I feel like John is this old relic of video game back the day where the main character are white men that don't talk much and locke and his team are like the opposite. Idk that just me.
I could write an essay abt how Halo itself is a contradiction, and how 343i is taking huge leaps and bounds to make it "relevant". Because in all honesty, Halo itself IS a relic. It DOES come from that era. Simply put: what was the "norm" in the early 2000s simply isn't "acceptable" now, both technically speaking and culturally speaking. But the current tenants are doing good: 343i is incorporating and telling the stories of more POC characters (and keeping them relevant, of the 8 leads in H5, four of them are female and three of them are POC, while the HunttheTruth campaign is told from the perspective of a black journalist) as well as maintaining an equal male to female ratio (heavily leaning in the female direction, too!)
tl;dr... these games have been around quite a while and reflect the fluctuating expectations in the gaming community. Not to say these expectations didn't always exist, people are just being LISTENED to now, and more ppl are making games who can make a difference. So like, Bungie probably DID see John as a white dude. That was just the norm for games then. But as a faceless protagonist, he was supposed to be whoever you wanted him to be. He's a relic... but a lot of people have been following his story for a decade and a half now, so there's a lot of takes on what he'd look like, and that doesnt mean everyone thought he was white. Unfortunately no matter what's revealed, someone's going to be unhappy, and that's just the disappointing truth.
