: Pelicans can't fly out to a city in the horizon, there needs to be dense
: buildings under them at all times, and they also need to make lots of roll
: motions. Miranda can't pose a thought without an aggressive scowl. A
: warthog can't be driving along a road, it has to ramp up onto it. A scarab
: can't enter by crushing a car, it has to crush a building and then crush
: a car. A pelican can't simply tumble out of control under pink AA fire, it
: has to suffer a big explosion in the process.

: The Chief can't be hefted into the scene by a tentacle in a snap, he needs to
: get zig-zagged along the ground first. The Gravemind can't have simply
: pulled the Chief to his face, he needs to do a spin when the camera
: addresses him for the first time. The chief can't plop down on High
: Charity, he has to do a roll, and have a dramatic clanky-sound
: Needler-"cocking" moment.

: Mercy can't struggle weakly against the infection form latched onto him, it
: has to cinematically flop its tentacles around his neck and he needs to
: flop about in struggle.

: Also, I have to complain about the general framing and editing during the
: discussion with Gravemind. It's very impersonal in the new version, and
: what it focuses on makes no sense. It's especially baffling that the don't
: center around Arby at all during the "your prophets have promised
: you... or all will perish as they did before", which in the original
: showed Arby's train of thought throughout the monologue brilliantly; now
: the camera is focusing on the Chief for some reason, and rather than
: pausing in awe at the appropriate moment, Arby is just sort of twitching
: the whole time. Or when the Gravemind is saying "you will search one
: likely spot, and you will search another", in the original the
: Gravemind gives the semblance and general air of actually addressing the
: group as a team, whereas now he's just yanking them in one by one; he's so
: blunt , not even pretending that his next line will include a
: "this ring will make us brothers."

: The way these scenes are staged and edited just doesn't seem that great. The
: rhythm and ideas present in the originals were sacrificed, and I'm not
: sure what for.

Pretty much this. After seeing that CGI cinema scene, I wish they had simply done everything in-engine like they did in HCEA. In fact, the animation in the original Halo 2 cinematics were generally of sufficient quality that they probably didn't need to bother with mo-cap for any of the human(oid) characters. While Blur's cinematics are well-animated, I prefer the composition of the originals. Having CGI cinema scenes seems like a waste of resources, particularly money and disc space.