Wait. Your last post was in 2010. That's not more than five years.

j/k. Welcome back.

: That being said, I see some familiar names - Gravemind

: To the old guard - how has everyone fared with all the changes to the Halo
: franchise and to Bungie? Have things changed, and how do you see things
: having gone by all these years? My idea of asking this question is not to
: "stir the pot" or "stoke the flames" but to take a
: kind of retrospective look. My apologies to Louis Wu and to any other
: administrators still active if this topic is in any sense unacceptable,
: but after years of being active on an entirely different forum, my
: sensibilities have changed and I am no longer in tune with the sort of
: discussion that happens here, the discussion that I used to have earlier.

Eh. I've been doing alright. If you want my thoughts on how 343I has handled the Halo franchise, look no further than my really, really, really ridiculously long review of Halo 4. I'm pretty sure you've read my previous Halo reviews, so you know what to expect.

I will say that though Halo 4 was ultimately disappointing (not bad, just disappointing), the fact that the Master Chief Collection will have Halo 1's original multiplayer component completely unaltered is a big deal for me, and it's the thing that convinced me to go ahead and get an XBO before either Halo 5 or a price cut to $300, whichever happened first (note that I do already have both a Wii U and PS4; the XBO will serve mainly as a "Halo Box" for me, though I may get other exclusives like Gears and Crackdown). 343I also said that they're moving Halo's MP back to a level playing field in Halo 5, which sounds encouraging. I'm still willing to give them a second chance.