: To start, it's borderline absurd to think that all of the Ghosts, Banshees,
: Scorpions, etc would look identical to each other; that there would be
: only a single model. Like saying "fighter jet" and expecting
: only F-16s. Something I always think (again, just personally) Halo can use
: more of is a sense of... galactic biodiversity we'll call it. Variations
: and permutations that really actually make the world feel diverse and
: "alive" so to speak. So when the opportunity comes along where
: we have a new model of rocket launcher, or Warthog, or Wraith, or
: whatever, you better believe we'll try and best find a way to fictionally
: "fit" it into the fabric of the universe. It's much more fun
: IMO to imagine squadrons of Banshees or Seraphs made up of various models
: flying through the air during a battle than to just assume "whatever
: is the newest look is the 'real' look and the 'only' look it's ever been)

The U.S. Army has a single MBT that's been in use for 35 years and a single attack helicopter that's been in use for 29 years. While the Air Force does utilize multiple fighters, the F-15 & F-16 forming the bulk of their total fighter fleet, they are all different in form factor and role. The F-16 isn't just an F-15 with a bunch of kibble and greebles added. It is much smaller, less expensive, and designed with a different role in mind (the F-15 was designed to be a straight-up air superiority fighter, while the F-16 was designed as more of a multirole fighter). The F-15 and F-16 have also been in service for decades. The USAF also only utilizes a single dedicated ground attack jet, the A-10, which as been around for 38 years. And the various subvariants of a given model do indeed have the same basic shape and appearance. General Dynamics doesn't hire some design school student to put his spin on ever variant of the F-16, for example.

All the "new" vehicles in Halo 5 are functionally no different from their predecessors. They fit the same role and have the same basic weapons and capabilities. They don't even have new names, just new numbers in front of them. We've just gone from "T-26 Banshee" to "T-54 Banshee" and "M-808 Scorpion" to "M-820 Scorpion." They were visual overhauls only. That's just not something we'd expect from an actual military. Also, we're expected to believe that in the six months or so between the end of Halo 4 (counting the end of SpOps to be the official end of H4's story) and the start of Halo 5 that Jul Mdama's faction just up and tossed every single vehicle they had and all got completely new ones, and that the UNSC did the same with their tanks and ATVs?

You know why these attempted justifications for the new designs fall flat? Exhibit A: The Chief's armor. Changes in cryo for no particular reason. Still has the same battle scars from Halo 3, but a completely different design. Exhibit B: The Dawn. Magically transforms from a Charon-class to an oversized Strident-class. There was no reason for any of that besides a desire to put one's own stamp on the series, regardless of whether it produced "visual plot holes" or had a consistent design language with the rest of the series.

Bungie wasn't innocent of redesigning things, but 9 times out of 10, they didn't beat you over the head with it with egregious visual retcons. The changes were usually subtle, and the new designs were often very similar to what came before. When there were really big shifts, they often either had plausible explanations that fit the narrative well (the Chief getting new armor in Halo 2) or were borne of gameplay necessity (the Brutes being given powered armor to make them a hybrid of Elites and H2 Brutes in terms of gameplay). Hell, even Reach had the excuse of using the Army instead of the Marines for why the human weapons (esp. the AR) looked noticeably different from how they did in previous games. The biggest crime against visual continuity Bungie ever made was changing the Autumn's design in Reach, and they rightfully got a bunch of flak for it, but that was the exception, not the rule. Bungie's Halo games overall had a very unified visual language.

The visual language of 343i's Halo games are however very different from what came before (barring models reused from Reach in Halo 4, obviously), and it has a negative impact on the "experience" of Halo. It serves to break continuity, suspension of disbelief, and immersion in the fictional world. Just imagine if between Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock that the Enterprise just suddenly changed from a Constitution-class ship to a Miranda-class ship, or if in The Force Awakens the Millennium Falcon was redesigned to look more like the Outrider. I'm sure any hardcore fans of either franchise would find that unacceptable, and even more casual fans might have been very puzzled.

While Sabre was having to work with the fact that the original game formed the substrate on which H2A was built, even when creating new visual assets in terms of artistry they hewed very closely to Bungie-era Halo, and I honestly think they have a better understanding of Halo's visual language than 343i's art dept. does. H2A looks like Bungie themselves could have made it, while Halo 4 and especially Halo 5 don't really look like they belong in the same continuity. They look like they're from a full reboot.

: Sometimes those things are created specifically as a different model from the
: beginning. And yes, sometimes it's just artists being artists and putting
: their own spin on something. Thing is, I see some of you saying
: "fictional justification is dumb, just call it artistic expression
: and be done with it." If we were to do that, each new thing would
: simply be overwriting the last, as if the last had never happen, and
: frankly, I think that's silly (in most instances). If you are fine with it
: simply being artistic license, then it already shouldn't affect you
: whether we come up with a reason or not. It just looks how it looks and
: that's it.

I think it's more that some of us just want the art dept. to admit that they just wanted to redesign things for the sake of redesigning them and that visual consistency was not a priority to them.

: Some of us however, prefer the idea of adding to the universe
: and trying our best to make it all fit together as best it can. Does it
: always work? Of course not. Some rationalizations are naturally a stretch,
: and we do the best we can.

They can add to the universe by creating entirely new types of things, not radically redesigning existing things for no good reason and then trying to find a way to shoehorn into the fiction after the fact. Create entirely new weapons or vehicles or species. I actually didn't mind the Prometheans and their weapons, or the Infinity and the Strident-class frigates, or the railgun and SAW. But I did mind totally unnecessary, arbitrary, and often nonsensical changes made to various established assets.

: On asset reuse, that's oftentimes just a reality of the process. Take the SOS
: Elites. The H2A versions and the H4/5 versions simply don't use the the
: same underpinnings (tech wise); it's not like simply reskinning one to
: look like the other. So in order to be more efficient with resources, it
: makes sense to utilize one over the other.

I don't buy the tech-related reasons for having to redesign things, because Bungie retained a great many designs in the generational leap from Halo 2 to Halo 3. Despite having to rebuild these assets for a whole new engine for a whole new, more advanced system they still managed to keep a great number of things looking nearly identical to their Halo 2 counterparts. Hell, even when Sabre had to recreate a number of Halo 2 assets from scratch because they didn't exist in Reach or Halo 4, they still kept them looking really damn close to the originals. "Technical reasons" is an excuse, an excuse that many other developers don't make because they didn't need to make it, because they didn't radically change iconic designs for no good reason.

Also, re: SoS vs. Mdama's Covenant, we had two factions of one species with differing appearances before. Halo 2 presented us with Sesa Refumee's heretic faction, which had differing armor but still existed alongside the regular Covenant forces, which retained their look from the first game. Bungie could have just taken the regular Covie models and given them a palette swap, but they didn't. Having more "traditional" Elite designs for friendly Elite forces in Halo 5 could have worked.

: On species variation , again, I think it would be absurd to imagine that ALL
: Elites look like they did in H2A, or H4/5, or HW. Same with Grunts,
: Jackals, etc (yes I know Jackals are a bigger stretch; please, it's sci-fi
: lol). On a fun side note, my wonderful and lovely significant other is
: currently finishing up her phD in Biology, with a specialization in
: Functional Morphology. So trust me when I say I have some pretty decent
: access to a wealth of rational scientific hooks on which to try and build
: relatively plausible justifications for regarding phenotypic variation.
: Again is it perfect? No, but it's not nearly the stretch that many a forum
: denizen or casual fan might assume.

I've had discussions about this very subject here before. And to reiterate what I said in those older discussions, anybody who knows anything about biology knows that you simply don't see such radical variations in morphology in real life between closely-related species. Definitely not at the genus level, much less the species level, and not even at the family level. You may have to start looking at entirely different taxonomic orders to get radical differences in skull structure and dentition like those you see between the "common" Jackal from Bungie-era Halo and the "Ibie'shan" Jackals from 343i-era Halo. It is obvious that they do not belong to the same species, genus, or family, and that their most recent common ancestor must have been tens of millions of years ago or more. I mean, just look at how similar these various animals from the order Carnivora are in terms of skull design:

And as for the Halo 4 Grunts, that's just a flagrant violation of biology right there. We went from a vaguely crustacean exoskeleton to a scaly, almost crocodilian-like skin covered in leathery scutes. Whoever redesigned the Grunts for Halo 4 obviously just didn't care and thought Grunts should be scaly now, screw continuity, biology, or any other considerations besides their desire to remold the Grunt into what it became. At least they backpedaled on the Grunt's integument in Halo 5, returning it to its previously crustacean-like appearance.

: So are all changes/justifications 100% optimal? Of course not, but I'll be
: damned if there aren't passionate and talented folks tirelessly trying
: their hardest to try and get it to all work together, make as much sense
: as possible, and maybe most importantly, continue giving folks a universe
: they enjoy exploring and questioning.

I have no doubts that the people in 343i's art dept. are passionate and dedicated to their work. That still doesn't make it right that they engaged in the most radical and far-reaching redesigns in series history, presumably simply because they felt like it. You never see such flagrant disregard for visual continuity in long-running sci-fi franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek. The people who made those series knew they couldn't change the way things look without having a really damn good reason for doing so. At the end of the day, this isn't about how dedicated artists are to their work. It's about whether or not they have any real respect for continuity and for a visual legacy left to them. So far, 343i's art team hasn't convinced me that they possess that respect, or if they do they have a funny way of showing it.

I appreciate you taking the time to come here and giving us a different perspective on things, but I'm sticking to my guns. 343i aren't bad game designers—I quite enjoyed Halo 5's campaign, and Warzone can be fun as well (Arena still needs work; the return of the 25-meter motion tracker would be nice)—but the questionable decisions of their art department has negatively affected my overall enjoyment of the newer games. After playing Halo 4 three years ago, I couldn't help but feel like these radical changes in art design were pulling me out of the experience, and Halo 5 has only amplified that. They're like some strange parallel universe, or maybe the Chief is still in cryo on the Dawn and is having a bad dream.