: I remember a few years ago reading something where Frankie responded to the
: Halsey criticism with 'when you see where her arc goes, it will make
: sense' or something like that. I'm presuming that hasn't happened yet?
: Like Revenant said, it feels too forced all at once, which makes me think
: she's going to 'redeem' herself in the next game or Spartan Ops or
: something. Kind of like forcing Cortana off so we had a goal to care about
: for the next couple of games. The writer's hand (or perhaps it's a
: franchise story team's hand) seems too apparent in these situations to me.

: I know what you're talking about. Specifically, towards the end of Spartan
: Ops, the third or second to last episode, it really felt like she was
: going to have an emotional breakdown and start murdering people, and I
: actually got excited for such a slow-cooked development... But then the
: season wrapped up.

: Perhaps, like Halsey, they're trying to extend these arcs into a longer
: story, and it's just hard for us to sit through the long downtime between
: acts?

: Yeah, I remember thinking during Glasslands, "Assuredly, Parangofsky's
: going to become a villain of sorts and Halsey, or somebody else, will have
: to overcome her flaws to prevent another war from happening,
: right...?" But after these books and Halo 4, there seems to be very
: few humans to root for anymore (other than Lasky). I literally have
: wise-cracking G.I.Joes associated with the Bungie-era UNSC symbol, and
: dicks associated with the new one. I need simple heroes in my Halo, I have
: brooding, anti-heros in every other game! :P

I don't mind the quick transition from the great Covenant empire destroying humanity to a big mess of crazies here and there. To me, it makes sense as it really points to the prophets being in complete control of the Covenant for so long that now that they've been dethroned, everyone is in utter choas. The unggoy are semi-naive and stupid and the kig-yar species went immediately back to their pirating/gun-for-hire ways.

The elites on the other hand, possibly the most obvious 'threat' to humanity' from the Covenant, are trying to find themselves after being the intelligent, lethal arm of the Covenant/prophets for so long...not to mention first being usurped by the brutes in leadership roles by the prophets, realizing their trusted leaders lied to them all along, teaming up with humanity who very recently was their enemy and an affront to their religious deities and then being out on their own again as a species after being in the Covenant for thousands of years or MANY generations of sangheili. Add in the human subversion of the sangheili civil war all in the matter of a few years, and it would be pretty good reason for such a quick (and for most part easy) transition within the confused confines of the Halo universe.

As for Palmer, did you all not feel that the Epilogue cutscene for SpOps season 1 painted her in a bad light after her "argument" with Lasky? I feel Lasky has been the consistent one to be a human hero since 343I took over. His desire to not kill Halsey appeals to our general love of human life as civilized humans, and Palmer's by-the-books, 'I always follow orders no matter what' is generally seen as robotic or even evil by the majority of civilized humans I'd say. I felt that put her as more of a bad guy than the 'new Cortana' or hero as most people seem to think.

Just some thoughts...I really wish we could all sit down at a coffee shop and talk Halo universe sometime. I don't have the patience to type out everything I want to. These explanations and thoughts are always much better in my head. :)

- MacGyver10