: In short, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with
: cheapLEY. I wish you all would stop with the half-assed fictional
: justifications and admit that this is a reboot.

I'd prefer full-asssed justifications and some reversions. I also disagree that it's a reboot, because they've included all of the previous story, I'd even say they've taken pains to tie things together. They've... replaced a lot of things established in Halo 3, but the continuity is there.
I wish they would do a full reboot so the arguing about this can end (and we can start arguing about whether first-universe Halo is better or new Halo).