The blog post is helpful in clarifying why I was so confused by the trailer's circumstances. To be honest, I remember nothing about the final conflict or resolution in Halo 5 and I only remember a little more about Halo 4. I was trying to remember why Halo 5 would have ended with the Chief floating in space next to a broken Halo but failed.

So it's like a "soft reboot" where the events of Halo 4/5 technically still happened and are canon, but 343 will introduce some time skip and some hand-waviness to make this effectively a new story. That's interesting. I guess they eventually figured "The Reclaimer Trilogy" (it was a trilogy, right?) was a lost cause and changed course?

The graphics are unimpressive. The models are cartoonish too, but that seems intentional. I can understand if they're trying to get "back" to the cartoonish style of Halo 1/2/3, but it feels overdone here. Almost like the artists pinned this image to their cubicle and used it for reference rather than how the armor actually looked in-game. That's the charitable read, anyway: the less charitable read is they're doing the classic 343 maneuver of copying things that became really popular three years ago and going for a Fortnite aesthetic.