Hey everyone! I'm usually a lurker, but thought I'd post about this. I just read the latest issue of escalation and thought it was pretty good overall, but am not sure about the ending. I'd love to hear you'r guys' thoughts, here are some of mine:

At the conclusion chief disregards R&R and has his team assigned "wherever they're needed." I imagined that chief really would finally take a break and get some R&R instead of assigning himself to as many missions as possible. He's not and idiot and ought to recognize the importance of recovering and recuperation... especially with what he's been through, with traumatizing conflict and loss, etc.
But i guess he doesn't like/know how to deal with things besides focusing on the mission at hand, so this is something he has to learn how to do after 30 years of combat. Something's eventually got to give so this is possibly setting up that problem for halo 5 ("halo 5: the master chief burns out edition"). This also isn't real life so maybe chief doesn't need as much time off :p

I also wonder how this is going to play into the "questioning everything" we keep hearing about chief doing. Maybe their exposed to unethical situations through taking on more missions, or they take on more independence and autonomy as they progress, causing them to question the motives of ONI and others (he's already disobeying Lord Hood by going active again).

Finally I thought it was a cool piece of fiction that didact 'attunes' his armor to his enemies weapons.

So I guess we'll see, I'm pretty excited for the mc collection and H5!