Black Mantis
Member
Bungie really didn't know how to tell a story, that's why everyone that played the games assumed that Halo's lore was really limited and not that big. Honestly if all you did was play Halo 1 to Halo 3 you have a very limited look into the actual Halo universe.
You barely know anything about John's origin let alone about ONI and the UNSC.
It's not really because Bungie were bad, but because it's told from a first-person perspective of right there and then, which I think is a deliberate design choice and I'm a fan of it personally. You're never going to know everything about something/one on a first encounter, which is why the player taking control of The Arbiter in H2 was a big thing for me, as it meant that I'd finally get to see things from perspective of The Covenant.
Every cutscene/event only takes place when MC or Arbiter are there, for anyone to delve into the lore of the universe, they'd need to do Final Fantasy style cutscenes.
I'm a big fan SP H4, but 343 handled Halo 4's Didact and Librarian reveals badly and having the terminal vids off-disc was a big mistake.