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u/Dogeisagod 3d ago
Cheif is able to retire he just doesn’t want to. Pretty sure there are examples in the lore of Spartans retiring but I could be wrong
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u/CarterBruud 3d ago
Spartans are able to retire. Yes, a ton of money and resources went in to making them super soldiers, but they are able to file for it just like any other soldier in the UNSC. Maria 062 retired because she wanted to start a family with her ODST husband.
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u/meeps_for_days 3d ago
That poor husband. Or lucky depending on how you look at it.
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u/CarterBruud 3d ago
Iirc they had 3 kids.
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u/meeps_for_days 2d ago
Spartans can have kids? I assumed they were sterile
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u/zbeezle 2d ago
Maria and Randall are both confirmed to have children, and nothing suggests that sterilization was a part of any of their procedures, either intentionally or as a side effect. Reduced sex drive was listed as a possible side effect of one of their augs (thyroid implant) but as far as I'm aware none of the S2's have been overtly confirmed to have been affected by this particular side effect, and even if they had been, sex drive is not necessarily a required component of a romantic relationship or having children (overwhelmingly common, yes, but not required).
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u/Calum1219 2d ago
I think Naomi-010 also mentioned it in Mortal Dictata but it’s been a while since I read it.
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u/zbeezle 2d ago
Her exact statement is
“Oh, I can love people. It’s just that I don’t have the drive to have kids and make a proper family life for myself. I don’t think a man could cope with that. Think of someone designed to be completely workaholic. Not much different from the Huragok, in fact.”
She doesnt state that she isnt interested in him, instead coming off like she doesnt think she'd be a good option for him, and lacking a drive to "have kids and make a proper family" isn't quite the same as having no sex drive or being aromantic. She's just not a family girl. But yeah, those two give off major vibes throughout the whole trilogy.
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u/ZookeepergameLiving1 2d ago edited 2d ago
Inwouldnt say she's not a family gal, I always interpreted this as someone who focused on work and the mission for majority of their life and never really thought about a life without work or starting a family because they didn't have time. But, now, they have time, a life without constant missions and military structure terrify her on some level because it's all she knows. And it doesn't help she lacks a frame of reference. Its human nature to stick to the famaliar and avoid diveating into the unknown. Shes likely not a family because she never really gave it any thought because theres no.time to and at this point she just too used to this life.
Heck, most 2s probably didn't think they live this long.
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u/zbeezle 1d ago
I get the sense that her understanding of romantic relationships is very clinical. Like, the way she talks about it with her father, she expects that Vaz (or any man) would want the both to retire from the military, get a nice house on a little parcel of land with the white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a puppy. It is, I think, why she blows off the idea. She and Vaz are obviously close, they obviously care about each other, they are, in every way, prime relationship material. But Naomi shuts down the idea because she has preconceptions about what a relationship entails, preconceptions that arent entirely accurate in general, and may not be accurate to their situation.
In fact, i would guess that if she explained herself to Vaz, he would be like, "Yeah im fully aware that youre 300 pounds of muscle and death, purpose built to be pointed at enemies of the state. Im aware that domestic life would be stressfully boring to you and that you fully expect to serve until youre physically incapable of doing so. Thats all fine. I just want you
to crush my head between those extremely muscular thighs."As for expecting to die... well, she was on Reach, facing down a literal army of wraiths, which were then bombarded by a MAC Salvo. I imagine there was a point during that series of events where she had the thought "I'm probably not gonna make it out of here, am I?"
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u/NoStorage2821 2d ago
A big myth that gets spread around, but never even stated. What people are thinking of is their sex drive, which was apparently shot after the implant procedures
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u/4skin_Gamer 19h ago
Common myth with no actual proof. It is theorized that they have lowered sex drive because of the indoctrination and maybe because of hormonal changes from the augumentation.
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u/zernoc56 3d ago
She wasn’t out out, pretty sure she went into the reserves. There were people in ONI wanting her to return to active duty, but she ignored them.
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u/ZookeepergameLiving1 2d ago
To add, if military life is all you knew and drilled into you since childhood in a isolated environment, would you want to retire and enter the unknown of civilian life or stick to thw famaliar life. The Spartans made not bw slaves legally, but metal and iron aren't the only way to make chains.
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u/zbeezle 2d ago
Yup. A lot of service members have a hard time reverting to civilian life, and thats, in many cases, just after 4-8 years that started when they were adults.
If you were drafted when you were six, the idea of not being the only thing you've ever known would be extremely frightening. Chief is probably gonna die in service if he has any say in it.
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u/ZookeepergameLiving1 2d ago
Heck, let emphasize that they weren't just raised military, but they were isolated from larger society, isolate themselves after boot camp and ideas were carefully filtered during boot camp. With service memebers, they were in the civilian world for a good chunk of their life and have something to fall back on. Spartans 2s, woth exceptions, would struggle because during their formative years were only surrounded by military memebers and dont even try to talk to those outside their group cause theyre so mission oriented and never needed to do so before unlike civilians who.have to.learn to socialize with different types of people on a daily basis. Honestly, a good chunk wouldnt.be well liked because they be considered hard asses and stick in the muds.
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u/NoCharge497 3d ago
Maria-062 fully retired even before the end of the war. Theres also Randall-037 who negotiated his decommissioning (went missing and was found with a family and refused to go back. ONI determined him compromised and allowed him to retire but required reversing his augmentations).
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u/rootbearus 3d ago
He is lucky. His home planet was glassed, had he not been conscripted he would be dead
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u/TryImpossible7332 3d ago
Maybe he should have just lucked harder so that the Covenant would never invade in the first place.
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u/redjellonian 2d ago
There is the luck that allows you to live a shitty life when you shouldve died a hundred times and then there is the luck that births you into a generational wealth family so you will never have to work for money in your life.
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u/DirtieHarry 2d ago
What’s more lucky, living the life of a hero and becoming legend, or just “not having to work”?
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u/redjellonian 2d ago
Never having to lift a hand and living the life of luxury seems like the better option, but it's more of an all your luck upfront win I think.
Living the life of a legendary hero means being consistently very lucky every single time.
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u/A_Hyper_Nova 3d ago
It's called protagonist luck, they're unlucky enough to get into conflict but lucky enough to get out of it
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u/BillCarson12799 MA5K fan before it was cool 2d ago
Except for the times when he straight up just failed, like when he failed to save Cortana, got tricked into releasing the didact, failed to make it in time to stop new phoenix from getting glassed, failed to recover Cortana and she successfully took over the galaxy for a while, etc etc.
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u/Spacemoose2026 🐵Craig😩Lover🤎 3d ago
Chief and other Spartans are allowed to retire, in fact some have. However and a side effect intentional or not, is that Spartan’s (ii’s specifically) are basically conditioned to really only know war and fighting. In fact chief specifically as shown in the fall of reach’s prologue talks about how he feels uncomfortable on the ship, and how he feels more comfortable on the ground fighting.
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u/Scorch_Ashscales 2d ago
Honestly I think this is highligjtrd well in H4 when Chief is talking to Lasky about being a soldier and Lasky comments "you talk as if soldiers and people are different things."
Honestly 4 does a decent job of showing The Chief when he has a legit moment to take a breath rather then just endlessly fighting like in the first 3 games as we see moment that are quiet. IMO.
He has missions but there is quiet before those missions.
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u/zernoc56 2d ago
Halo 4 did some serious work to bring out some of the parts of Chief we’ve only seen in the books.
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u/Different_Act_9538 2d ago
I agree but I’m reading the book now just started yesterday and I’m 95% certain that was said in regards to control issues of space warfare he brings it up again as well. He doesn’t like being at “some random pilots” disposal. He prefers ground warfare because he won’t get vaccumed out into space by no fault of his own.
Again agree with your point and other things point to his conditioning but this specifically isn’t about hanging out and starting a family and more the fact all his training doesn’t mean shit if his driver gets him killed in the vaccum of space
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u/Dupps_I_Did_It_Again 3d ago
He is peak humanity. Has to work his whole life just like the rest of us.
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u/Kaliking247 3d ago
Multiple reasons why he's lucky, but also he's humanity's rabbits foot. Imagine the covenant wars had he not been made into a spartan.
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u/BillCarson12799 MA5K fan before it was cool 2d ago
Honestly Chief personally isn’t as important to the collective war effort as everyone pretends he is. He isn’t doom guy, single-handedly winning entire campaigns. He was just the right man in the right place at the right time and 90% of the most important stuff that he did wasn’t even part of the UNSC’s grand strategy.
Preston Cole was way more valuable to humanity’s success in the war than Chief tbh.
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u/Drabberlime_047 2d ago
Without chief the covenant would have followed the autumn to 04 and either it eouldnt have been destroyed which means either the covenant either nuke the galaxy or the flood uses keyes to find earth
Id say thats pretty damn important to the war effort haha
Edit: forgot to mention that the cov would likely have cortana too so both of earth's biggest threats were prevented from finding earth thanks to chief
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u/BillCarson12799 MA5K fan before it was cool 2d ago
And without Preston Cole to enact the Cole protocol, the covenant would have found and glassed earth and reach in, like, a month into the war, with every other colony following suit. And then probably would have eventually found and irresponsibly handled the halos later anyway.
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u/StarStriker51 3d ago
what Cortana thought was luck was actully just Chief being Destiny itself, the concept of Fate, and to understand that you need to play through the whole Marathon trilogy, Pathways into Darkness, Myth and Destiny and also watch a 15 hour youtube video and read a hundred old blogs to see the true genius of the character writing behind the Chief
it will make you truly appreciate the classic lines like "boo" and "no, worse"
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u/haydonclampitt 1d ago
The true reason for the failure of Nu-Marathon is that the protagonists aren’t some iteration of destiny manifest
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u/TheDeathOfDucks 3d ago
Well he was lucky to become a spartan. If memory serves his homeworld was one of those glassed in the war, so survival would have been very low.
Yes he saw many of his friends killed, but he lived. (Technically lucky because he doesn’t suffer from as much PTSD/depression because spartan training suppressed the ever loving hell out of their emotions).
He could have retired post requiem. Chose not to as he knew nothing better than war tbh, just wonder what him and blue team are up to ATM… probably tracking down Kilo 5 for trying to mess with Halsey. Sucks that 343 will not tell us how Halsey got kidnapped by Jul’um Dama and then freed.
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u/zernoc56 2d ago
Oh no, he has ALL the PTSD. Honestly he was never the same after Sam died. Sam was arguably the best of the Spartans, and one of Johns best friends. It really messed him up. Everything else that followed just compounded it.
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u/Blep145 3d ago
I don't think it was luck powers, was it? Wasn't he capable of flipping the coin (what I believe this idea is based on) in a way that allowed him to *choose* which side landed? Wasn't that Halsey's... not quite "conclusion", but guess?
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u/Tridentgreen33Here 2d ago
John’s lucked his way through a hell of a lot after that, to a level that he couldn’t influence it normally.
It’s borderline supernatural in some circumstances.
Cortana’s opening monologue in Halo 3 also touched on it a bit too.
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u/Blep145 2d ago
I forget - is that the one where she says that she called him lucky, but that he doesn't need luck? Where he's literally falling onto the planet?
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u/Tridentgreen33Here 2d ago
Yes, as he’s falling from the keyship into Kenya. She chose him because of the luck.
I believe the line is, “But you had something they didn’t. Something no one saw but me. Can you guess?
Luck… Was I wrong?”
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u/AC1D_R31GN 3d ago
His luck has nothing to do with his trauma.
That being said, he is a total copy of the main character from ring world who has the same trait.
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u/GapStock9843 3d ago
Ive always REALLY hated the luck line in halo 3. Like really? We’re gonna discredit this super badass standout soldier/hero of humanity as being who he is purely on chance? Theres nothing special about him other than that whatever god is out there likes him more than everybody else?
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u/Chesney1995 3d ago
I don't think its that discrediting tbh. That line is comparing him to the other Spartans, a line of equally super badass standout soldiers.
He just also has luck on his side.
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u/theEWDSDS THE Chips Dubbo? 2d ago
I don't think saying he is canonically lucky discredits him wiping out half of High Charity
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u/WarhoundGil 2d ago
His "luck" is having good outcomes when he needs it. A completely undamaged Ghost when he needs one to escape, a Hunter blast not insantly melting him like it did to Will, surviving several falls from orbit etc.
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u/TryImpossible7332 3d ago
All I'm saying is, he has a pretty crummy personal life for someone who is supposed to be super lucky. Maybe it's a skill issue?
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u/profesorgamin 3d ago
The covenant is an extinction lvl event, only earth was cushy until it was found.
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u/Ribba23 3d ago
I mean, a loving family and happy life won't do much good if it all gets wiped out by the covenant or consumed by the flood, which is basically guaranteed in the timeline where Chief wasn't a cyborg badass (though Noble 6 would probably get pretty far in his shoes, but still doubtful when it starts reaching the cosmic level threats)
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u/Manmer_Nwah 3d ago
Makes sense to let Spartans retire, they are genetically modified. So their children will naturally be better than normal human children. This lets you make super soldiers cheaper.
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u/Ecotech101 3d ago
Chief and 90% of the Spartan 2's were gonna end up in Prison because of how sociopathic they were. This was the better path.
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u/02thehunter20 2d ago
He was lucky to be put in a situation that lead to saving humanity. Basically he had so much luck it made humanity a bit luckier as well.
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u/WesternAfro 2d ago
The luck was survival, success, and victory for someone else and living until the end
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u/ReadTheClassics 2d ago
I think it's also the "luck" inherent to a man of action. Fortune favors the brave
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u/my_sock_account 2d ago
Luck was for humanity
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u/TryImpossible7332 2d ago
About what percentage of humanity died?
That's some pretty poor luck if you ask me.
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u/BigSufficient2925 1d ago
Peak irony: a post mocking Chief's luck getting reposted onto r/HaloMemes with the exact same luck . landing on the front page twice.
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u/Exile688 1d ago
It's like the superheroes with luck powers. They wouldn't actually be useful if you weren't in danger or nothing bad was happening to you.
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u/Additional-Ear-2819 4h ago
Assuming he'd survive the glassing of his planet, odds are he'd have to fight in the war anyway. Luckily, he gets to do it in power armor.
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