: I guess Captain Spark and Snipe already said it. Halo is just dead.
: The original Halo games (and the novels too) had a sort of magic to them, but
: that was over a decade ago. After a decade of 343i failing to capture that
: magic, and largely refusing to even try to capture that magic, the
: community has largely moved on.

: It's not fun to discuss where the books are going and how subtle hints in the
: books will play out later, because the books largely don't matter.

: It's not fun to speculate where the games are going, because the story arc of
: the games can switch fast enough to whiplash the fans. Reach didn't fall
: like it did in the books! Now the Forerunner are returning! Now Cortana is
: back from the dead! Now the Banished are contenders on a galactic scale.
: And all the while we're trying to flesh out the Master Chief and give him
: character, but he gets less interesting with each installment. After
: Infinite, I just don't give a flying fuck. I don't. And the Edgar-suit
: mockery that's in the Halo TV show is even less interesting.

: I hate to be so negative, but the non-event that was Halo: Infinite and the
: trainwreck that is the Halo TV show has really got me down. After the end
: of Halo 3, there was so much potential. And they chose to focus on genetic
: destiny and the Master Chief's character?

I respect your opinion, but I will say that your view isn't anywhere near a universal sentiment across the existing Halo community. I agree that everything has been incredibly stop-and-go and poorly executed over the last decade, but I do still find some good buried in the narrative that I'm still hopeful they can capatalize on if they can get their shit together; they've at least managed to keep something in there that can be revived. However, that's coming from someone who quite liked Infinite's narrative.

I'm still not sure when or why it happened, but as I got older, I started caring about the lore and the major events of stories and started caring more about character motivations and character arcs. Infinite focused on that heavily, so while the plot was light and barely noteworthy, the character development was honestly, IMO, some of the best the series has ever seen. The Arbiter is probably the only noteworthy example outside of perhaps ODST. Noble-6 were caricatures, and while they weren't bad, there wasn't too much development there, just the emotional journey anyone would go through during those events.

I'm hopeful because I felt like, despite all its flaws, Infinite gave me the feeling that they understand the heart of Halo, they just can't seem to get their house in order to execute on it properly. I personally suspect 343i operates too much like old Xbox/Microsoft.