: I think it's still largely biased on both sides. Monstrous, unethical,
: sinful, etc. Yes. Lives ruined. Terrible stuff. Spartans got created. Real
: talk here, Spartans don't get created, all of those sins don't matter. All
: of those lives ruined by Halsey and ONI and anything else? Probably
: glassed. Best case scenario, the Covenant just wipe humanity off the face
: of the universe. Worst case is they find their Halo rings and activate
: them, blasting all the things off the face of the universe. Or the Flood
: still get unleashed and never get stopped, and now the Flood are the
: universe.

: Ackerson got to run roughshod with his Spartan IIIs, and that was okay
: because it wasn't Halsey. Go ONI.

: ONI in general is a terrible shadow organization that will most likely lead
: to a new galactic war, and the S-IVs with their idiots like Palmer will be
: their instrument to bring the destruction. So you're right, there's a lot
: to debate her, Halsey's hands are anything but clean, but the portrayal as
: outright terrible monster bad guy villain when literally there would be no
: humanity or novels to have this discussion about in the Halo Universe if
: the Covenant had just wiped humanity off the face of the Earth says it
: all. It's jacked up, but in this case the ends did justify the means. And
: I'm sure ONI loved and supported it the whole time, because now their
: asses are alive and in control and doing all the stuff they're doing.

When Halsey created the Spartans her ends were to create a weapon that would quell dissent. She was shoring up a failed government and there is no guarantee that her Spartans would have succeeded in that task.

Her ends were to stifle dissent via terror and assassination. Her means were to kidnap children and brainwash them to be her agents of terror and her assassins.

Halsey said that each of her Spartans could have been an Alexander the Great - a great martial leader. We could have done with a few dozen of them during the Covenant war. Instead her foot soldiers won land skirmishes until the cruisers came in and glassed the planet.

She wasted the potential of those children.

Apart from the player characters her Spartans did NOT win the war.

She took potential leaders, scientists, strategists, thinkers and squandered them as assassins, foot soldiers. Maybe those one in a billion exceptional candidates could have worked out how Covie weapons actually worked, could have found a way to breach Covenant ship shields, could have given us effective victories against the covenant. Maybe Halsey herself could have helped in those areas if she had concentrated on them and left kiddie experiments alone.

: It boils down to the thread consensus. Too much, too fast. Trying to force
: down throats. Clear agenda to paint Halsey as some really terrible nasty
: person, casting aside a lot of why it happened or just how much support
: ONI had for it or were involved with it, let alone what they're still up
: to in the shadows.

What Halsey did wasn't nice. She actually did kidnap those children - it's not something that Travis made up or lied about.

And Travis did NOT cover up ONI's involvement - she made particular mention of it.

I'm pretty sure that Travis isn't a fan of Halsey but I bet she's glad Halsey the character exists. I bet it's been fun writing for her.

Have you considered that those people who went along with her are now vilifying her because that's how they distance themselves from what they did or what they allowed to happen? They could be putting their guilt into Halsey and then hate her. She is a scapegoat.

I think that the Arbiter cast his own guilt onto Truth and then killed him. I think that Mendez and the others are doing that with Halsey. It lets them think of themselves as good people who were just lead into evil by Halsey. They don't need to blame themselves; they can just blame Halsey.

I don't know if this is what Travis is doing with those characters but there were a few things I picked up in Glasslands that suggest that she was thinking along those lines.

Everyone has a bias. Travis is not pro Halsey :-) But her characters are not just her sock puppets. Mendez et al are scapegoating Halsey but people do that; it's not, necessarily, out of character or against human nature to blame others for our own actions.

: Oh and Palmer is still a wholly awful character (both in writing and
: execution).

I don't like her and I think that she was meant to be liked but she does give 343 story telling opportunities. 343 could make more use of her as an antagonist or as someone who has an epiphany than simply as a likable minor character.