As someone whose bread and butter was Halo, I don't know that I can bring myself to care about Halo anymore. Or at least be hopeful about it. 343 seems like a bunch of nice people who work hard, but every step forward they've taken has been accompanied by two or three steps back. They bumped up visual fidelity, but introduced a lot of clutter and lost a lot of readability in combat. They eliminated the AR start matchmaking problem with loadouts, but introduced a host of others by not restricting and balancing well enough. Most recently, they rebalanced the sandbox (which was atrocious at launch), but made weapon and vehicle placement changes to the already-mediocre launch maps that somehow made many of them worse in the process (Gauss Hogs do not belong everywhere. Mantises do not belong everywhere. Those vehicle guns did not need a buff. Scorpions do not belong anywhere). They accelerated the traditional Halo DLC plan and had nine maps out six months after launch, but they didn't learn from the mistakes of the launch maps - these maps just don't work with the gametypes that the game shipped with. It's been a net improvement since the launch of the game, but only just barely. They're continually making decisions that I just can't understand. Next week, they're going to talk about how they're transitioning Team Objective, which was one of the core 4v4 playlists in past games (with gametypes that only work in 4v4 like Oddball and King of the Hill), and shoving 16 players in there...and this is after trying it out with 12 people which was a disaster. It's like they hear people (since there definitely was a push for Big Team Objective), but don't understand what they mean (because the objective gametypes in Halo 4 just don't support that many players - Big Team was CTF and Assault for a reason). I mean, Halo has a history of rough playlist management...but I think the way they've handled Halo 4 beats all of the previous records.
I just don't agree with a huge number of the core philosophies that they've brought to the table, and it would require 343 to vocally renounce them to bring me back on board fully. The things that were actually new about Halo 4 that 343 brought to the table I think are, by and large, abject failures. Their Global Ordnance system that they crowed about so hard pre-launch. Most of their new weapons. Almost every single alteration they made to the existing gametypes, not to mention the conspicuous and unexplained absence of fan favorites like Assault coming off of the gametype-packed Reach. The heavily structured, fundamentally flawed "pick your playstyle" perk and loadout system. The progression system. Dominion. The three new enemy classes. The changes they've made to existing enemy classes, both visually (in terms of player feedback) and in terms of behavior. Their uh..."cinematic" approach. Let's not even get started on Spartan Ops. That was the most blatant example of not understanding how to balance difficulty but keep it fair and fun that I've seen since Halo 2's Jackal Snipers.
