I'm sure Microsoft has all the money in the world and especially so for its baby.

: There were even achievements handed out for finding them.

There were achievements to the considerably cheaper Terminals in Halo 3 too.

: Finally... well, let's be honest. Text is a far better medium for delivering
: information than video. You can peruse and reread passages of text at
: will, but you have to start a video all the way from the beginning. Pure
: text also lets you focus on the information that needs to be delivered, so
: you can have a philosophical conversation between the Librarian and Didact
: without worrying about what Forerunners wear or even look like.

: I guess, in short, reading the Halo 3 terminals felt like discovering
: fragments of a lost epic like the Iliad. Watching the Halo 4 terminals
: felt like watching a bad soap opera.

I think there's benefits and drawbacks to both Terminal styles. I absolutely loved attempting to decipher the meaning behind Halo 3's and Reach's text-based terminals. For the casual player who may not care much to take more than five minutes to read these, though, I would imagine it becoming a distraction that takes them too much out of the game proper.

Meanwhile, the motion comic style for ODST, Anniversary, and Halo 4 accessible in the game (I know, I know. Just imagine it too) is straightforward as they generally concern events that are happening at this very moment or have great meaning to the story we're experiencing while shooting people. Of course, they may not necessarily have the depth that the revelation-heavy text Terminals have, but they are far less likely to take you entirely out of the experience (Yeah, I know. Shut up!).

Since I'd imagine that these text-base Terminals are fairly cheap and provide little burden for the studio, I don't see why we couldn't have both scattered throughout the games.