The same ship? Absolutely. Yes, there are many differences, which you could enumerate much better than I could, but I find the overall shape and feel of the two models to be far more than similar enough to call the same ship. If you showed me your series of silhouettes and renders, which are very nice by the way, and all I knew about them was one was done for a 2001 game and one was done for a 2010 game not only would I ask if they were from the same series, I'd ask if they were meant to be the same class of ship.

Contrast that to the changes made to the Forward Unto Dawn between Halo 3 and 4. When the new shape of the Dawn was shown (on some of the early Halo 4 concept art I think…) I did not recognize it plain and simple. It took me a few days to even begin accepting that the new shape was still the FUD. Even to this day I only accept it begrudgingly. It's not that I don't like the new version of the FUD, in a vacuum (ha! spaceship joke!) I would likely prefer it to the Halo 3 version, but the changes were far too great and in my opinion the spirit of the ship was very much lost.

P.S. I hope I didn't come off too flippant during our very brief vocal exchange (I'd say online exchange, but this is online too!) I greatly admire what you do and your attention to detail. You've been a great asset to the Halo community over the years. :)