This always bugged me. Despite bungie basically ignoring the chief as a person throughout all their games, it does not change the fact that he is a person with his own traits and feeling and eveything.
You read the books, and Chief is a real thinking person with emotions, feelings, thoughts. When you play the games, he's a lifeless shell, there simply as a device to move the story along. Sure bungie wants you to think "you're the chief", but the fact of the matter is, chief is his own person, and they completely ignore that.
That's why I hope reach focuses still on the chief (and his allies), and actually explains what he's feeling. I don't want an emotionless shell, I want John as I know him from the books. At this moment, the guy in H1-3 and the guy in the books may as well be a completely different person. All his friends/familiy die and...that's where it ends? He virtually becomes a robot after that. Halo 3 provided closure for the halo story as we know it, but it did NOT provide closure for master chief. That was the big dissapointment for me. The game represents the end...but it sure didnt feel like any sort of closure for MC.
Now, one could speculate that chief saving cortana was sort of like him saving the bit of "family" he had. Since cortana essentially is Dr Halsey, all his fellow spartans were more or less presumed dead. See, they included all the Halsey quotes in H3, but they dont go in to any greater depth with it. So what does MC think of this? He's a living thinking emotional person, TELL US! Show us!
I mean, underneath it all, was H3 supposed to be sort of tragic? MC seeing/hearing all thse images from his past, reminding him of what he;s been fighting for? Why doesn't bungie put more of this at the forefront of the story? MCs story, imo, is just as important as humanities.
[Edited on 09.18.2009 3:08 AM PDT]