I've never been a huge fan of 343i's art direction. The environments look nice, but I never cared for the changes they made to the creature designs, vehicle designs, etc. It's almost as if they've made an active effort to purge any traces of Bungie-era art from the main series (fortunately Sabre kept H2A looking very faithful to the original). They've also had problems with the use of color, with very few instances of contrasting colors, especially between the environment and things within the environment (i.e., AI units, items). The Covenant especially used to contrast very well with the the surrounding environment. They used to utilize bright, bold colors. Not just their purple ships and architecture, but also blue, red, orange, gold, and white were heavily used in their armor, the colors being indicative of rank. Making them distinctive did help gameplay in addition to giving the games a look that was distinctive from the usual grey and brown shooters that were all-too common in the 00s.

But under 343i's watch the Covies have gotten duller, with more muted, lower-contrast colors (excepting the Jackal's shields, which are still bright blue or yellow). Combined with their tendency to "over-design" everything by adding a ton of unnecessary details and you get situations where it's hard to tell higher-ranking Covies apart from the weaker ones in the heat of battle. Even their formerly bold purple vehicles look dull and muted much of the time, depending on the lighting. Nothing really "pops" anymore. Bungie's art department simply made better use of color, lighting, etc. Love 'em or hate 'em, Bungie knows how to make some damn good-looking games. Almost makes me wish Marcus Lehto & crew had worked with 343i on Halo 4 and then transferred fully over to 343i once Bungie was done with Halo. Destiny may have plenty of faults, but its visuals are most certainly not one of them.

Anywho, what better way to illustrate these differences than with pictures?