Aish, forget that.

As 343i are so quick to remind us themselves, they're filled with people with years or decades of game development experience. Individuals overflowing with talent, plucked from dozens of AAA studios across the industry with many published, highly-lauded titles. What's more, they're all huge Halo fans too*! Who understand Halo on an intimate level and TOTALLY get where all you guys are coming from. Trust Us^TM. It's totally the best Halo game ever: I mean fast early sales mean everything. Right guys?

You CANNOT have it both ways: you can't claim credit for all the successes while passing off all the failures to some external source.

You either own both: you honestly accept shortcomings and try some humility on for size or,
You own neither: other people could have done just as well or better, and branding, marketing, and established design did the job they were supposed to.

*unless of course they're not.