Certainly a lot has been covered over the last eight months. The gameplay for the most part was acceptable, although a lot of button pushing. Multiplayer didn't suck me in like Reach and Halo 2. The story was ... questionable. The sound effects... poor. For me, there are two main points that killed the game for me.

1. Art Direction
Beyond redesigning central assests that didnt need redesigning, the art team really seemed to have a disconnect. The texture and lighting work tried to make the objects in the world seem more realistic, yet the object design looked very anime in origin. The two do not mix. You cannot make something realistic, and cartoony, and still have it make sense visually. Basically, it felt like the art team was split up, and didn't talk to each other. What makes it worse, is that I know there were several artists that did both texture and model work, which is really disappointing considering the perceived disconnect.

2. Promethean design
This faction had huge potential, and very little was made of it. The Covenant are immitative, not innovative. Why are the Promethean contructs and weaponry not recognizable? Should one of the Promethean weapons have not acted like a Neelder? The Incineration Cannon should have been some sort of heavy Needler, that would explode in one hit, but spray out needles upon contact for added destruction. The Boltshot should have been closer in design to a plasma pistol. It could still have the shotgun function, but have it plasma based instead of hardlight.

The weapons could be reloadable, but you couldn't pick up ammo. Have the reload animation like the incineration cannon. The weapons 'recharge' instead of reload, but they can only recharge a finite number of times. That would distinguish them from both the human and covenant weaponry.

I really hope they take some of the community feed back to heart with Halo 5, but then again, we just got a Jedi Master Chief in the desert. =\