This might be the best post I've read here in years. Yeah, it helps that you did a far more eloquent job of putting into words some things I've been posting since the very first Forerunner novels (this hard on for humanity and how great we are, the way Forerunners have been portrayed outside of the games and in H4), but my own personal biases aside, you really, really touched on why the writing and story direction has been downright frustrating if not flat out awful.

343 can take all the notes it wants to make Halo 5 good (and I'm sure that emphasis is on multiplayer), but I really hope they read things like your post when trying to write and progress a story.