"...Everyone in this prequel seems to be fully aware of their ultimately doomed status, too. No one's particularly surprised when the Covenant do show up (with incidentally all human characters immediately being totally familiar with the operation of Covenant weapons and vehicles; you'd almost think they'd just built this game off the engine of a previous one or something), and the story is focused on a small commando unit whose members spend the entire game having a prolonged "Who can have the noblest death?" competition. Oh come on, this isn't a spoiler! They wouldn't characterize this many NPCs if they weren't going to pick them off like After Eight mints. The very first image in the game is a brief flash-forward depicting your helmet lying discarded in the dust of battle-scarred terrain, what the fuck do you think happens in the end? Your character thrillingly and climactically gets a little bit hot?"