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Gettin' all Herodotean up in here!
Posted by: ImmortalJoshua
While I was never a big fan of the traditional Mark VI, there just needs to be an actual explanation for the change in look, not ARTISTIC LICENSE.
Why not? All of us who are obsessed with the canon, and the eventual bastardization thereof, have been really nitpicky about stuff like this. "OOOH! That's not what it looked like before and it makes me grumpies!" I remember the same thing happening when Halo 3 screens showed the Chief's gauntlets were different from the ones he wore in Halo 2, and again when Emile's EVA gear didn't match up PERFECTLY design-wise with what we'd seen in Halo 3. I joined in the discussions, in fact. But the simple fact is that unless the aesthetic changes to the Chief's armor actually affect the way the armor behaves in a way that DEMANDS explanation, it can be, and, for sanity's sake, should be written off as artistic license.
This principle, of course, needs to be used within reason. Certain changes, while purely aesthetic, would certainly be too big a pill to swallow; for instance, if the Chief were to go into cryo wearing the standard Mark VI helmet, then come out wearing a CQB helmet, I'd call BS. But he's not. If you give the designers a little wiggle room (which we all should), and consider the fact that this is NOT Bungie and by giving the Chief a slightly different appearance the people at 343i are simply putting forth their own imagining of him, coupled with the visual differences that are endemic to any changes in the graphics capabilities in the game engines and so forth, it's not an intolerable change.
Just have some faith, and don't sweat the irrelevant details. I tend to disregard most of the visual stuff as far as the Canon goes anyway, because it IS so subject to artistic license. To say that the look CAN'T change without breaking Canon would mean that none of the games are Canonical, because looks change so much due to so many different things. But that's another tangent for a much longer post. The point is, it's not a difference that MAKES a difference, so it's not really worth obsessing over. The wrapping paper doesn't affect what the present is.