: Consider that the Genesis had split screen gaming at 60fps in 1992 with the
: release of Sonic 2. That system had a 7.6 mhz processor and 64KB of RAM.
: There is zero reason Halo 5 could not have done splitscreen. 343 simply
: had to lower the graphical fidelity, or simulation complexity to do so.
: They chose not to do this. Their hands were not tied.

If they weren't going to lower the framerate, why would they lower the resolution? They can't give in on this but they can on that, for some reason? Not only that but if anything you'd want full resolution for split-screen because all the details are going to be squished, you'd want to see them as clearly as you can.
Making the simulation less complex is much easier said than done. I don't think Havok has a knob where you can turn down the calculations per (milli)second for velocity or gravity.
Comparing a 2D game to a 3D game, let alone one with anti-aliasing and various other prettification techniques, is not completely fair, and I think you know that on some level. I really wish you would learn even the basics of programming (enough to get into the theory and practice of how to do it well) so you'd have a better idea what the fuck you're talking about when you decide to bless b.org with your informed opinion.
Beyond all that, this is just intuition, but I'm pretty sure their hands were tied by whatever part of Microsoft is one or two steps above 343 Industries, or maybe by the general manager(s) of 343, they were told they had to meet the numbers and check the boxes.

: Alternatively splitscreen could have run at 30fps or something like that.

: As for innovation, it is indeed overrated, but the desire for novelty is not.
: I never played Halo 5 a second time, because it's basically the same as
: all the other Halo games, and I'd rather play something new. That, and the
: story being about nothing and just not being that good.

Not that it's a new thing at all, but I wish a bunch of people could reconcile their view (in this case, Halo 5 is way too new) with your unusual view and come out somewhere in the middle.

: I do not think Halo will ever be regarded as it was in its height. That's not
: 343's fault necessarily; that's just the way the universe works. You think
: Doom 4 is gonna be as big a deal as the original was?

The problem people have isn't the notoriety, it's the quality. Plenty of people said Doom II was just as good as the first one, even though it wasn't groundbreaking at all while the first Doom was one of the earliest first-person games to have true multi-level structures (and I think some things about lighting?). It was so adequate that for the next Doom release id didn't even try to revamp the game, they paid fans to make new levels using the existing assets, and they came out feeling pretty good, and that release was looked at as Doom III by many people until a proper Doom 3 came out.