I love RvB, and I love its character roster. Each soldier has such a unique novelty to them in terms of their personality and their voice, but one thing's still kind of got me a little bit irked after 15 years of seeing the guys...

...most of them still wear the same damn thing.

Now I can understand why this was a thing in the Blood Gulch Chronicles, Halo 1 and 2's armor options were limited, and even beyond that it made sense for every character to wear the exact same armor type because they were all stationed in the same outpost under the same organization.

Not so for Halo 3 and beyond, where after briefly separating they've gone far beyond the reaches of their humble little box canyon.

A thing I always liked about Seasons 6 was that while all of the other characters kept the Mark VI armor, Caboose reverted back to his Mark V helmet. It gave him a little extra novelty that no other character had since he was, for a while, the only major protagonist with any sort of non-colored visual diversity. In short, he sticks out more compared to the others around him. And it works.

Since then all else we got from the permanent Reds and Blues team was Carolina, also known as the only member who wasn't introduced prior to Season 6 (barring Epsilon as he's still a copy of Church). Arc exclusive characters like Kimball or side characters like Locus don't really count as they're not consistently a part of the core dynamic, even if it's nice to see some diversity from new characters like them.

But yeah, only two members out of the thirteen recurring Red and Blue squad soldiers have anything to help them stick out compared to their color-coded brethren. And honestly with how many armor types Halo has had since 3, I think that's kind of a shame. The armor's iconic but I don't believe it's so iconic that everyone needs to wear it.

I don't think anyone would have thrown a hissy fit if Simmons or Grif or Sarge had gotten new threads since the time skip following the first story arc. The series was still getting its bearings and most casuals probably wouldn't care about the differences in the transition as long as they kept their iconic colors and voices. I think it's a lost cause that they didn't go for that.

Even now, I think it could have been neat if some of the Red and Blue members pulled a Carolina and got some armor upgrades on Chorus. Or if Lopez Dos.0 had a different design that the original Lopez would end up usurping instead of an identical copy of his original body. Or if Tucker kept some variation of his Meta suit after Season 13 (even if it wouldn't be one-for-one the same since that version of it apparently isn't in Halo 5). And to be honest even though I definitely wouldn't want everyone to get radically different armor, I still wouldn't be opposed to one or two of them getting story-based upgrades in future episodes that actually stuck around this time. Something that helps diversify the remaining 11 Reds and Blues a little bit better, whether it be different body armors or different helmets, rather than 9 of them having the exact same setup when there are dozens of other options nowadays.

Now at the end of the day this is just a nitpick and in no way affects my enjoyment of the series, but I figured it's still something worth talking about.

For all you Halo experts out there, since I'm still not the most well-versed in the variety of armor types, would you be opposed to some Red and Blue team members getting new armor adjustments? If they did, what do you think would suit each of them from a visual standpoint, and which one(s) do you think ought to keep the same classic setup? Leave your thoughts below, and after doing some research on Halo 5's selection, I'll do the same later on. :P