: And you aren't getting that with 343i's Halo. There's no exploration of what
: Covenant tech can do, there's no thought paid to how the UNSC has adapted
: existing technology to fight the Covenant, there's no intermediate steps
: between "Covenant has it" and "UNSC has it too, only better."

: Where's the battalions of soldiers armed with captured Covenant weaponry?
: Where are the ODST suits enhanced with materials acquired by cutting
: Covenant armor apart? Where's the negotiations with the Covenant Fringe
: for obsolete starships?

Personally, I wouldn't trust Covenant tech or even materials any farther than I could throw them (and I don't have a lot of arm strength), until they're understood down to a sub-microscopic level. Who knows what kind of tracking devices might be in them, or what kind of tracking devices the Covenant might have that can home in on those materials? Who knows what kind of dead man switch or self-destruct mechanisms they might have? Who knows when they'll start producing massive amounts of radiation (because it seems like most Covenant tech does at one point or another)? I wouldn't want to carry something like a plasma rifle or Covenant carbine as a soldier for longer than I had to, and as a commander, I wouldn't order or even encourage anyone under me to do it unless the risks were fully understood, or if there were no other options, or if my CO had ordered it.

: Because 343i is following the Marvel Mindset of Insufficiently Advanced Alien
: Technology, where the nuances of technology built thousands or even
: millions of years ahead of our own are perfectly comprehensible to mortal
: man. Where the difference between Human technology and alien technology is
: not measured in performance or ability, but the color of the metal and the
: presence of tron lines.

I got the impression from Spartan Ops that really the UNSC didn't understand what they did with the Infinity that well, especially if you count out Dr. Halsey.

: : : Then you're not telling science fiction. You're dressing up another genre in
: : : the trappings of science fiction.

: : This is precisely what Star Trek TOS was.

: Tried to be. Failed to be.

: Not as bad as the later seasons, I'll give it that.

That was definitely one of the driving forces, but I wouldn't nail down ST: TOS as being "issues fiction dressed as sci-fi". Anyone remember "Catspaw"?

: Ask not what the difference between fantasy and science fiction is, because
: those boundaries exist for all to see and are beyond question and that's
: how it must be if I want to sleep at night.

hahah, you're a genre hipster :p
I'm mostly kidding of course, you like what you like for your own reasons, and that's fine