u/Born-Boss6029

Had a great time playing this remake; I give it an 8/10 personally. However, no one seems to be addressing the several elephants in the room from the prequel missions in how it fits into the lore.

So I'll ask and see what you guys think:

1. How do the Covenant speak English in the prequel missions when this is a year before Reach, in that game they don't speak English? Did they always know how to speak English?
2. In the FoR novel, Chief did not seem to know who Sergeant Johnson was. The last time they were acquainted was in Silent Storm. Yet they banter in Meteorite like friends. But in First Strike, Chief nearly kills Johnson for assuming he might be flood-infected. Afterwards, Chief is incredibly professional around Johnson in that novel.
3. How does Master Chief's Mark 4 armor have energy shields? In fact, when did the UNSC incorporate Shields? In Halo Wars 1, when Red Team takes damage in gameplay, they have shields, but not in cutscenes of Halo Wars 2 during the fight with Atriox. Then, Noble Team wore MK V(B) as early as 2551 when the armor was issued, and it had shields. Making the V(B) the first armor to have shields, so why does Chief have them? Is it just a non-canon gameplay thing like in Halo Wars?
4. Operation: RED FLAG was doomed to fail due to the UNSC's lack of information on the Covenant's "home world". They didn't seem to know what High Charity was, yet in Metorite's ending Johnson has an image of the HC.
5. When the prophet of Harmony was first revealed, Chief says, "What’s a prophet doing here?" How does the UNSC know about the prophets? We know in FoR, the first time they heard a Prophet was via an obscured transmission from Truth. They wouldn't have known what he looks like.
6. I thought the reason why the master chief earned the name "Demon" was because he destroyed Alpha Halo. How is it that he’s called Demon in the prequel missions way before the events of Alpha Halo happened?

In Halo First Strike, John-117 believed he considered Linda-058 to be the best Spartan because she can operate effectively as a lone wolf and as a sharpshooter without needing a spotter. And given that she did an impressive stunt in First Strike (dangling off a suspended cable upside down and shooting Banshee pilots out of their cockpits), literally less than a day after surgically recovering from plasma wounds, I can see why.

John has also said that he would lose a fist fight to Fred-104 because not only does he consider him the currently physically strongest Spartan, but he also believes that Fred intentionally holds himself back to give the others the spotlight; in many ways, he seems to consider Fred to be his successor as leader of the Spartans. There's also the fact that Fred is a tactical leader, often the de facto leader of Blue Team when John's not around, and he is an excellent fighter with knives.

With all that taken into account, who is the best Spartan-2/Spartan in general? Both in practical terms and in terms of how the Chief judges them? One can even argue that Chief is the best since he's a jack of all trades, so to speak. He already spends most of the games being a lone Spartan with various weapons, so it's not an easy question to answer. But I want to know in his eyes, who is the best?