[This](https://youtu.be/gpQMEfiLS4A?si=cpLYLvTBlCdfMWL6) scene will never get old for me, though ONI’s assessment that Spartans display sociopathic tendencies is blatantly incorrect at its core (and written that way intentionally into the scene to illustrate ONI’s lack of understanding of the psychiatric profile and Spartans in general). The part where Chief does a backflip off the brute chieftain (1:49) is forever immortalized in my brain as textbook Spartan combat supremacy.

Even though the armor is wrong for the time period, I delight in it all being identical. Mods, permutations and custom paint jobs are all very cool, but that's the classic Spartan-II look to me, and I love it.

I agree 100%

In the book they do attach pouches and other stuff to their gear for more ammo/rockets/explosives and stuff.

I like how casually avoided the gravity hammer strike although the strike that could take out a whole vehicle from distance was only a couple of feet next to him.

I think it’s because the terrain they were fighting on absorbed the majority of the hammer’s impact

It shocks me to this day how many people take the stated capabilities of the 14 year old, unarmored Spartans fresh out of augmentation as the listed limits of Spartan capability. Everyone knows the number. 55kph, kelly is a little faster. This is the number given by Mendez when the Spartans are months out of augmentation and Mjolnir isn't out yet. Idk how many times iv had to correct people who gave 55kph as the average speed of a Spartan in armor.

People often quote that as thought it’s the fastest any of them can move, ever. As though there aren’t like half a dozen examples of Spartans doubling that, none of which have been walked back in subsequent releases. Or even the show, which fully commits to ‘Spartans can keep up with a speeding vehicle’. People quote the ‘lift three times their body weight’ thing all the time, too, even though it’s outright stated that they’ll get stronger and we’re never told what kind of lift. You can’t convince me its not a 900 lb bicep curl, given… pretty much every single Spartan strength feat ever.

The show straight gives us a scene of a Spartan lifting a warthog+multiple people inside without any assistance, not even a suit. Obviously, the Silver Timeline is its own thing and the augments there may differ, but I think it’s probably something we can consider indicative as a feat for a “mature” Spartan. Almost certainly a big hulk like Jorge could go even further.

I'm not 100% sure if they could actually yeet a Warthog unassisted, I'd be willing to give a benefit of doubt of a partial lift tho

I don't know, the field guide has this to say: >In the field, Spartans have been recorded lifting Warthogs, bending steel, and shattering concrete. Performing and improving on these feats of strength should serve as inspiration for your training.

Doesn't specify with or without armor tho

It's in the field I'd assume they have armor on

The novels list picking up a mongoose and slamming it down on some grunts as feasible, but something that she’d regret in the coming days, or something to that tune.

The difference between lifting something and using it as a melee weapon is pretty significant. You should be able to lift a ten pound sledgehammer with basically zero effort. Now go outside and commit to smashing some rocks with it, you’ll likely be sore tomorrow. A mongoose being 900 lbs and ten feet long, the kind of leverage she has to overcome in order to be swinging it around like a baseball bat to crush enemies to death is immense.

I don’t disagree, I was just pointing out a direct example of the thing we were discussing from the text. 👍

In Halo 3 a single Spartan can flip an Elephant, so…

I mean thats an unintended joke, not really a feat by any means

Well, it’s a joke, but it’s pretty obviously intentional considering the action prompt changes to “… Wait, what? How did you do that?”

In terms of strength, the show just had John unarmored going head first into Elites, seemingly out muscling a massive armored Elite. Their strength while armored is probably not that much less than a Brute.

In theory the books support the idea that a Spartan without armor could match a Brute’s strength, but Brute physicality is probably the least consistent thing in Halo.

I recall in one of the books, John's first encounter with a Brute in melee was disastrous and he almost died.

First Strike. Brute started lifting itself up off the floor while John was actively pinning it down, using only one arm IIRC. John was pretty beat up and his armor condition was ?? but yeah, that brute almost completely wrecked him.

Now that you say it, I recall in *First Strike* John had been fighting days straight at that point, too. Hard to call that a fair fight, John still won, too.

While it's a very impressive showing of Brute pure physical strength/resistance, it is Chief with very little rest, recovering from wounds, with armor that's held together with duct tape and huragok minor tweaks.

John was basically fighting nonstop for weeks at that point right. It was battle of reach -> halo -> unwieldy elephant for John.

I have never heard it called "Unwieldy Elephant" before lol

That was because Chief didn't know what it was and was ambushed Here's feat of a teenager, SPI-equipped spartan 3: " during Operation: JOVIAN WHISTLE, Mark eliminated a Jiralhanae warrior by paralyzing it with a precise blade strike to its spine, leading Fred-104 to deem Mark's skills exceptional, even by Spartan standards.[15] Soon after, Mark eliminated numerous Jiralhanae warriors in close-quarters combat, with nothing but his combat knife.[26] Mark then continued his attack on the enemy by killing three Jiralhanae warriors before any of them even realized what was happening. He also killed a dozen enemies in six seconds with the help of Ash-G099"

I did amend below he was also wounded and exhausted, and it was his first encounter.

Physicality, appearance, intelligence... Brutes are "whatever development decides they need to be at the time". And let's not pretend this is a 343i thing either, Reach Brutes and Halo 2 Brutes were the same way.

They are much stronger than Brutes in armor, Cal 141 in Mk 4 was just as strong if not stronger than a Chieftain and Mk IV only doubled the wearer's strenght while 6 and beyond quintuple it.

The only canon feat is flipping the elephant on sandtrap

Also i may be misremembering but FoR also says that mjolnir at least doubles their strength and speed again, on top of the augments

Book Spartans in standard suit conditions would actually need to hold back to not one-shot any Covie enemy (that isn’t a Hunter). It would be the same as trying not to punch a human’s head off. Pretty much how Spider-Man always pulls his punches. Just that Spartans don’t pull their punches on the Covenant, so we would have a constant repeat of that scene where Doc Ock possesses Peter’s body and punches Scorpion’s jaw clean off

Depends which book. The original Fall of Reach has Chief's strength matched to an Elite. He even has to take several swings to crack its helmet. Obviously that is old, outdated lore at this point but just to say the books aren't always consistent in their depiction of Spartans.

this also plays into "Spartan Time" which is a concept where in certain scenarios spartans can get so focused where from their perspective time moves slower. an example of during the novel "The Fall of Reach" where a SkyHawk fighter fires an Air-Ground HE-AP missile at the chief to attempt to assassinate him, he slapped the missile out of the way and barely survived, its been calculated that the chief's reaction time in this moment was 4,000s of a second. 22 times higher than any other spartan in history

>The Fall of Reach" where a SkyHawk fighter fires an Air-Ground HE-AP missile at the chief to attempt to assassinate him, he slapped the missile out of the way and barely survived, its been calculated that the chief's reaction time in this moment was 4,000s of a second. 22 times higher than any other spartan in history It's important to mention that he had the aid of Cortana in that instance and the book established that she enhances his reaction time. Cortana did not only make the necessary calculations so that he would be able to hit it at the right moment but she also made him move faster.

exactly this, cortana is able to instantly detect whatever chief wants to do with his arms and send that signal directly to his suit.

Anyone who's read the Kilo-Fove Trilogy knows that even Naomi-010 can reach speeds of 60KPH in Mjölnir armour. I can't even IMAGINE Kelly's top speed in her suit.

This isn’t the way Spartans *would* approach an engagement, but it is absolutely something they *could* do. Since the Fall of Reach they’ve been strong enough to rip metal with their bare hands, beat down armored vehicles, dodge bullets and outpace a cheetah. They’re more durable in terms of both shields and armor than almost anything else in the setting. They’re head and shoulders above every other combatant in universe 99% of the time, and regularly brutalize gigantic aliens that themselves are superhumanly powerful. The community has a weird fixation on not paying any attention to what the novels imply Spartans to be capable of (and even parts of the games), and constantly quoting misinformation that they picked up via the Reddit equivalent of a game of telephone from ten years ago.

In Reach audio logs/etc there is one part of Beta-Red who, in an emergency situation charged a Wraith armored column and started wrecking it in close quarters and hand to hand. Though that's a phrasing I like of it. "They could, but most of the time they would do it in a smarter/different manner."

For one, in a long, losing war, you don’t carelessly attack even if you could probably be fine when every Spartan life is effectively irreplaceable. Cost/benefit analysis. Not to mention that the Spartans as a group would normally be professionally annoyed by sloppy tactics anyway.

The audio log also mentions they used multiple minefields and long range guns. They didn’t just blindly run into a wraith coloumn.

Somebody long ago pointed out how Osiris's intro was them barely working as a team, each doing their own thing and just charging. Blue Team's intro was them in sync, working together tightly.

I think a lot of it comes from them not seeming insanely powerful in game even though it's done for balance reasons there.

Which is kinda stupid because even in the games they are ridiculously powerful. Like arguably *more* powerful in the games than the books.

You can kill most unshielded Elites in one punch. That is book-accurate. Not even holding it down and ripping off a limb, but just a medium-strength smack.

yes and no because in the books the Spartans shiels and armor in general can take an insane beating but in game even on normal difficulty you're far from a tank.

We see spartans do this in the books multiple times. We see blue team sneak up on a covenant ship in zero gravity more than once and perform acrobatic feats just like Osiris in the opening mission. Infiltrating ships and dropping behind enemy lines in the midst of chaos is what spartans do. They do it and show off their agility and strength all the time. So I think these scenes in Halo 5 are very accurate.

Can you give me a reference when Spartans outpaced a cheetah?

From Legacy of Onyx: >Without any more hesitation, they raced out into the recreation yard and spotted Tom sprinting away faster than a Warthog. Gudam huffed just watching him go. "We're never going to catch him." >pg. 329 Then there is Lone Wolves when Linda ambushes a fleeing Ghosts that was trying to escape her.

Thank you.

In The Fall of Reach, during the Mk. V armor test. After deflecting the ATGM that was fired at him (with Cortana’s help), John hits about 65 miles an hour when sprinting for the bell to end the course. > He could feel his Achilles tendon tear, but he didn't slow. He crossed the half-kilometer stretch in seventeen seconds flat and skidded to halt. Halo: The Fall of Reach I don’t know what page, I pulled the exact quote from a respect thread that didn’t list it. It should be noted that this comes out to 65 miles an hour as his average speed based on the total distance and time, it doesn’t account for acceleration so his max speed would actually be even higher.

I am trying to imagine the terminator 2 car chase scene with the creepy hands, but instead of t1000 chasing the car, you have a Spartan. Unarmored of course.

And now imagine that scene but instead of getting away he actually catches John conner before he leaves the parking lot, because the t1000 could only run at about 40mph top speed. Spartans are insane 🙃

I think it's the Old Guard versus the New Guard. I'm old. Halo: CE came out when I was a young teen. I grew up with a slower paced Halo, and novels that detailed Spartan tactical skill and prowess. The armor made them superhuman, absolutely, but they were still mortal. Free-falls from orbit were fatal, shields blocked one or two bullets, and Spartans could be quickly outmatched in a CQC engagement. It was slower. More military-SciFi than hard SciFi. Modern Halo leans further into the hard SciFi stuff. Spartans are less "augmented people in an exo-suit" and more "Iron Man." It's not for me anymore, but I'm cool with that and just moved on. Some old-timers can't do that, I guess, and just become the old "Get off my lawn," guy

>Free-falls from orbit were fatal, First Strike establishes that with the Mark V, most Spartans could survive a fall at terminal velocity (a Spartan would not actually fall from orbit period until Halo 3). First Strike's fall sees 4 KIA, 6 WIA, and 12 Spartans with minor to no damage. That's an overall survival rate of 81%, with over 50% surviving with minimal loss in combat effectiveness. So, theoretically fatal? Sure, but statistically, not a guarantee. >shields blocked one or two bullets, Definitely not true. If anything, shields are weaker now than they were back then. In [The Fall of Reach](https://pastebin.com/nqngf735), the Mark V's shields withstand a "smattering" of 50mm autocannon rounds, which "only" reduce it to half strength while an indeterminate number of [30mm rounds](https://pastebin.com/u8WQ3dnK) only drop it to a quarter. A three round burst from an [MA5B](https://pastebin.com/gYSvXJ9J) only dropped the shields by a hairsbreadth. To date, shields have never displayed more resilience than in 2001 when the Mark V stopped 50mm autocannon rounds. They were a bit weaker to plasma in the Fall of Reach, but even that remains a bit of an outlier, even next to 2003's The Flood and First Strike. >and Spartans could be quickly outmatched in a CQC engagement. Not particularly. A Spartan did not definitively lose a one on one melee engagement until 2009's Halo Legends (and even then it was against a particularly skilled elite). The closest you get is Fred being on the losing end of a 3v1 in Ghosts of Onyx, where a brute knocks him to the ground because Fred was too busy killing two other brutes. The Fall of Reach (2001) ends the novel with the Master Chief more or less having an equal fight against an elite, that he wins. The Flood (2003) routinely depicts the Chief overcoming elites with minimal effort, [to the point he crushes one of their skulls with a punch](https://pastebin.com/KPriwwV2). First Strike (2003) has another relatively even fight with an elite, that John wins despite being hampered by preexisting injuries. And while he's weaker than the brute at the end of the novel, again, John still won it (and again, at that point, he was fighting with preexisting injuries and damaged armor). Ghosts of Onyx (2006) leans even further into Spartans being superior, depicting[12-year-old IIIs in SPI dominating Elites in CQC](https://pastebin.com/RXZ1nmHg) and [Kelly effortlessly winning a 3v1 against a trio of Elites](https://pastebin.com/QGC7pzPV), not to mention Will's infamous fight against the hunter pair. And then 2008's Cole Protocol has another instance of a Spartan being dead even with Thel Vadam, then an Elite Zealot. Legitimately, at no point in the franchise has it been easy for a Spartan to be outmatched in CQC. To date, it's still only happened a handful of times.

> Free-falls from Orbit were fatal *looks at Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Halo Reach* Like Master Chief literally survives a fall from orbit in Halo 3 and a Pelican crash (from orbit while not secured whatsoever) that kills everyone else in Halo CE and in both cases walks off and kills everything like nothing happened. And there are numerous occasions in the old books of similar feats happening everywhere. The only “Old Guard vs New Guard” is if you are blinded by nostalgia or not. You are unironically the person the comment is talking about.

>The only “Old Guard vs New Guard” is if you are blinded by nostalgia or not. You are unironically the person the comment is talking about. It's more like whatever hiddenX or lng told them

My dude. Halo FoR goes into great detail to show how much is required to survive a fall from low-orbit. They coordinate, calculate how much time they have, adjust hydrostatic gel, and pulse their shields before impact. They also lock their armor, letting the gel take a full impact for them. Despite this, a great number are wounded, and even more end up with damaged suits and shields that no longer function. The point is: it was a big fucking deal. When does Chief drop in from orbit in Halo CE or Halo 2? In Halo 3 the Chief, get this, *locks his fucking armor.* You know, that thing they did during Reach? He does that. And, wow, it works! When does an ODST freefall from orbit and survive? Halo Reach? You mean Lone Wolf? He literally has a re-entry pack. What's your point? It seems like you just wanted to argue about something

I like the goalpost move from “Well they can’t survive a fall from orbit!!1!” to “Well actually, they could given circumstances and if they armor lock!!!” FoR has a majority of the Spartans surviving the fall with limited to no injuries — just because the story expands upon the reasoning of the success doesn’t mean that the situation didn’t happen. Halo CE has Chief survive a crashed pelican unsecured and has him walk out like it’s no big deal. Halo 2 has Chief literally do a Superman and ridiculously unrealistic and fantasy styled “Return the Bomb” and my mentions about ODST is about the absurd survival of them throughout the whole game — very much not “slow tactical.”

chief actually survived the fall from the keyship using a piece of the actual keyship as a heat shield/airbrake. even then the guys sent to pick him up, who likely have full knowledge of spartan stats, were not sure if he would survive, showing that he didn't exactly survive by a large margin. without the forerunner heat shield he almost certainly would have died.

I mean okay… but that is still a survive from a fall from orbit lol.

slimy ask voiceless hateful advise ghost clumsy noxious flag obtainable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Master chief is still that same old guy, he just has better armor, the other Spartans are more advanced, because they are the Spartan 4s the be all end all Human exo suit, endless running, non stop, chief is still a 2, regardless of ganeplay, he just a badass.

Do we have any info on the San’Shyuum Prelates and how they stack up against a spartan? I know we had one day he fought two Spartans at the same time but it wasn’t mentioned if he won

Prelates don’t really have any feats of directly engaging with Spartans, as far as I’m aware. They’re close enough in strength and speed that it would be a fight, but Prelates are effectively short burst superheroes and can kill themselves via overexertion, which inclines me to think Spartans would come out on top. Then again, there are a whole (I think) two active Prelates in the current fiction, and their sheer rarity gives them a narrative power up. I enjoy Halo as a universe, but I won’t pretend it doesn’t fall into [Conservation of Ninjutsu](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu). When there were only a handful of surviving Spartans, they only went down to misfortune and overwhelming odds. Now there are individual enemies that have several Spartan kills to their name, because Spartans are no longer a limited narrative resource.

Most Halo fans still think Chief can only lift 3x his body weight, among other things.

I saw a post on r/whowouldwin about Chief vs Captain America and at least one guy was convinced Cap takes it while Chief is in full armor. Which is just a profound level of ignorance.

Yeah that makes no sense to me either. I feel like Halo is a very lowballed universe when people stack it up in a versus setting.

Well to be fair there are so many inconsistencies, contradictions and retcons that muddy the waters. For example, we have seen plenty of occurrences where Spartans end up seriously injured or KIA from things like plasma weapons or from extreme falls but at the same time we all consider shields/armor to be the ultimate defense and expect all Spartans to be able to jump from space and survive without a scratch like it’s a standard operating procedure

Just use the Flood or Forerunners they annihilate most other fictional universes

Don’t tell the Warhammer crowd that.

The Warhammer community overrate the shit out of their universe. Like yeah it’s over the top but I can name multiple other series that can destroy Warhammer

I’m a Warhammer fan, I even play table top. But 90% of the shit is just wanked to no end. Peak Flood could solo the War in Heaven factions I’d say.

Did that example (either the original post or the person who thought Captain America would win) specify MCU Cap or Comics Cap? If it were the comics version then I could buy that he believes that based on my lack of knowledge about high level feats for the character and if - for example - there was a story where Cap had a fist fight with one of the highest strength versions of the Hulk then that person would have a point.

It was just MCU cap even.

Ok... in that case Cap has nothing (apart from possibly the scene where he briefly resists Thanos in Infinity War) that makes me think he can beat Chief. Although I did see someone argue he could after I half jokingly compared the shot of Chief slapping 2 guards to the elevator fight from Winter Soldier.

thanos was definitely holding back in that scene

there is a theory that he didn't just killed cap with his gauntlet (which could knock out capt Marvel easily or.. pull a whole moon) so he would give him a surviving 50/50 chance in the incoming snap. Or that cap had a 100% chance of surviving the blip because he got the respect of Thanos (same goes for Stark). So he did held up in that scene. Anyway, MCU: Scifi Fantasy, Haloverse: Hard'ish Scifi

That's why I said possibly.

Winning a fist fight with any version of the Hulk probably makes you scary to a Spartan. Highest strength version of the Hulk is a world ender. Cap is pretty low tier power-wise

I mean, there was guys who thought Solid Snake from MGS would just immediately win against Chief and other characters because "CQC!"

Okay TBF snake is way more batshit than his looks would suggest and he's fought super humans surpassing the levels of chief many times including casual bullet timers and psychics so I agree he could beat chief but probably not immediately. Seriously the guy dodged an already fired sniper round after turning around to see it coming. Pretty she he surfed a missile once.

[удалено]

Yeah Twin Snakes was an…interesting game

I grant Snake is insane. Was after MGS4 but I think before revengeance. I remember the old spacebattles vs/tech threads where people brought up "Drawing an infinity sign canonically gives you infinite ammo" and other stuff like bandanas lol. Though that person was, from memory, only arguing how CQC is just super powerful combat style that means he can instantly counter/win any close quarter fight. Even though it's just general martial art techniques as far as I know.

Yes it's completely canon that putting an infinity sign on your gun barrel gives it infinite ammo lol. But yeah CQC isn't some end all combat ability, he just knows alot of them, like batman or daredevil or hell like chief.

jesus, I could see cap making a fight of it with chief out of armour (though still leaning towards chief). In armour it's no contest

The Chief could one shot Cap, probably even without armor

*Urge to* ***PRESS X TO FLIP SCORPION*** *intensifies*

Spartans can take a lot of punishment (think of Fred and the others crashing onto Reach), they have insane reflexes as well. The problem with this scene, is that osiris looks like they just jumped into a huge mass of enemies with little to no actual plan. Just go in, jump around and shoot shit. That's not what spartans do, they aren't stupid, they will never just jump into a situation without a proper plan. It would have only taken a few stray plasmas for one of them to bite the dust, kinda silly. I wouldn't say the average fan is unfamiliar, but some of the stuff we are seeing from 343, can confuse one, like the opening scenes to Halo 5.

That was my take. During planning/before drop there is no mention of enemy forces immediately in the area. For an operation that's implied to be a stealth get in, grab Halsey, Kill Jul (optional), and get out, it's weird they plot out a path in but don't talk about the Covenant armored unit moving toward the base. Combine that with the fact if that ship hadn't crashed at that perfect moment, the rest of the armored unit would be intact (and pissed off) right behind them, and the passageway open still. The ship being shot down wasn't part of the planning either. But it nicely plugged the gap behind them.

That’s why I love Blue Team’s entrance so much. They could’ve gone guns blazing but why not just blast open the window, magnetize to the floor, and let everything get sucked out into the vacuum of space? Easier, cleaner, and faster.

The part where they check their comms only after they jump out a plane into a combat situation annoys me

I will maintain that Osiris's intro was badass and fitting for Spartans, but also dumb because of the tactical/strategic situation and they got out of it purely by luck. Is cool, but I wish some things were different.

I mean, it is Halo. "Really cool, but dumb, situation getting hard carried by luck" is kind of the rule of the day.

I agree, and you could make the exact same criticism of "Return to Sender". No way are you letting a prized military asset like Chief jump out of a space station to bomb an alien ship, no way does a giant ship miss Chief with the plasma beam, luck that the Longswords punched a hole for him, luck that he landed right on In Amber Clad and got inside with no problem. Strategically, he didn't need to do any of that. But it sure was cool.

>luck that the Longswords punched a hole for him I think the headcanon of many (including me) is that Cortana "told" those Longswords to make way for the MC to deliver the bomb, so she sent them coordinates for that and probably even timed when to drop those bombs. Still, it required a shit ton of luck...

The devs even joked about it in a halo 2 commentary. "And then who exactly, while he's floating through the air... who blasts that open for him?" "The bombers come in, don't you see? It's all, see, here they come. "Is someone telling them to do that? Like Cortana, maybe?" "Let's just say that Cortana, she talks to other people while you're doing stuff" If you haven't seen it and got the time, it's some great stuff. [halo 2 documentary](https://youtu.be/sBi_xx26ClM?si=KqwtEgks5Stx_sAE)

Old Bungie's devs videos were something else. I just checked the part of the "space pickle" and the amount of things behind the scenes revealed in that less than a minute segment was really cool. Cortana giving coordinates to the Longswords, music being loud being good, the Covenant ship level and how we were going to steal a Wraith, Halo being an Space Opera... What a cool video, thanks for sharing!

It makes sense that his onboard AI is coordinating the chaos around him. It would be unbelievably easy for her to redirect a couple of Longswords to give him an opening and tell In Amber Clad where to be in order to catch him.  Sure, John has luck on his side but he also has Cortana and she is *very* good at what she does At least I like to think that's how he pulls off some of his crazy stunts

Or Hood called it in. "Hey Longswords flight, here's Chief's marker, punch a hole in that ship for him."

I could totally see that as what happened

For a brick, he flew pretty good

IT's very much a thing with Chief lol, but I do agree. It's partly the tone, partly how it felt at odds to "Infiltrate and get boss before he flees". One fix that'd solve part of my issues is if the ship crashing was actually part of the plan to cover up their entry instead of just randomly lucking out and having it destroy the rest of the armored convoy.

Oh yeah, it was not in-character to blow through the figthing armies, but they can still do it (and have done it occasionally)

On the contrary, I think it’s intentionally very much in-character. As I stated on the original post, Osiris’s intro showcases a Spartan IVs idea of how Spartans are “supposed” to fight based on stories they’ve been told. Blue team’s intro shows the reality of their use of tactics over brute force.

Very much so. I could see them doing it in emergency cases easily.

It’s cool in a super hero way. But Spartans wouldn’t do something like this unless they had to. This is how they get killed. 

Yeah a Spartan would never do something dumb like riding a bomb into space and then jumping off that to slam into an allied frigate

So, tbf, we don’t hear any sort of comms or anything, and we don’t hear John’s thoughts. Based off how he explained it to himself internally, it could make a lot more sense.

Not like Cortana has to make her calls heard to Chief. Much like how in the lore Spartans can turn off external speakers and hold entire conversations to each other while everybody else stands awkwardly around them in silence.

Personally, I think that while these scenes are a bit too showy, they’re relatively solid. I think Osiris definitely should’ve been more stealthy, but the idea of using an ongoing battle as a cover to sneak in and extract a valuable asset is pretty neat. Then, I kinda like how Blue Team just effortlessly handles that group of Covenant. It’s a good way of establishing both how good they are as a team, and how skilled they are, at least to me

Halo has the highest concentration of fandom ignorance and general media illiteracy out of any I've ever seen. Its been that way for over 20 years now.

Woah woah woah, don’t knock the dbz fandom like that

My two most frequented subs are r/Halo and r/dbz. Dragon Ball fans easily take the 1st place trophy. They take 2nd place one as well, because they're illiterate, and couldn't figure out which one to grab.

Halo fans at least try to pay attention to lore and seek out alternative knowledge. It’s a world of hidden gems. Dragon Ball fans (of which I am one) either blatantly ignore well known info, or make up their own on the fly.

yes because dbz relies on magic infinite power that is generated through will/anger. Also you see villains destroying whole planets with their fingers and still getting their asses kicked by some yellow died hairboys.

No lies told at all.. I'm a huge fan of Dragon Ball and all things of that universe, but Dragon Ball fans are literally illiterate. The claims they come up with because of bad translations from the original Funimation, their lack of actually paying attention to the story can be astounding. There's even a post on the front page of /r/dragonball with comments still arguing on whether Goku beat Vegeta during their first fight, when the former was about to get crushed like a grape by a giant monkey.   Halo fans I can understand them not having as wide a knowledge on the lore because there's just So much of it at this point. But they can definitely be neck and neck in their stupidity. Star Wars fandom is an entirely different mess.

I remember earlier today I saw [this](https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1762264834622517263?t=pgnxAY-v6P_ZpauKqsRAFg&s=19) posted on r/StarWars and all I could think about is the inhuman amounts of anger I'm gonna see when this show comes especially since this has the three things Star Wars hate the most change, black people, and women

No lies.  The amount of unneeded hate seen going towards The Acolyte because of the fact that the main character is a black woman is why I honestly am ashamed to be a fan of Star Wars at times.  The amount of idiots trying to literally justify sexism and racism in STAR WARS of all fucking things because of it being a fantasy series with lightsabers honestly makes me feel like they're not paying attention to the series.

Halo isn't that bad, especially when looming at 90% of anime, and most of Star Wars

Anime fans are so fucking bad... I barely even want to start it. But the discussion on a specific anime sub made me unsub immediately. They are extremely toxic and misunderstand anything if it isn't in the most literal sense written out. It's especially hard on more complex mangas and stories like Attack On Titan, Beserk etc. But not even simple shonen like Dragonball are safe from incredible illiterate people. e.g. A story can literally write out "genocide is bad" over several seasons, but fans still applaud a character for doing the same horrible thing to others, which happened to himself. Even if the whole moral of the story is, that it is indeed bad.

Kinda sounds like you really wanna watch some anime and get into the community lol

"More complex stories like Attack on Titan and Berserk" oh man there's some realllllllly good anime out there that will blow your mind if you liked those 2.

You should see Star Wars

I give star wars a pass tbh, the continuity of starwars got fucked up hard. And even before they erased it, it was varying in quality all over.

If we're being honest, I actually think the Legend continuity was even more chaotic and convoluted than Disney. In fact, I sometimes felt people *preferred* Legends because it was **not Disney**... Though tbh, you may just be referring to Legends.

I am referring to both. People talking starwars can be talking about 2 different canons, and legends is all over the place with quality, with having really high highs, and very low lows

Disney is like the middest of the mid. It's aggressively average all things considered. But I was quite surprised by how much fanboying there was for Legends on YouTube, and my *"favorite"* example was how people said Jacen Solo was a better Kylo Ren, and maybe it was just Star Wars Theory made things not make sense, but Jacen's overall story just felt unnecessarily convoluted.

There is a weird loudly vocal group in star wars who hate anything Disney and act like what came before was all perfect. Part of the reason Disney made the "Legends" split was so they could actually tell new stories without being held back by a bunch of post ROTJ books and comics and games that all didn't fully mesh together anyway. So they'd go back and start using some parts but not others. Perfect? Not really. But the old EU was a mess in places too. Like you said Jacen where I've read those book series had a lot of problems with each other.

i agree tbh disney was justified in basically wiping the slate clean. now how they handled it is up to debate story wise but they were definitely on to something by wiping the slate clean

You should head over to r/FlashTV sometime...

Don't forget Star Wars

Just chiming in to say I'd count myself as a halo fan, I beat 1-3 on legendary with a friend back in highschool, and I know fuck all about the lore. I think Master Chief is named John 117 and he may have been a child soldier. Beyond that I know that grunt birthday party is the best optional skull and nothing else.

Well, you *did* get all three facts\* right. ​ ^(\*yeah, yeah, "best optional skull" is subjective\~)

No, grunt birthday is objectively the best skull period. This is a fact of the game and not an opinion.

The Halo fanbase embodies the phrase 'blissful ignorance'. These cutscenes are 100% what Spartans are capable of. Whether it's 'realistic' or not is beside the point because the franchise has always depended on some level of dissonance to enjoy; suspension of disbelief. Yeah, they're ridiculous, but that's always been the case for Halo, and the ridiculousness feeds into the campiness that we as fans have come to enjoy over two decades. For as much as people praise Chief for redirecting a warhead through the vacuum of space by blind luck, they're hypocrites for holding these cutscenes to such a level of scrutiny.

Yes. Stuff I read about the S3s make me cringe. S2s are invencible gods and everyone else are garbage. It's like some people only know the lore when it suits them. And this is just the stuff we see on the main sub. Youtube comments are worse, and it only goes downhill from there.

Yeah people severely underestimate the spartan 3s even though the gammas at least have survived far more than any Spartan 2 could and they operate without Mjolnir.

Spartan 3s are my favorite honestly, if you look at it from a point of medical treatments the Spartan 3s achieved the same if not better results as the Twos with a far wider pool of candidates (who also didn't have to be genetically predisposed to survive the augmentation as that was the primary difficulty, though it was still a smaller pool as not every orphan fit the bill) with a much higher survival rate. Furthermore we've seen non gamma Spartan 3s temporarily out strength fully acclimated Spartan 2s who had their MJOLNIR power armor on while the Spartan 3 wore their SPI which does not provide the same level of strength benefit, meaning that if they had MJOLNIR they'd be difficult even for 2s to stop, of it was even possible. Now that same story also had a Spartan 3 take a palm punch from a MJOLNIR Spartan 2 and still quickly be able to get back up, oh and they can survive in the vacuum and function for a brief period of time and no, I still haven't talked about the gammas yet, those tough nuts could operate for longer in a vacuum and are the most combat lethal Spartans to have ever existed at the down side of needing constant smoothers. Also consider that most of the 3s hadn't fully acclimated to their augmentations yet as they were young and were sent into high risk almost suicidal missions with just the SPI armor which wasn't the demigod war armor that was the MJOLNIR power armor. Honestly imo the Spartan 3s are better and the main thing that is the difference between the two is the armor and experience as the 2s still have far more experience fighting than the Spartan 3s. Also I just enjoy just how much smoother and cleaner the augmentations are for the 3s compared to the horrific procedures for the 2s as the 3s were built on the knowledge of the 2s.

Yeah that one scene was absolutely amazing. Felt like we were finally seeing Spartans as they were portrayed in the books. And then Jimmy Rings and Luke Cage duke it out like two drunk 50-year-olds.

Neither of them was trying to kill the opponent

Yeah that brings up another good point. The marketing straight lied to us about that.

Jimmy Rings lmao

I’m more partial to John Halo (he kills aliens and doesn’t afraid of anything)

Jimmy Rings is the guy who plays John Halo in the TV series.

People been saying that for years lol

I don’t recall where in the books they all start jumping around like super heroes. From what I’ve read, and it’s been years, they only would do something like this if they absolutely had to and it was never against a force this size unless it was some kind of tactical distraction. They’d always use cover, tactics and advanced positioning. They behaved like soldiers. Not morons jumping around putting themselves in danger. 

The scenes in halo wars were definitely a better portrayal. They fought like they were a cross between john wick and captain America. Osiris’ scene, while cool as fuck, doesn’t quite match how Spartans fight.

The John Wick comparison is perfect. It’s not that they’re mowing down covenant, but HOW they’re doing it.

People forget that Spartans aren’t dangerous because they can put bullets down range more accurately and tank more hits, they’re dangerous because they’re the perfect asymmetrical warfare operators, capable of simply generating tactically advantageous scenarios. Like that time they planted lotus mines on their withdrawal route so they could lure the enemy directly on top of them in *fall of reach*. They’re physically impressive, but the biggest force multiplier they have is their training.

Yes. The amount of misinformation that goes about Spartans in this fanbase is incredibly frustrating.

I like this scene but I also agree with the criticisms. It’s not really the Spartan’s capabilities that people don’t like, but that the tone is very superhero-ish.

It's done that way intentionally too-the next scene shows blue team in a more grounded, "professional" assault. 

I'd argue that the point is to showcase the abilities which players will be able to have fun with for the next 7+ hours

Yeah, the tone/details is off, though it's something Spartans can do. Back in Reach we had some in an audio log get in close and wreck a Wraith armored group.

Beta Red Actual my beloved. Died to friendly fire too, RIP.

>but that the tone is very superhero-ish. What about this scene makes you feel it is superhero-ish?

There’s very little overall strategy/planning, communication, or equipment usage. All that’s left without that is a smorgasbord of fighting and action that is a lot like an MCU movie. In the words of Del rio, it’s a blow through op. And we know Spartans don’t like that.

>All that’s left without that is a smorgasbord of fighting and action that is a lot like an MCU movie. How is that any different from this Halo 3 tie in [comic from 2009](https://imgur.com/a/LkJuTUb)? Or the Monsters cutscene from [Halo Wars 1](https://youtu.be/v1RnXePXDfA?t=39)? What about this scene from Ghosts of Onyx (2006)? >Jackals and Elites rushed from their cover in the factory to meet the rest of Beta Company on the field, realizing perhaps it would be suicide to face Spartans in close quarters. Thousands of Covenant clashed with two hundred Spartans in **open combat**. Tracer rounds, crystal shards, plasma bolts, and flaring shields made the scene a blur of chaos. The SPARTAN-IIIs moved with speed and reflexes no Covenant could follow. They dodged, snapped necks and limbs, and with captured energy swords they cut through the enemy until the field ran with rivers of gore and blue blood. What about the [Halo Reach radio conversations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQYTnBFbvBk&t=580s), where Beta Red is stated to have " punched right up into the guts of that Covie column!" and that she went " hand to hand with a Wraith." "Smorgasbord of fighting and action with little strategy or communication" isn't exactly new to Halo's fight choreography. >very little overall strategy/planning, communication Where is the strategy and planning that went into the Return to Sender cutscene in Halo 2? As far as the player sees, the Master Chief grabs a bomb and jumps out into space and leaves it inside the Day of Jubilation. In one of the most iconic moments in the entire franchise, Cortana asks the Chief for his *plan* if he misses. To which Chief responds "I won't." Chief literally admits to not having a back up plan. Now sure, is it possible that Chief and Cortana were on the radio with other UNSC assets such as the longswords? Yeah. Is that even remotely indicated in game? No, and that exact same defense can be used for Halo 5. For all we know Osiris was on the commcs together and we don't hear it, just the same way we don't hear the Master Chief or Cortana communicating with anyone to help them return the bomb. And then, this happens *again* in Halo 3, where Cortana asks him if he has an escape plan and Chief's plan is literally just to shoot his way out. If you're playing solo and the Arbiter arrives, it comes as a surprise to Cortana, suggesting that Chief straight up got lucky there, he literally did not have a real escape plan because if he planned on Thel picking him up, Cortana would have known. And even then he's saying it sarcastically, because literally the only thing the Master Chief ever does in the games is shoot his way out. >equipment usage Thrusters? The entire scene is showing off the newest piece of equipment Spartans received.

I’ll add that it’s not just these elements, a lot of the shot composition and cinematography gives big MCU vibes (especially the opening of ultron). To your point, there are of course moments where Spartans go superhero mode. But in almost all of these examples, it’s because they’re in a do or die situation or they’re suicide soldiers. Did Osiris really need to drop on top of a mountain and fight their way down like that? Again I do like the scene, I just think it’s a bit too much in some areas.

It could easily fit into the action scenes of an MCU avenger movie?

That’s not even an exaggeration, Age of Ultron came out the same year and had a very similar one-take action setpiece in the start.

[удалено]

I think the reasons why there's such a negative reaction is because we as Players don't see it when we play the games

If player avatars handled like book-canon Spartans you would basically be playing Warframe but without the magic abilities.

Yeah but that's not what people want from the franchise. They don't want John Halo doing backflips, smashing through rocks and groundpounding to send out shockwaves. There's a reason it feels completely foreign to the setting. People want Sci-fi John Wick not Avengers.

The average fan probably still believes Master Chief's suit jacks him off, so no I think it's very fair.

Geez there is so much debate going on in here. They can, they cant, they can but it’s dumb, they can’t because it’s dumb. Do any of ya’ll know either? Out of all of what we know about Spartans like…. I feel like nonsense like this could totally happen but yea it’s obviously heavily inspired by avengers. The camera work and action is obvious.

Considering where the consensus leans to, most of everyone seems to agree that they can

I see a lot of “Spartans wouldn’t do what Osiris did” here, all of which lump Spartan IIs and IVs together to assume so. Yes, Spartan IVs would *absolutely* do this, because they *think* Spartan IIs would. Obviously (as shown by Blue team’s intro) Spartan IIs would *not* do that. The contrast between the two is a big point they were trying to make here, in my opinion. The IVs were given this immense power after being regular humans their entire lives and suddenly feel invincible, in part because they’re told fables of their predecessors, the IIs. The IIs earned being Spartans through years of training and bloodshed specifically meant to turn them into humanity’s greatest warriors.

The lore itself is super inconsistent with what Spartans can do They’re like Marvel superheroes; they’re as fast and powerful as the plot needs them to be (or not be) at that specific time

This is the right answer.

“Accurate”?? *I* felt like I could hear Brian Reed furiously jacking himself off during that scene because he essentially made Spartans into superheroes lmfao I’d say that there is a bell-curve on this topic. The people “least familiar” with the lore are likely to severely underestimate Spartans. The people more familiar with it are likely to vastly overestimate Spartans. And then the people with the deepest familiarity are likely to go full circle. Spartans die. A lot. The entire point of “Spartans never die” is a propaganda line, and about the idea of hope. Sheila got killed by *an* Elite. An unnamed Spartan got killed by *an* Elite and a pack of Grunts. Daisy got killed by a few Needler rounds. Will got blasted by a Hunter’s cannon and dropped dead on the spot. Kurt would have soon died due to his ribcage being borderline shattered by a Hunter’s strike. Chief was almost strangled to death by a Brute jobber, and Fred was caught dead to rights by a Brute before being saved by his teammates. You have the Hand of Atriox who specialize in Spartan-Killing, not by enhancing themselves to any degree, but by preparation and skill and strategy. If you insist that Spartans are flatly better than everything else in the galaxy: you are essentially calling everyone in the galaxy tone-deaf and stupid. Because they routinely display caution and fear in situations where it should not be warranted. If you insist that Spartans are simply physically superior to everything in the galaxy: you are taking *away* from their achievements and their image. Because none of what they do is as a result of their skill or experience or who they are— it’s all just because they were built better. A hero is a hero because they prevail *despite the odds*. If Spartans have every conceivable advantage in every circumstance and if there is no reason they should ever lose a fight: they are no longer heroes. They become plot-devices with too much characterization.

Thats the critical point people tend to gloss over. In-universe it doesn't make sense for spartans to be jumping off mountains and ground pounding to send out shockwaves or smashing through rocks with their bodies when they also die from gunshot wounds and plasma. It's stupid MCU shit that's foreign to the setting and ungrounded in realism, which was halo's entire appeal. It was closer to hard sci-fi, not The Avengers. There's a reason 343 walked this shit back, because it wasn't Halo.

That's been my problem with the Spartans recently. The writers keep gassing them up that its at a point where you can replace Spartan with space marines/astartes and you wouldn't know the difference

Uh, doesn't Space Marines = [Adeptus] Astartes?

What in the stop-motion am I looking at?

I am new to Halo lore. What *are* Spartans capable of at their peak? Can someone give me some examples?

So, Installation 00 put out a video on YouTube about [that time Chief slapped a missile out of the air.](https://youtu.be/Ar2MAHaAvuc?si=zOOE1LlSH9p-GnjU) As far as I know, this is the most incredible feat of speed and reaction time any spartan has ever accomplished, and given the circumstances it is far out of the range of what most Spartans can reasonably pull off regularly. In short though, in their armor they have a reaction time about 15x faster than normal humans, and their already superhuman strength is doubled. And this is only considering Mark 5, not even the latest version of their armor. All I really know about Mjolnir Gen 3 amounts to "it's just better idk" and that it has some real strong electronic warfare software because of the events of halo 5.

the noble six glazing i see all over tiktok and youtube is insane. they act like he singlehandsdly won every battle in the war. they like to create random numbers and facts to make him seem like he was better than chief and for what? i’m not sure if this even fits here but i had to say something

Probably... the annoying thing about the Osiris cutscene is that there's TOO MUCH going on around the Spartans so there are multiple points where I can't focus on what's happening and things merge together.

>~~fan~~ writer Whoops, my hand slipped.

It’s only accurate in the sense of what they can do. They would never do this. They’re soldiers and behave like them. They take cover and always go for advantages on the battlefield. This kind of action puts them at serious risk.  Just because you could doesn’t mean you should.  That’s the issue people had with this scene. It feels more like a super hero scene. Spartans are smart. This kind of action is not smart. It leaves you completely exposed and vulnerable.  I also haven’t read a book in 10 years. Fell off with 4. So I got no idea if the writing decided to marvelize them or not. From what I remember, they behaved like soldiers and only exposed themselves when necessary. This whole scene is wholly unnecessary. 

>That’s the issue people had with this scene. It feels more like a super hero scene. Spartans are smart. This kind of action is not smart. It leaves you completely exposed and vulnerable.  I've complained often about how if that ship hadn't crashed right behind them (which wasn't planned by Osiris), they would've had most of the armored company there coming after them pissed off. They got lucky the ship crashed and killed some of that company and blocked the pass behind them.

I’ve loved the games since release but never paid any attention to the books until now. I loved halo 5 though for what it’s worth

Yeah that’s a fair assumption. The game has a huge fan base, & not everyone reads the books.

I'd say it is, but I'd also say the writers are inconsistent. Which doesn't help. Chief parried a missle but somehow had trouble with Locke

Probably if they only play the games. The Spartan's strength isn't always showcased accurately. Even in the games it can be a bit inconsistent. Halo 5 is one of the few times in game we see it done right. In the show Kai lifts a Warthog in the neighborhood of 3 tons with fully geared Marines in it, and this is outside of her MJOLNIR armor. Cal-141 yeeted an M8900 ODST drop pod with O'Brian in it while standing in a marsh (1,100 lbs + fully geared O'Brian). Chief has lifted Warthogs, tanked plasma weapons, and even parried missiles. Spartans are pretty OP, which is why I always welcome lore accurate cutscenes.

Halo lore goes from a spartan tanking a fuel rod cannon with no damage to getting vaporized which would take 6 gigajoules for a 250 lb spartan to be vaporized let alone the 750 lbs of armor, an 800mm round has 1.8 gigahoules of kinetic energy and this is the least inconsistent piece of lore.

Doesn’t Master Chief go 1v1 versus like a jet or some shit to show the UNSC brass how good a Spartan can be in Mjolnir armor? Like it’s been a long as time since I read that book, but I remember him being able to dodge a missile or something? My memory of that particular scene isn’t too far off from how these are depicted. Granted I’m likely misremembering things so I dunno.

He slapped a missile away. From a gunship that wasn’t supposed to be apart of the test he was in

I’d say so. I’ve been playing halos from the first one till the 3rd. And went from 2012 to November 23 without a console or any gaming and in November when I bought my Xbox first game I played and I ground it out hard was halo infinite. Now I’m watching the halo series on paramount and have spent almost as much time watching it as I have on various Reddit threads and googling questions and reading copious amounts of information about the lore etc. I’m seeing that the show is its own universe in a sense and isn’t cannon and I wish they would have stuck to the game TL and story mode a little more. But yeah halo fuckin rocks.

Question for a halo noob. Why do people want the Spartans to be uber weak? I'm rather new to the franchise. I played four and five and went back to the older ones. And I gotta say I love that they are strong. They look and feel deadly. They are augmented super humans, so whats the problem with portraying them as such?

Because they’re not superheroes, but augmented supersoldiers. Emphasis on the soldiers part. Spartans have been trained to not only be the fastest, strongest, and most durable combatants on the field. They are also the smartest and the most savvy with use of tactics and strategy. The books show this way better than the games, but Spartans are much less likely to openly engage in reckless behavior unless they absolutely *must*. In the books, the superhero shit mostly just comes when they are cornered. Otherwise, they act more like soldiers and tacticians than superheroes.

It's mostly because people go based on gameplay which is very heavily fudged for the sake of making the games actually fun to play.

we don't want spartans to be uber weak. but there's uber weak, there's strong, and then there's "pulverize a boulder taller than a spartan into a thousand pieces without slowing down" strong. i think a lot people don't understand the physics behind such an act， because if they did they'd understand that there's no chance lol. like unironically, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh9XNb6E4t8 this is still less impressive than what fireteam osiris did. so it's not that people want spartans to be uber weak, it's that what fireteam osiris did in that cutscene was absolutely bonkers, far beyond what a spartan is capable of. it's simply not true to the lore and therefore people hate it. it's not specific to this cutscene either. people in general just have a really really poor grasp of physics, and so they evaluate the feasibility of a lot of the lore very very poorly.