Then this excerpt did a horrible job of selling the story.

: Ditto.

: Double Ditto

I'd feel so much better if it was a 343i employee telling me this.

Instead, I get the feeling that someone like Brian Reed would hear the word "Transhumanism" and reach for the dictionary.

: That was only the first chapter and honestly the most bare bones one
: establishing the circumstances for the rest of the novel. It isn't meant
: to be anything other than a sample, not the full course meal.

Mkay. So, it's a full steak dinner with mashed potatoes, steamed beans, and corn on the cob piled high.
Except the sampler is just a little bit of corn with smut on it. And there's a funny sort of smell wafting from the kitchen.

: That's a pretty basic statement that anyone, including those in the URF,
: could stated in any setting from a prologue of a memoir to the dinner
: table.

I'm keying in on "Over-militarized". To me, that phrase has connotations that the user prefers their civilians to be completely disarmed. In real life, I've heard it used to describe civilians who dare to own those evil black rifles or lawfully carry concealed handguns in public.

And this is the Haloverse, where a fleet of Covenant warships might pay a visit one day. A colony could mount Patriot batteries in everyone's backyard and I'd still consider it a reasonable defensive measure.

I'm looking forward to 343i hiring an author who takes the Insurrection seriously and details entire factions in the URF. There could be different philosophies, like Jovian Trotskyites or Eridanian Nationalists or even Loosely Affiliated Minarchists. Maybe they are united under one front, but they'd all have different goals (Eradication of the UNSC vs Self-determination for each colony, for example) and different tactics they're willing to try.

Both the Innies and the Covenant (Pre- and Post-Schism) can be so much more than cannon fodder.