The developers are thinking of their careers. They probably feel that they need to show that they can create the high clutter environments that better hardware can render. They may worry about their future employability if they create low poly environments.

It's just that Halo 4 was butt ugly for me.

The inside of the FuD was like a Soviet washing machine factory.

That structure where the Elite dropped the active cammo module was just an incoherent mess. Stand outside and look up at it. What is its shape?

The orange glare on most Forerunner structures hurt my eyes. The lines everywhere were a strain to look at. It was hard to make out what you were looking at. Everything sort of merges together - like a herd of zebra.

I wanted to play the game with my eyes shut.

What was the shape of the bad guy's spaceship?

Liches were bland, bland, bland.

The Harvester was a mud box sculpture with legs too thin to support it's weight and would have looked very ropey walking around. The interior was disappointing - I had no sense that this was a workable structure.

Elite armor looked like it was made from pappier mache - or half chewed wine gums. Or maybe it was hand made pottery - fired in a kiln and glazed blue. It didn't look like armor.