By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Posted by: ALPHAslayER1911
Reach showed us the Forerunner structure under Reach's surface which connects with First Strike (it even shows so in the first pages of the Definitive Edition)
Er... no it doesn't connect with First Strike at all. The Forerunner ruins under SWORD Base are only brought up in the game and briefly talked about in Halsey's Journal. It does not appear at any other point in the Halo series, nor is it otherwise even referenced. What it contains is never explained, the only exposition it got was Halsey saying "knowledge".
and Noble Team was far more compelling than Blue Team ever was. Seriously, who WERE the members of Blue Team?
If you're asking that after having 4 books focused on them with several comics and various other media then you've clearly mentally disregarded it to make such a terrible statement like that.
I would amend your post to this:
Emile - He's good at close-quarters combat and blames others for stuff.
Kat - She's good with tech and "spunky".
Jun - He's [really not] good at sniping and has terrible dialogue, but most Spartan-IIIs usually weren't that fond of conversation either, so that's not exactly unique.
Anyways...
Carter - He's a no-nonsense kind of leader, however, the Legendary Commentary of Reach tells us that he and Kat once had a romantic relationship (which may have to have ended due their statuses as Spartans)
Hold up a moment. I don't care what they said in the commentary, where is that referred to in the game? Or even at all?
Oh right, it never is.
which could possibly explain why he's so defensive of Kat when Halsey says "I could put you [Kat] in the brig for this...", due to residual feelings for her.
Or because he thinks Halsey is being stupid making threats to a Spartan? Or because he thinks a Spartan is more important in the fight against the Covenant than a random data chip they found? Or because he's loyal to his team?
How does him defending Kat prove in any way he has 'feelings' for her? She's part of his team, he's not just going to say "yup, here you go, stick her in the brig"...
Not to mention, he is the one carrying Kat's lifeless body after her death, yet he was not the one dragged her into the bunker after she got shot. This is just speculation, but perhaps part of the reason why Carter is so anxious to sacrifice himself in the Reach campaign is because after Kat died, he lost a piece of himself, and thus, nothing was preventing him from rejoining his lover and his family.
See above. Absolutely none of that is any sign of him loving her. Did he love Jorge too? He died, so it must be the case... The game makes absolutely no reference to any kind of relationship between the characters. Why didn't Kat know Six? They would have grown up in Beta Company together for about 8 years, but she doesn't know him... Why isn't Six her 'love interest', or at least some kind of conflict between her, Carter and Six?
What backstory is even explored in Reach? Absolutely none.
Kat - She's great with technology and is generally pretty snippy, even with Carter, who not even Emile tries to joke around with. To be honest, there's not much more to say for Kat that hasn't already been said in Carter's part, so I'll move on.
Meaning: "There's nothing to say about Kat because she receives almost no character development in the game at all".
Jun - He's the sniper of the group and makes bad cooking jokes. For some reason, I really like that, just because I have never heard of that being a character trait before.
This is neither a reason to like a character, nor does it make a character good. He's the sniper of the group, and yet the most sniping he does is... actually none at all. Linda hung upside down inside a Covenant ship and shot out 7 Banshee pilots with one hand during First Strike, she did more in 30 seconds of reading than Jun did for the whole game.
Sadly, Jun seemed to have had pieces of dialogue (Let's bake this cake!) and other traits of his character cut out of the final product. That's a real shame, since after I read Fist Full of Arrows, I really wish there was more to Jun. Although, I guess you could say he's a bit childish when compared to everyone else.
You are aware that 'A Fistful of Arrows' is non-canon, right? Instead of removing his dialogue, they should have just removed his character completely because he contributes absolutely nothing to the story and what can laughably be called the plot.
Emile - This guy is really interesting
Nope.
because he has a bit of an artistic side
Nope.
and as someone has pointed out before, he never removes his helmet (and thus, is faceless to the player) yet he draws a face on his visor. This is interesting because while every other non-playable member of Noble's faces are seen, Emile prefers to keep his helmet on. To me, Bungie was trying to convey that Noble Team aren't just suits of armor, but actual humans, Emile however IS his armor, yet he still has a "face".
Indulge me a moment, would you kindly?
When Emile is killed, his "face" is covered, and when his identity is masked, he is impaled by an Energy Sword and later passes away. When Emile shouts out "I'm ready! How about'chu?", he is referring to death, and perhaps his skull represents Emile's preparation for the bitter end. Emile reminds me a bit of Shaun, actually. Shaun lives by thinking "It'll be easier to think that I'm already dead..", perhaps Emile saw himself as a shell of a man, and didn't fear the end because of this very reason.
You use the word "perhaps" a lot when you talk about these characters because we're given absolutely no backstory or information about them beyond the archetypes they represent. Like Jun, Emile contributes absolutely nothing to the story other than being 'that guy' who makes snarky remarks and acts like a badass with a cutting fetish. I'm honestly surprised you managed to talk about him for so long when he could be cut from the game along with Jun and absolutely no difference would have been made to the story at all.
Jorge - He's the one Spartan-II in Noble and is just MASSIVE, yet he just seems so harmless when he's helmet is not on, and when Emile isn't ripping on him. Gawd, I just love Jorge. His voice actor is great, his relationship with Noble Six and the player is greater than any other member of Noble, making his death the one with the most weight, at least to the player alone.
Jorge I can give you. He was the only interesting character in Noble Team, and it came as a pretty huge middle-finger to me that he was killed off half way through the game. Couldn't they have killed off the rest of those loathesome twats instead? The biggest problem with Jorge though? He's just Kurt from Ghosts of Onyx under a new name and appearance, which honestly detracts from the whole point of Kurt being 'unique' among the Spartan-IIs.
Also, The Battle of Reach felt like in after thought in tFoR, and it only described the space battle. First Strike gave us SOME insight to the ground engagements, but we only saw Red Team, and it just seemed like the whole purpose was to just say "Spartans died."
And Reach's purpose wan't just to say "Spartans died"? Allow me to direct you to this article where Marcus Lehto makes it pretty clear that the game's ultimate point is to showcase Spartans dying:
Marcus Lehto, creative director: Well, the game's a tragedy overall. We wanted to tell the story of the Spartans sacrificing everything they had
I might point out that we only see the battle of Reach from Six's point of view in the game...
As for Halo Wars having a better story? I don't think I can agree to that either. I mean, I don't think it's worse than anything in the main trilogy, but like Halo CE - 3, it falls into the same basic events.
Act 1. The Covenant
Act 2. The Flood
Act 3. Both
It really doesn't bring anything groundbreaking in terms of story.
Er... what? I can disprove your final statement with 2 words:
Shield. World.
This was a concept only in Ghosts of Onyx at the time, one that was extremely vague and unexplored. About half of Halo Wars is set on Shield-0459, regardless of the conventional narrative formula it had, Wars was infinitely more groundbreaking than Reach in terms of story because the only story in Reach was moving from point A to B to get rid of Covenant in an area.
Wars also introduced a variety of new vehicles, expanded on various battles across Harvest and Arcadia, and was accompanied by a graphic novel setting the stage and tone for the game by bringing characters like Admiral Cole into the picture.
How you can believe what you have said is... astounding, to say at the least.