For your pleasure: some awesome renders to show how these assets should have been updated.

343 should hire this guy and let him update the originals. Just look at his scorpion.

To use a Codyism, "the origional/Bungie designs updated are objectively better than the 343 version". By about a billion percent.

If I were 343, I'd just break the 4th wall and admit the "old" 343 versions just weren't as good - hence the use of the updated Bungie-esque versions. I don't care about retcon-bullshit explanations. Excellence is the only excuse you need. (It's why I don't grouse about the Halo 4 suit design.)