Master Chief (Halo)

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Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN 117-John

Game series	Halo series
First game	Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)
Voice actor(s)	Steve Downes

Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117, commonly referred to in-game as simply Master Chief, is a fictional protagonist within the Halo universe. He is the main character of the video game Halo: Combat Evolved, and one of the two playable characters in Halo 2. He will appear at least once more in the forthcoming game Halo 3. He also appears in the novels Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: The Flood, and Halo: First Strike, and is briefly featured in both Halo: Ghosts of Onyx and the Halo Graphic Novel.

1 Background
2 Character history
3 Appearances in other media
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Background

Master chief in action

Although his official military designation is Spartan-117, he is most often referred to simply as "Chief", short for his rank of Master Chief Petty Officer. The assignment of Navy enlisted rates to him and other SPARTAN-IIs resembles the usage of these rates by the United States Navy, a correlation further evidenced by the fact that his unit is attached to the UNSC's "Naval Special Warfare" division.

The Master Chief is a SPARTAN-II Super Soldier, a biologically-enhanced and cybernetically-augmented commando. Extensive surgical alteration coupled with a rigorous lifelong training regimen has resulted in Master Chief being significantly stronger than even the strongest natural human, and his strength and fighting ability are further augmented by the advanced MJOLNIR battle armor he wears. In the books, the SPARTANs were originally assigned to the task of putting down rebels and insurgents within the United Nations Space Command; when the powerful alien empire known as the Covenant attacked, the Chief and his fellow SPARTANs had a priority shift.

According to Bungie Studios, the Master Chief stands 7 feet tall and weighs approximately 'half a metric ton' in full battle armor (2.13 meters and 500 kilograms).^[1] He is approximately forty-one years old at the time of the events of Halo: Combat Evolved.^[2] Between Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, the Chief's armor is upgraded from MJOLNIR Mark V to Mark VI. Both iterations of the armor include a helmet with a reflective visor so the face of the Chief is never seen. In spite of this, he is seen removing his helmet once in each game, the camera angle always concealing his face from the player. The novels describe Master Chief out of armor as a tall, ghostly pale man with short military-style hair, freckles, and a blank yet sorrowful expression. Master Chief is voiced by Steve Downes in both Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, and Downes has been confirmed to be returning for Halo 3.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Character history

[edit] The Fall of Reach/ Ghosts of Onyx

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

See also: Halo: The Fall of Reach and Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

John (Master Chief) was born in 2511 and spent the first part of his childhood on the human colony planet Eridanus 2 where he lived with his family. John was large for his age at the time, approximately a foot above his school peers, a sign of a "perfect genetic match" for a project dubbed "SPARTAN-II". He is described (at the age of six) as a typical boy, having brown hair, freckles and a gap in between his two front teeth.

In 2517, John and seventy-four other children his age were covertly taken from their homes and replaced with flash clones. This specific form of clone was employed to ensure that none of the families knew that their children had been kidnapped. However, the cloning was rushed and unstable and all of the clones died shortly after from what was termed as 'Metabolic Cascade Failure' making it seem like natural causes. Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, head of the Spartan II project, later commented that this side effect was unfortunate, but the timeframe requirements of the project left no alternative. The original children were brought to planet Reach, one of the UNSC's headquarters, to train to become SPARTAN-II supersoldiers. On Reach, the abducted children began intensive physical, mental and psychological training as part of the Spartan program by Chief Petty Officer Mendez, and were assigned new identification numbers instead of last names. John became known as John-117.

On the first day (September 24, 2517) John met his teammates Kelly-087 and Sam-034. They later became best friends. On July 12, 2519, at the age of eight they were sent out into the wilderness in Pelican dropships to participate in a survival exercise. Their trainer, Chief Petty Officer Mendez, said the last trainee to complete the objective had to walk back to the base from the mountainous wilderness, which was a very long walk. After being dropped off individually by the Pelican the trainees planned to link up by a large lake. After proceeding to the rendezvous point John and the other trainees found the Pelican to be guarded by drill instructors who were out of uniform and under orders to attack any trainee who approached the Pelican. John wanted to make sure everyone got back so he and his fellow trainees brutally beat the guards, stole the Pelican and flew it back to the military complex, with the guide of their teacher AI, Deja. When they returned home, John insisted that if anyone should be punished, it should be him, since he was the last one to board the Pelican. Halsey convinced Mendez to promote him to Squad Leader as a result of both his ability to adapt and his leadership over the other Spartans.

In March 2525, the children were biologically and cybernetically augmented and enhanced. These procedures had substantial risks, and only thirty-three Spartans of the original seventy-five survived to functional status after the augmentations. Of the others, twelve were crippled in surgery and were relegated to tactical and administrative duties in the Reach complex, more specifically, Naval Intelligence (as stated by Mendez after John inquired as to what would happen to his men). When John asks Mendez what to do on his next mission (John considered their augmentaion a "mission") to avoid such heavy losses, Mendez replies by saying that some losses are acceptable; however, he tells John that there is a difference between a life spent and a life wasted. John contemplates this later and also thinks about it in the future when the war with the Covenant starts.

John-117's first real mission was against rebels in the asteroid belt of the Eridanus System, where his homeworld was located. He was wounded but not incapacitated while leading his squad to capture Colonel Robert Watts, leader of the insurgent forces. He received a Purple Heart after the mission.

John, during his time with the Spartans, was deemed the "luckiest" (by Dr. Halsey) and was the first to test the MJOLNIR armor. He also took command of the trainees during free-form tactical exercises.

Later on November 2, 2525 he was briefed on the Covenant threat; he and the other Spartans would fight for many years against this new enemy. They were first sent to the Damascus Materials Testing Facility on the planet Chi Ceti 4 to retrieve the MJOLNIR Mark IV armor. While retrieving the armor, the UNSC ship on which they had arrived encountered a Covenant frigate in the system. After leaving the planet, Sam, Kelly, and John subsequently boarded it and planted a bomb. This insertion ultimately resulted in the death of Sam, who, due to his suit being breached from a plasma bolt, stayed behind to ensure the successful detonation of the explosives. John was forced to leave the Covenant ship without one of his closest friends. It was then that he understood what Mendez had meant about a life spent or a life wasted.

On May 1, 2531, John and his SPARTAN-II team had been sent to the 111 Tauri System, on Planet Victoria. The mission was to recover nuclear warheads stolen by the rebel insurgents. Among his five-man team, Kurt-051 became Sam's replacement, a former rival during training whom John felt would jeopardize the mission due to Kurt's "lack of discipline" and "having funny feelings." However, John-117, Kelly-087, Linda-058, and Fred-104 were captured by rebel commandos led by General Graves. John's doubts about Kurt were proven wrong as Kurt initiated a one-man-rescue, helping facilitate the operation. It wasn't until after the rescue that Kurt was openly accepted to Blue Team.

[edit] Halo: Combat Evolved and The Flood

See also: Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo: The Flood

As Humanity fought a losing war against the Covenant, the UNSC High Command developed a last-ditch plan to capture a Covenant High Prophet, who they hoped could be used in order to barter a truce. Prior to planning out the mission, the MJOLNIR Mark IV armor got upgraded to the Mark V, integrating the Covenant's energy shielding system into the armor. Before the physical part of the mission could be put into action, Reach, the staging ground for the operation and the centre of naval operations, was attacked. The majority of the Spartans were diverted to Reach's surface to defend groundside installations and the fusion reactors for the MAC guns in orbit. The Master Chief was sent along with two other Spartans, Linda and James, to destroy a small Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) stealth ship so that the vessel's navigation info, which could lead the Covenant to Earth, would not fall into enemy hands. As the UNSC fleet, the Marines and Spartans defending Reach were being destroyed, the Master Chief managed to complete his mission and return to the Pillar of Autumn. However, James was lost in deep space and Linda was placed into a cryo chamber aboard the Pillar of Autumn after being severely wounded in action. Knowing Reach was lost, the Pillar of Autumn plotted a random course as per the Cole Protocol. The Master Chief, seemingly the last Spartan alive, went into cryo sleep along with the Autumn's crew, standard operating procedure for slipspace jumps. As Reach's rivers turned to steam and the land became molten slag as a result of the Covenant's orbital bombardment, a few Spartans managed to escape and hide in the one area that was not being targeted.

Upon coming out of slipspace, the Pillar of Autumn, commanded by Captain Jacob Keyes, aided by Cortana, the ship's Artificial Intelligence, was attacked by the Covenant and crash landed on Installation 04, called 'Halo' by the Covenant. In the midst of fighting the Covenant, it was discovered that Halo was a ring-shaped construct created by the Forerunners as a last line of defense against an alien parasite called The Flood. The Flood was accidentally unleashed by exploratory Covenant; as a direct result, a majority of the Covenant and UNSC troops who landed on Halo were infected and became Flood themselves. On behalf of the installation's Monitor, a hundred millennia-old A.I. called 343 Guilty Spark, the Master Chief retrieved the Index, a device which would activate Halo and supposedly wipe out the Flood. However, Guilty Spark neglected to inform Master Chief that Halo would accomplish this by destroying all sentient life in a vast radius, essentially starving The Flood to death. From Guilty Spark's words, it is implied that he believed that the "other installations" would follow suit, and the entire galaxy would be wiped clean of sentient life. Cortana's timely intervention prevented Halo's activation, and the two decided to destroy Halo itself. Fighting off immeasurable numbers of Covenant, Flood, and Guilty Spark's Forerunner Sentinels, the Chief temporarily disabled Halo's firing mechanism by destroying its three pulse generators that would magnify its range, and made his way back to the Pillar of Autumn. There, he detonated the ship's fusion reactor core to trigger an explosion that initiated a chain reaction that allowed Halo's centrifugal forces to tear itself apart, destroying Halo and crippling the Covenant invasion/occupation forces led by the future Arbiter that had destroyed Reach and pursued the Pillar of Autumn.

[edit] First Strike

See also: Halo: First Strike

The Master Chief, along with the few UNSC personnel who survived Halo, managed to capture the Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, and return to Reach to contact Earth's High Command. At Reach, the Master Chief discovered that the Covenant had not eradicated the planet's biosphere the way they normally did, and that a few other Spartans were still alive. He retrieved them, as well as Dr. Catherine Halsey, the creative genius behind the SPARTAN-II project. The Spartans then attacked a Covenant command station, the Unyielding Hierophant, which was being used as a staging area for an attack on Earth's coordinates.

By the end of the novel, the only other remaining Halo survivor is Sergeant Avery Johnson, whose life was in the Master Chief's hands. Prior to Dr. Halsey's disappearance, Halsey gives Master Chief a final lesson about sacrificing a life for the greater good, or saving every single life possible. In Johnson's case, the Master Chief had the option to give just the combat data on the Flood, or give the complete data including Johnson's freak accident survival. At the end of First Strike, the Master Chief chose to give the regular combat data. Furthermore, only five of the original Spartans are in active service: Linda (Spartan-058), who was revived by Dr. Halsey's medical care and organ transplants, Will (Spartan-043), Fred (Spartan-104), and John himself. Kelly, Spartan-087, is still alive but has been kidnapped by Dr. Halsey for purposes unknown, in the book stated as a "private mission." All other Spartans are either missing in action (MIA) or confirmed killed in action (KIA); however, dead SPARTANs are listed as Missing in action or WIA (Wounded in Action) to maintain the illusion that Spartans cannot die, in an effort to give the human race hope and to boost morale.

In addition to the five Spartans mentioned above, there are in fact three other Spartans designated "Gray Team" who were otherwise engaged on fields of combat too distant to be easily recalled, when the Spartans were gathered on the Pillar of Autumn, prior to the fall of Reach and the events on Installation 04. They may have since fallen to Covenant forces since Gray Team never contacted Command for a year according to Halo: Ghosts of Onyx.

[edit] Halo 2

See also: Halo 2

Upon arriving back on Earth, the Master Chief's heavily damaged Mark V MJOLNIR armor was replaced by the newer Mark VI model (recently field-tested by SPARTAN-062 Maria), based on improvements made to the Covenant technology used in the Mark V. Will, Fred, and Linda are un-accounted for, but it is heavily speculated that they are undergoing extensive medical recovery. The Master Chief attended a brief awards ceremony aboard Cairo Station defense platform, which was rudely interrupted by a Covenant invasion force, comprised of an unusually small fleet of ships. The Covenant boarded Cairo Station, but were repelled by the Master Chief and the UNSC troops. He destroyed one of their ships with their own bomb intended to destroy the station, and reached the In Amber Clad which descended to New Mombasa to combat Covenant ground forces. He cleared the city then boarded and destroyed a massive Scarab walker with the assistance of a small squad of Marines. As the Covenant departed using a slipspace jump within the city, the In Amber Clad followed them to Installation 05 - another Halo. It wasn't until the Master Chief's disappearance that Will, Fred, and Linda assisted in defending Earth for two weeks.

Master Chief and a small squad of ODSTs landed on this new Halo, and the Master Chief assassinated the Covenant High Prophet of Regret, which triggers the Covenant civil war.

MCPO (Master Chief Petty Officer) John was rescued by the Gravemind, an intelligence of Flood origin, after barely escaping from the High Prophet's main temple and met his Covenant Elite counterpart, the Arbiter. Gravemind had a secret agenda and sent the two soldiers to stop the Prophet Hierarchs from activating Delta Halo. (Even without Installation 04, the devastation caused by the remaining six rings would still be apocalyptic, destroying both races and much of the Flood's food sources) Gravemind sent the Master Chief to infiltrate High Charity, the Covenant capital city-ship, while the Arbiter went to try and stop Tartarus, on the surface of Delta Halo itself. As the Chief distracted the Covenant on High Charity, who were already embroiled in a civil war of their own, the Gravemind hijacked the In Amber Clad, filled it with Flood combat forms, and Slipspace jumped the unlucky ship into High Charity. Out of the wreckage spilled a Flood invasion force.

MCPO John followed the Prophet of Truth to a Forerunner ship through waves of Flood Combat Forms and managed to board it before it embarked for Earth. On an ironic note from Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, John's surviving SPARTAN-II comrades disappear sometime before his return to Earth assisting Dr. Halsey on Onyx, with John himself being fully unaware of the incident.

Cortana remained on High Charity as John pursued the Prophet of Truth, in order to detonate the crippled and Flood-infested In Amber Clad in the event that Delta Halo was activated. Such a detonation would have been intended to damage the installation to a great enough extent that the Halo superweapon would have been rendered incapable of firing. Despite the fact that the activation countdown for Delta Halo was initiated by Tartarus, however, Cortana did not detonate the In Amber Clad.

[edit] Halo 3

See also: Halo 3

On May 9, 2006, Bungie released a trailer and official announcement on their website confirming Halo 3. Although some have speculated the SPARTAN in the trailer (who rarely speaks in-game) isn't actually SPARTAN-117, Bungie has confirmed in a Weekly Update that it is, in fact, him.^[3] A new commercial for Halo 3 aired December 4th, and is now available for download in 720p format on Xbox Live.

[edit] Appearances in other media

While developing Dead or Alive 4, Team Ninja originally approached Bungie asking to use the Master Chief in their game. While this proved impossible, due to storyline restrictions, Bungie's interest in the idea resulted in the development of Nicole (Spartan-458), a character that is seemingly unrelated to the Halo storyline that could conveniently (and somewhat plausibly) be inserted into the DOA universe. Nicole-458 was inserted into the DOA universe when Bungie acknowledged the Haunted Apiary game as canon, permitting the time traveling Nicole to be inserted into present day reality.^{[citation needed]}
Master Chief's Helmet is an unlockable item for Character Creation mode in Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space.
Master Chief is mentioned in the first episode of the Halo-based machinima series Red vs. Blue. While talking to Simmons, Grif says, "I signed up to fight some aliens. Next thing I know, Master Chief blows up the whole freaking Covenant Armada, and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, fighting a bunch of blue guys."^[4] Thus giving some explaination to the setting.