r/whowouldwin • u/kelsier69 • Sep 23 '20
Featured Featuring Edward Buck, the Spartan IV (Halo)
Edward Buck
Another Halo feature, this time showing off the capabilities of Buck and his new class of Spartan IVs. This will go over some of the less known/accessible feats from outside the mainline games. If you want to debate using a less often used super soldier, or are just interested in some of the specifics of their capabilities then this is the post for you.
Edward Buck was originally an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, the very best of the humanity's special forces. Following the end of the Covenant War, Buck was determined by UNSC AIs to have been one of their most skilled soldiers which led the new Spartan IV program to attempt to recruit him. Initially refusing due to being unable to join with his entire ODST squad, the restrictions on the program were eventually lifted and Buck spent the years following the war slaughtering alien threats as Spartans are known to do.
Height: ~6'5" // 6'9" (in-armor)
Weight: 113 kg // ~613 kg (in-armor)
Augmentations
As a Spartan-IV, your first challenge will be adapting to a new physical reality. After you awaken from the intensive augmentation surgery, your body will be stronger and faster, and you will find that you can concentrate on tasks and recall facts with ease. Note the following changes, and carefully test your own strength. Newly augmented Spartans have been known to shatter everyday objects with a touch.
- Album of general augmentations - Their bodies were completely overhauled with augmented and nearly unbreakable bones / muscles and new organs, their reaction times were increased, their blood was improved to become immune to most toxins and clot faster, they can see in the dark, they can interface with AIs, they can eat a raw tree and get the same amount of calories as a six course meal, their hearts are weaved with tech that pumps it hard enough to let them outrun a horse, their lungs are enhanced and they can breathe methane for up to an hour, among other details.
- Buck's vision is good enough to read the fine print on the bottom of contracts from across a room, and his hearing is enhanced to the point he can hear people coming from several rooms away.
Mjolnir Armor
Spartans are hard to kill, but when paired with Mjolnir powered armor they are unstoppable. Created specifically for Spartan physiques, this revolutionary powered assault armor increases your strength, speed, agility, response time, resilience, and overall combat effectiveness on the battlefield.
- Spartan IVs all wear GEN 2 Mjolnir armor (and are likely soon to wear GEN 3), older armors boosted both their reaction times and strength by a factor of 5, with GEN 2 likely increasing them further.
- Every suit comes with built in thrusters which drastically increase mobility, give the ability to leap dozens of meters and even grant limited flight.
- VISR/sensors - Mjolnir has an entire suite of sensors bundled into a program called VISR, it provides them a 360 degree imaging system that extends far into the EM spectrum.
Strength/Skill
Unarmored
- Buck remarks that any Spartan can tear their instructor into pieces without a sweat.
- Even in conventional heavy war gear, a Spartan IVs ability to leap, dive and scale uneven ground surpasses the average soldier by over a factor of 10.
Armored
- Lifting 3000 kg Warthogs, bending steel and shattering concrete is a baseline feat for all Spartans, not indicative of their limits.
- Buck fist fights with another Spartan, throwing punches that would shatter regular peoples bones. The fight from a distance sounded like rolling thunder.
- Buck and his Fireteam slaughter their way through a large battle.
- Buck, alongside Fireteam Osiris and Blue Team fight through hundreds of Forerunner Armigers. - At one point he stomps through an Armiger without breaking stride.
- Buck and and another Spartan easily defeat a pair of Goblins, which are ~3 meter tall bulletproof mech suits described as walking tanks.
Durability
Unarmored
Armored
Speed
Unarmored
Armored
- [Scaling] In their first ever appearance in the lore, Forerunner Armigers immediately deflect bullets, and they are a staple enemy that Buck and other Spartans routinely defeat.
- Everyone on Fireteam Osiris outruns several Ghosts (top speed of 132 kph) that are all running for their lives.
Marksmanship
How to use Buck/Spartan IVs on WWW
Pick a loadout and put him up against anyone, he's street tier so him and other Spartans would be a good match for many characters. Spartans in general scale to each other due to having the same augmentations and armor, so providing the Spartan IV Respect Thread would be useful in any debate.
Recommended Reading
The game Halo 3 ODST features Buck as one of the main characters as he leads his spec ops team through the invasion of Earth, and Halo 5 features him in his current status as a Spartan. Outside of his main game appearances, the novels New Blood and its sequel Bad Blood go over Buck's and his team's journeys outside of the games, including his transformation into a Spartan. They're also the best content that feature the S4s so far.
We’d been shipped off to distant corners of the galaxy to fight fractured Covenant forces and beat back any kind of opposition as they attempted to reorganize. You’d be surprised how much damage three Spartans can do, especially when you’re not having to worry about a Covenant destroyer coming in overhead and glassing the ground you’re standing on. The Covenant always had better spacecraft during the war, but we could hold our own against them on the ground. With their alliance shattered, the remaining leaders either in hiding or on the run, and their fleets broken up, let’s just say those were a good few years for the UNSC.
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u/Frylosphy Sep 23 '20
A couple of questions from someone who hasn't read into the lore since the first few books came out. 613kg seems light for a spartan, did they reduce the weight of the mjolnir armor system? and as a second question when did they start adding in the augments to lung and blood? I was under the impression that the mjolnir armor was made to handle environmental hazards.
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u/kelsier69 Sep 23 '20
613kg seems light for a spartan, did they reduce the weight of the mjolnir armor system?
For the longest time the weight in armor was stated to be half a ton / 450 kg which is also close to the Master Chiefs exact given weight in armor. Recently we've been given the specific weights of other Spartans which are decently higher like Bucks, or Fred who weighs 600 kg in armor despite also being lighter than the Chief outside armor so the weight depends on the specific armor model. As for remembering them being heavier, maybe you're misremembering the 1000 lb statements to have been kg or something.
and as a second question when did they start adding in the augments to lung and blood? I was under the impression that the mjolnir armor was made to handle environmental hazards.
The S4s were originally supposed to not need armor in favor of having insanely powerful augmentations, but it made them crazy so they dialed back on their power.
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u/Frylosphy Sep 23 '20
You may be right about me miss remembering the weight. side note I love how Halo is seemingly making the universe feel abit more grounded when they pull the curtain back and show the failures.
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u/frogglesmash Sep 23 '20
The more you learn about Halo lore, the more the games start to feel like dishonest war propaganda that's been disseminated by ONI.
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u/Dreadpipes Sep 28 '20
I love the disconnect between the books and games, frankly. Game chief is this ooh-rah amazing hero, book chief is.... sad.
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u/Qawsedf234 Sep 27 '20
Didn't notice this sooner, but you forgot to link the thread here