: Armor design is definitely my biggest gripe with 343i's art direction. They
: don't take nearly enough time to clean up and focus their designs before
: building them as finalized assets. The visually noisy designs that they
: put out look neat in motion, but just don't have the kind of staying power
: that comes from a strongly defined silhouette and conservative application
: of fine detail.

^So much this. The over-complicated paintjobs on Halo 5's armors (which look like they belong to race cars instead of military hardware) further mess up any sense of form the designs may otherwise have and generally just overload the viewer's ability to take in the visual information.

: It also doesn't help that 343i seems to pretty frequently farm out building
: MP armors to contractors, resulting in the in-game assets being of
: inconsistent/variable quality.

I've noticed that as well. The concept art for the Mark V, for example, looks fine for the most part (sans the lack of the ammo belt) but the final, outsourced 3D asset is all wonky and wrong.

I'd much rather have a handful of distinct and iconic sets than dozens of forgettable ones, though Reach's system where you just changed bits and pieces of the armor remains my favorite. But the "quantity over quality" philosophy sells better I suppose.