Ok. I've gotten home from the graveyard shift, having crawled through the closest thing to human feces that the FDA will allow inside a food processing plant*. I've taken a shower, but I'm still amped up on two cans of Red Bull. Now really isn't the time to post a reply, but I'm going to do it anyway. And I'm going to start out with an apology. A real apology! 100% honest, sarcasm-free apology, printed where nothing short of a server crash will ever remove it from the internet.

I was wrong to say that Halo 4 was immeasurably worse than The Phantom Menace. While I feel that both suffered from similar problems, the Phantom Menace had Jar Jar Binks and the creepy Anakin/Padme romance.

Coming home from work, I saw the chance to make a joke at Halo 4's expense. I knew it was beating a dead horse, but I had a funny-looking stick with which to beat it, and the timing seemed just right. I should have been the grown-up and refrained.

End apology.

*To clarify that point: Mashed peas and pods, when they accumulate in the corners of the waste conveyors and ferment for a week, smell like the breeze just downwind of a compost pile and an outhouse. The muck is brownish-black, lumpy, and sticks to everything.

Believe it or not, the waste from organic peas is worse.

: I understand the criticism, and it seems like
: 343 does as well, but I really think you guys are seriously overlooking
: some of the massive things that 343 is adding to the Halo universe.

Have you heard me bitching about the Chief/Cortana relationship, or Dr. Tilson, or the Forerunner saga?
No. Because I'm NOT overlooking some of the massive things that 343 is adding to the Halo universe. I'm looking forward to the MCC and Broken Circle, so I've scarcely given voice to my misgivings about them.

I've been bitching about Spartan IVs and the Infinity and the watered down Forerunner precisely because I'm not overlooking some of the massive things that 343 is adding to the Halo universe. It's there, it stinks.

: Sure,
: they took a few missteps on a few small details, but small details can be
: corrected as they learn. Just look at what they've done for the
: overarching story. Stuff that I've wanted to see since Halo 2...

Let's draw a line in the sand here. Let's clarify where we stand.

You like this stuff about the Infinity and the Spartan 4s. You like the focus on the Forerunner to the nigh-exclusion of the Covenant. You love this stuff about Humanity's Manifest Destiny and the birthrights the Librarian left behind for us.

None of that is appealing to me. I don't like the retcons that have been implemented to put the UNSC on this tech level a mere six years after their industrial base was leveled to the ground. I don't like how 343i abandoned dozens of promising storylines to go chasing after this Forerunner rigmarole. I don't like how they've reduced the Forerunner to "Human-like society and technology, with a little hardlight painted on top". And all that is just scratching the surface. As science fiction, it's just not interesting to me.