: What about ONI and the rather totalitarian bent of the human government?

: You can get away with a lot when there's a war on and you are facing an
: existential threat. But afterwards?

: Does the Chief go back to murdering dissidents? protestors? people who just
: want to leave? It was a good thing that the innies were so murderous. What
: if they just went on strike? What would ONI do about an innie Gandhi? The
: Chief Keyes-punching the skulls of pacifists :-)

: And what would the new Cortana have to say about it? "The
: give-peace-a-chance choir have locked themselves in the vault to escape
: you Chief. Don't worry: I'll have that door open in a jiffy.

: Has Halsey a better solution to political problems than Spartans?

: I laughed when I read in the first book that Spartans were Halsey's solution
: to starships ramming planets at lightspeed. Does the Spartan run to the
: site of impact and punch the ship back into orbit or does every ship have
: a Spartan in it?

: The Chief's unwavering loyalty is only a virtue in certain circumstances.

: As a side note: for the future. I think that all colonies should be started
: with an agreed independence date. Waidaminit! am I accepting the notion
: that you can own people even for a short while?

It's a tough situation. To hear it from Trautmann and Nylund, they invented the insurrection to explain why humanity had ever had a military to fight the alien invasion in the first place. So it makes sense that Bungie didn't really buy into exploring them, as yet another thing "forced upon them". But even Nylund definitely downplayed the realities of the Spartans in favor of the Big Damn Heroes part of it.

343 has focused on that aspect far more—from the opening cutscene of Halo 4, to dredging up that past in Infinite's haunting... visions? Not quite flashbacks? Not sure what you'd call them. If you were paying attention to the 343 games versus the Bungie games you know the origins of the Chief are no bueno.

eBut I think, especially with a T-rated game, there's a hard limit to how far they can go with it, not to mention I think there's an overriding gameplay reason they're not interested in having us fight humans, because it's going to be relatively boring compared to interesting aliens with interesting alien weapons. The choice they've made with the character also limits that kind of story in that Chief is ultimately a-okay with being a child soldier because it's all he's known, and he'd probably be dead otherwise. You'd really need another character to cover that, and I'm not sure you'd ever be able to get more than glancing blows at the problem in a game medium where you have to make shooting other living things fun.