: I dunno what "something greater" would be. It seems like they threw
: the SoS Phantom pilot (I'm horrible at remembering Elite names) in there
: mostly because it was just a voice on the line and didn't require any
: additional work. Actually integrating named and NPC female characters for
: the various alien races is a lot more work, and would take a much more
: concerted push early during development for (relatively) not much gain,
: unless they take the story in a certain direction. The female
: representation for aliens I imagine will remain far lower than the human
: counts.*

Mahkee 'Chava, the Shipmistress you're referring to, led to a scripted line of dialogue by Olympia Vale to comment on the number of female Sangheili in the Swords, noting in one form or another that "war is traditionally a male's game." I don't think that she's necessarily just another NPC. Will we see more of her in the future? Who knows. Named female dropship pilots (Foehammer, Hocus, and now, Mahkee) don't have the best of luck in sticking around. In any case it seems like they made a conscious effort to note that female Sangheili exist and that they won't allow themselves to be confined to the keeps.

: *Although it occurs to me we still know next to nothing about the Brute and
: Grunt females, or really much at all about their larger society, compared
: to what we've learned about the Prophets, Elites, and Jackals. They'd be a
: good area to start fleshing out. The Drones and Hunters I feel like are
: more alien/less individually intelligent and thus less interesting from a
: cultural standpoint.

Alien is good. While the capitalistic and matriarchal Kig-Yar is a neat parallel to humanity, similarly capitalistic yet formerly patriarchal, I want to see what other forms of gender exist across the galaxy and how they fit into the cultural and political aspects of their respective civilizations. What we see with most of the former Covenant is an identical or similar matriarchal/patriarchal system like what you'd find with Humans. The Lekgolo and Yanme'e, the latter of which I believe incorporate queens, would be an excellent example to develop on. They're certainly the most alien of the Covenant and could benefit with some truly out of the box thinking. With the Fringe species of the Covenant they can a lot more I'd imagine.

We can also look back at ancient Humanity as well. A contributor on Halo Archive pointed out some months ago that these Humans recognized at least a dozen or so individual genders. I think that's really cool considering the diversity of Human species back then to begin with. If they ever decide to make a Halo RPG set during the old times I'd love to see this be a gameplay and story mechanic.