The problem that people have isn't evil Elites, it's the way that 343i has presented the whole entire issue. The Elites in Halo 4 are not explained to be a splinter faction, it isn't explained who they are [i]at all[/i] actually. And the Kilo-5 Trilogy doesn't help either, as [i]all[/i] of the Elites in that trilogy are cut from the same block and act as if they are a hive-mind. [i]All[/i] of them hate humans and want nothing more than to see them dead and gone. The Arbiter is the only one who doesn't, even his supporters in Karen Traviss' nonsense want the human race dead, the only difference between them and any other Elite is their opinion on [i]when[/i] it can happen. They think they should look to their own affairs first rather than focusing on humans then and there, unlike Jul's mindset where they want to deal with humans right here and right now and kill them all ASAP. That's 343i's problem when it comes to the Elites, they're doing [i]exactly[/i] what you're accusing other fans of, only instead of saying all of them are good or something like that, they take the opposite approach and act as if they're all evil. Thing is you [i]don't[/i] need to read First Strike to understand Halo 2, at that time we didn't know anything about the Longsword, nothing in CE said that a Longsword wouldn't be able to make it back to Earth or all the way to human space in order to get picked up by the UNSC. And First Strike didn't tell you anything about the Brutes either, they show up in that with just as little fanfare as they do in Halo 2 itself and with just as little information. You shouldn't [i][b][u]NEED[/i][/b][/u] the books or anything else in order to understand the games or what's going on within them, the games are the primary medium of the Halo series, nothing else [i]should[/i] be [i]required[/i] to understand the primary medium of a series. That's one of the big problems with Halo 4.