It’s more that they wrote themselves into a corner with Cortana’s state/loss, all the forerunner lore being out in the open now, the weird Guardians stuff…

Infinite could have been a much more subtle expansion on the forerunners, keeping them enigmatic like the trilogy, and kept Cortana. That’s much more straightforward and “Halo”

The open world stuff wasn’t awful. I loved the marine encounters. But yeah, it felt half baked.