: I thought it was an okay release. Wasn't, you know, fantastic or anything,
: but I never really thought anything poorly about CEA (except maybe the new
: Halo ring- everything else seemed fine though). It seemed unnecessary, but
: what they did with it didn't really offend me.

I talked a lot about it before and during its release. Here's the highlights I can recall (Sorry, I've tried to wipe it from my brain. I even went back and tried the game again with a beer and still got angry. I know, it's stupid.)

-The cinematics were the worst part for me. The motion-capture they employed captured none of the actual characters. Master Chief didn't feel like a stoic soldier in heavy armor, etc. (some would say, 'at least it's better than what was there,' but I would disagree - what was there meshed with the overall style of the game.

-The random use of Reach and Halo 3 assets shoved onto the old animation skeletons to replace the character and vehicles without actually looking at the original's designs and recreating those. Weird randomly-colored Elite Majors, Bumblebee pilots wearing Halo 3 armor while the marines wore Reach armor... There was no consistency. Master Chief's armor turned out alright. I don't know who they were looking at when they recreated Sgt. Johnson.

-A number of the environments, especially the Forerunner structures veered way too far from the original designs and just felt random. Instead of uprez-ing and preserving what was there, they replaced the smooth designs with as many details as possible and flashy textures. Metal looked like human-made plastic instead of the minimalistic, seamless stone-metal of the original. The Halo ring is course, the biggest monument to this.

Overall - they changed instead of preserved. I know I'm in the minority and I know others haven't stared as closely at the originals' details for a decade like me, so I know I won't be convincing anyone. Most people probably don't even notice the little things that drive me crazy. It's just when it comes to preserving art, I get stupidly stubborn. I would rather have had a complete reboot, so the originals would remain a space apart.