- SeraphvsIvdicii
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- Exalted Legendary Member
Spartans are good guys. That's a very cut-and-dry issue. They don't harvest little girls to gain power, and they don't exterminate Capital Wasteland settlers for extra caps. Allowing the sort of moral decisions possible in Bioshock and Fallout 3 would be highly un-Spartan-like. It would be pointless to give the player the opportunity to do the wrong thing as a Spartan.
Now, you mention choosing between saving a squad of ODSTs or another Spartan. That's not quite the kind of moral decision one makes in those other games. Neither decision is "evil". Only one of them, however, is militarily competent. A single Spartan and his training and armour and augmentations make him vastly more valuable, both strategically and literally, than dozens, maybe hundreds, of ODSTs...not to mention that a Spartan would be loyal to other Spartans, having fought alongside them since they were six years old. Allowing the player to choose the ODSTs would make something of a moron out of the Spartan making the decision.
Also, you need to think about the story being able to conform to the canon of the Halo universe. There's a single canonical record of events. Things either did happen or they didn't. At the end of the game every player's Spartan needs to have either saved the Spartan or the ODSTs. If some saved one and some saved the other, then what actually happened? Are we down one Spartan for future stories, or is he still alive?