always disappointed me a little that Halo never really wrestled with the fact its entire base premise is incredibly fucked
Not like in a "wow if this were real" way, I mean like, in-lore. In every game (except ODST and the Arbiter levels in 2), you're a Spartan, right? Everyone knows that. But I dont think, unless you ventured into the "expanded universe", they tell you the fact that Spartans are like. Incredibly fucked up.
The whole process of creating a Spartan starts, with ONI (read: Space CIA with infinite funding and even less of a moral compass), spying on a bunch of children. Then they select the "best" ones, and well, they kidnap em. Straight up. Steal them away in the middle of the night, replace them with a poorly made clones[1], and escape into the night. Next, you take those kids and throw em through something roughly equivalent to Navy Seal training crossed with Green Beret training. Then, when they start turning puberty age, this is where you get real fucked up.
See Spartans are literally superhuman. They are not regular people, they are augmented and doped so much their piss would melt the cup. The problem with this is most people aren't built for that. Real life doping wrestlers and athletes alike often die young from the sheer strain. This is also reflected in the Spartans- the augmentation process flatly either kills outright or heavily disables about half of the kids they send through it.
But okay, right. This is incredibly fucked, on so many levels. Even in-universe, some of the higher-ranking members of the Space CIA think Halsey[2] is an utter psychopath. But humanity was facing the Covenant, right? The Covenant are such a wildly unbalanced power match for humans that the only reason they didnt quietly shuttle across the universe systematically reducing every colony to molten slag, is because some of those planets had glowing Forerunner cubes embedded in the ground. So something something, greater good, right?
Welllllll. You see the Spartans weren't actually designed to fight The Covenant. They were designed to fight human rebels. You see, before the Covenant appeared, the UNSC was already at war- with "Insurrectionists". In the Halo world, everything is ruled by the United Nations. Thats what the "UN" in UNSC is. And membership isn't voluntary. The UN does the colonizing and the colonies are UN, lock stock and barrel. Want out? Tough shit, that's not an option. Some colonies tried to leave anyway, and they were met with overwhelming military force. The rebels are generally written to be a pretty scummy, corrupt bunch, but also its almost always written from the UNSC's own view, so ehh... And honestly? The UNSC wasn't doing great. The rebels were guerilla fighters, and those are a real thorn in your ass at the best of times. The Spartans were supposed to be the Final Word. Functionally unkillable supersoldiers who you could drop in, have paint the floor with a rebel cell, and then walk out with barely a scratch. Whoever they didn't kill would be scared back into line. The Covenant appearing was honestly just a convenient opportunity to do PR laundering.
Some 343-era books expand on the rebel stuff, which in lore picks right back up after the Human-Covenant War is over and humanity's one giant united front quickly collapses. Hell, they even write one of the squad from ODST[4] (Mickey) into defecting from the UNSC to the rebels. (He gets arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment). But idk, I feel like its an under-explored aspect of the lore, and a lot of the darker parts of the SPARTAN programs get laundered when 343 introduced the SPARTAN-IVs[3], who don't get nasty side effects from their augments and are volunteers from the military population.
[1] In Halo lore, human cloning does exist, it is referred to as "flash-cloning". However, the clones are much like modern animal clones, and incredibly susceptible to cancers and other degenerative diseases, and so are incredibly illegal due to the obvious ethical ramifications. ONI at this point just flaunts this.
[2] The doctor at the head of the SPARTAN-II program.
[3] Spartans are split into three (seen) generations- the SPARTAN-IIs, those are the kidnapped children with horrible augments; Master Chief is one. The SPARTAN-IIIs are seen primarily in Reach; every team member save Jorge is one of these. They were the cost-cut version of the IIs- weaker armor, less difficult augments, and also they were explicitly suicide mission soldiers. To save on recruitment costs, ONI just chose from available war orphans.
[4] shoot I never explained what ODSTs were. They're shock troopers dropped into hot zones from orbit. They're more highly trained, but lack any energy shields or augments, and are only slightly less squishy than a general Marine and only on account of slightly nicer body armor. They are my favorite kind of Halo infantry. Feet first into hell, soldier.
