- anton1792
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"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron
We have conflicting statements... I don't have the book to check, but others have said how Master Chief mentions he doesn't want to get in close with Elites, or in general doesn't breeze though.
Well I guess each to his own; it would not be sensible to say that all the Spartans were good at everything. Although as a group, they should pretty much have everything covered, and a fair amount individually. CQC is probably not what John would class as one of his best skills. However, although John expresses disdain for fighting Elites in close quarters, he still makes it out in the end by manipulating and taking advantage of other factors. You may say that external factors are required to tip the balance one way or the other, at least in the case of John, but he was creative enough to use them to his advantage and he won whilst those Elites where not. The Gamma station Elite was killed by his own weapon in the end. Being better does not require you to destroy everything in your path with ease.
Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron
Really, this seems kinda like the stormtrooper effect. They are elite, well trained soldiers, but if a hero (spartan) enters the room they turn into blubbering idiots who couldn't shoot a hot pink star destroyer sitting two feet away. I mean, Elites are commonly referred to as "equals" to spartans in terms of strength/combat ability, yet get rolled over easily and often?...
Well, about the Stormtroopers. I believe the reason as to why they were regarded as elite troopers is due to the first scene on board the senator's ship where the troopers storm the ship and slaughter everyone on board with frightening efficiency. There is probably all the other extended Star Wars canon setting their efficiency in stone but the point is that we did see it in the movies and so can say that they have been dumbed down in the later movies.
With the Elites we do not see this. From the games I do not believe we can make this assumption. Nothing stands out about them in any significant way that tells us that they are highly trained and dangerous on the same level as a Spartan. If we were given a few cutscenes of Elites mowing down marines like long grass just like the Stormtroopers did to the crew of the Senator's ship then we could claim Stormtrooper Effect. But we do not. What we do have is the Halo Wars cutscenes. First one and it looks like it is fair game between the Marines holding the line against attacking Elites. The next is roughly the same at the Harvest artifact. Then we have the most well known one where the Spartans face off against the Arbiter's security detail. We all know how that turns out.
Extending it to all the other media and it is not so clear cut either. The Fall of Reach only features one Elite fight, in which he is outsmarted and killed. If this Elite was trained in some martial arts and was matching John's every move then yeah. However what we have instead is no more than a zero-G arm wrestle. Furthermore the Ranger is beaten in his own environment of specialty. First Strike further questions thier supposed training. At the door to the hanger bay, John and his team come face to face with a group Elites on the other side of the door. A firefight plays out in which one Spartan and 4 normal Humans pretty much massacre those 5 Elites. Polaski even draws her weapon faster than "her" Elite. If that Elite did not have shields, her round would have torn through its skull. Imagine that it was 5 Spartans behind that door. I have serious doubts as to the survival of John and his group in that case. Or imagine that John had 4 other Spartans with him. Imagine what would have happened to the Elites then. And both parties were surprised at each other's presence. Then we have the big fight in the Bridge. The Elite missed all its sword swipes, threw away its gun and its helmet, and then tripped over its own helmet. That Elite was also described as being tough, well trained, cunning and having not been exhausted from days of fighting. Yet was only barely a match for John. Yes, it struggled too. But the fact that John singles out this Elite as being special by saying "this Elite was" suggest that he is just a rare exception. However, still bested.
What if the Elites did not have energy shields like the Spartans did not have energy shields for the first 26 years of the war? What if they did not have plasma weapons? With all this extra tech, they have still failed to kill Spartans in any meaningful amount during the war. You brought up how it was always gun fights rather than CQC. Okay. Accepting this assumption for now, shields are a very useful thing in a gun fight. Elites had them; Spartans in Mk IV did not. For 26 years this was the case. The Spartans were still successful and very few were killed in the war. Jora, one of Thel's Elites, would have been gunned down on the spot by a single marine if he did not have shields. And this was a Zealot. His shields - A piece of technology- saved him, not his martial prowess or training.
Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron
My thought is just that Spartans aren't super-best-godlike-unbeatable. It depends on the situation and individuals. I mean, people act as if it's set in stone and in 1 vs 1 combat a Spartan cannot ever lose and will always triumph. The absolute only way to kill a Spartan is by massively overwhelming numbers... I just don't accept that <_<.
That is one of the main points of Halo. That has always been one of the points. The Spartans are Humanity's greatest source of hope, and rightly so. On the ground, they never lost. A Spartan would show up, leap over the walls of the trench and lead a charge of the remaining Marines and the tide would change. If there were far more Spartans then the war would have been almost fair game. They can make mistakes, as they are after all still Human. Solomon rushing in got him vaporized by an antimatter bomb, Emile taking the opportunity to boast got him impaled through the back, John not maintaining situation awareness almost got him flanked by an Elite Major after crashing to Halo, etc. However their own abilities are reasonably expected to triumph that of the abilities of anything the Covenant could come up with.
As for acceptance, that is fine. I think that it is a logical stretch that the best Humanity can produce embodies Humanity's highest potential that must obviously surpass that of any other species, otherwise Reclaimership would not be on Humanity's heads. I have not a problem with this as Halo seems to be crammed full of other "baww Humans suck" tripe.
[Edited on 10.11.2011 7:11 PM PDT]