We - the player - are the Master Chief. We didn't watch, or read, or hear about the exploits of some distant hero. Rather we lived it - we ARE the hero. We leaped the maw over and over and came out alive time and again. We saved the world again and again.

So when they throw a word like 'Traitor' around it feels like they're pointing the finger at us. This journalist isn't talking about someone else: they're talking about us, what WE did.

The journalist was there (supposedly) for one moment, but we were there for the rest. We held the weapon, loaded it, aimed it, pulled the trigger and we made those events happen. We don't need corroboration or confirmation: we remember it ourselves! We did the best we could in the circumstances and we came out on top. Excuse me if I feel like I don't need someone to tell me how to interpret what happened in my life.

Where is this going? My mind leaps to possibilities like trying to paint the previous 4 games as UNSC propaganda simulations, or as misremembered dreams, or delusions of a psychopathic Master Chief, or painting the Chief as a unknowing puppet of some other agent like ONI or the Didact or some Forerunner or precursor or something.

Which would just seem like a cheap trick. Trying to re-write history. Completely incongruent with the central gameplay themes of power-fantasy, wish-fulfillment and badassery.

Or is it something the MC allegedly did after the events of Halo 4? "YOU - dear player - are going to be a traitor!" Well sorry, we don't remember that bit because it hasn't happened yet! I'm sure I will have very good reasons, too! Feels a little... Minority Report.

Where would such a situation even get us? Kill another alien to prove our innocence? The thing we've been doing this whole time anyway. It's not as if we're going to bust into ONI, hose the place down with bullets, hack into their computer systems and expose the mis-information to clear ourselves, are we?

Humans are allies in Halo! Well... except for that one time in Combat Evolved, and that one time in ODST... and all the time we spend shooting each other in multiplayer... hmm.

Well if they can make the combat against humans interesting (something Halo never tried to develop AI for previously), it could present a worthwhile thematic payoff. Something that comments about how allies aren't always the ones that look like you, and enemies aren't necessarily ones that look different- ya know, racial harmony and all that. Especially if the Arbiter comes back into the game to provide an ally among the aliens again. Although as I understand it, we will be playing as a black man as well - Agent Locke?

Think we'll get to fight against Spartan IVs in campaign and show them what a real Spartan can do!? :D

Wow - totally argued myself into a 180 on this. Could honestly be interesting. I think maybe it is just a timing of the accusation of traitor, and the previously unknown source of it?

But I wonder how that Forerunnery birdy thing in the teaser trailer ties in. Maybe just an angsty side-path to provide extra things to shoot at. Something to prove that Master Chief is far too valuable to try and mark as 'traitor' and cast out?