon, the Security Officer wasn't a true blank slate. A backstory is implied for him towards the end with the discovery of the hidden Mjolnir cyborgs aboard the ship, and the plot of the third revolves entirely around him being controlled like a robot and learning to overcome his programming. One of the most powerful moments, for me, in Marathon 1 was finding the data log talking about the history of the uprisings on Mars, and wondering if my avatar had once been one of the oppressive officers "keeping the order" in the slums there. I might have been a bad guy who just happened to be fighting worse guys now.