: There's a lot of game development that happens before you write the first
: line of code, especially for a new studio. There's hiring staff, setting
: up the office, designing the story, creating concept art, etc. 343i was
: created while Reach was still being made, and they've been working on Halo
: 4 all that time.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20304

While the article is not accurate, I know this proves that 343i started being assembled around the end of 2007-early 2008, that was the time when Bungie gave the middle finger to Microsoft and started having ideas about Destiny. my guess is that they would take a year to get everyone they needed assembled (2009) before working on Project: BLAH4BLAH (Halo 4's rumored code-name) which was around the time when Reach was announced.

But I don't think they really started working on Halo 4's engine until they got a build of Reach to work with, after all 4 is just an ODST situation with it being built on top of Reach. and I can't see Bungie giving up their materials until they felt they were done with Reach UNLESS Microsoft stepped in and told them to give them a build of Reach to work with. if the development cycle is 3 years like always then they would have gotten a build of reach that was at least 75-85% complete considering Reach didn't reach 100% completion until August 5, 2010 and launched a month after that.

That leaves 2 years to finish Halo 4 the game itself. not a whole lot of time to create, build, implement, test, fix, test, ragequit, get back to it and test again, and finish Halo 4. kind of explains why Halo 4 is the way it is, hell who can even focus on multiplayer aspects when...fuck I'm derailing never mind.

Anyways, my point is that 343i wasn't formed during Reach's development cycle, the idea of 343i's Halo 4 was. 343i itself was formed long before halo 4 343i version had a script.