I separate my Bungie Halo (RIP) from 343's Halo (I loved Halo 4 before the weapon rebalancing), so it's not a "back in my day" type of thing so much as it is an annoyance with mismanagement of a rich universe loaded with potential. The whole Geas thing is right up there on the list of worst storytelling devices, with extremely improbable character connections tagging close behind (heck, Luke and Leia coming together is a great example of this bit of bad storytelling, but everything around it flowed so well and their relationship was so inconsequential that it actually worked), and the resurrection of dead characters just because of their iconic status/popularity/marketability.

Given this direction, I foresee a confrontation between Jul and Arbiter, though given the fact that they're leaders of their respective enemy factions, it could work...

Still, Buck going from meeting Noble Six, being the deuteragonist of ODST (and meeting Johnson), to being part of the special squad hunting Chief is a huge stretch of credibility, but storytelling tends to play second-fiddle to marketability and recurring characters.

It's a thing.