#and how that’s explored through the unseen facets of Halo’s universe that Red vs Blue just so happened to build itself on top of

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Adding onto this if the OP doesn’t mind me hijacking their post somewhat. Ever since 343 started making a broader effort to canonize civilian usage of Spartan equipment, a big question about the project freelancer content of Red vs Blue’s narrative has started to sneakily find itself more and more narratively justified. Everything between the Rakshasa and Hazmat cores implies some really interesting things that generally amount to ‘now we can explain why the project freelancer agents had armor that looked like Mjolnir without them having augmentations.’ In the past at least I think the implication was always that they were utilizing an unpowered form of Mjolnir without the neural link that helped predict movements before they occurred. Though, this was relatively unprecedented and hard to substantiate with canon, since the broader Halo universe at the time the project freelancer flashbacks were written only had Marines and ODST using unpowered equipment. Now with what we know about what would eventually become Spartan IV’s and folks that used Hazmat tech, the once strange hole of continuity that was the unpowered Mjolnir armor of the project freelancer soldiers has been filled in. I find it interesting how years after this original Red vs Blue content was written it’s still finding ways to integrate itself with the broader ever changing Halo canon.

man I love watching halo lore videos talking about the differences between bungie canon and 343 canon because it adds a completely new layer of understanding to rvb.

for example; in bungie's halo an ai experiencing rampancy is an ai realizing its sentience and gaining true freewill—aka, they become human.

in 343 canon this is obviously not the case, and an ai experiencing rampancy is degrading into non functionality rather than transcending from the limitations of their original programming.

both forms of rampancy involve the ai "going crazy", but it's so interesting to see how these lore changes are reflected towards the ai's in rvb. with burnie and matt returning I wonder if epsilon's rampancy is going to reflect bungie's lore instead of 343's, and if his degradation in function will instead be attributed to the fact that he's always been an unstable ai fragment whose functionality has always been questionable?