The only Halo thing I've experienced that I would call bad is Halo Anniversary, and that's because it failed in several of its goals, it failed to present new things that I aesthetically enjoy, the control schemes could've been better, it doesn't work right with non-widescreen monitors, the extra story content required an expensive extra piece of hardware, and it was obviated by the Master Chief Collection just three years later. The Master Chief Collection I wouldn't call bad in the same way because the core concepts are solid and when it works it's quite good, it just fails hard in its execution.

: There's a lot of talk on here currently about how much people loved Hunt the
: Truth and hated Nightfall, and similar discussions have of course occurred
: in the past regarding other productions.

I still don't get what was supposed to be so bad about Nightfall-- I thought it was fine, not great, but really not bad.

: It seems that the Halo community (as any audience) has a general consensus
: of things that work and don't work... we all agree that certain productions,
: by their presentation and content, have more merit than others within
: the Halo universe. But have we ever actually stopped and discussed what it is
: that makes Halo content good and what makes it bad?

We usually discuss that whenever something comes out, don't we?

: If you were to create a Halo production, what 'template' would you use going
: forward to ensure that each release is enjoyed by the fans?

: Marvel has their template that they roughly follow for each movie, and while
: it's true that all those films aren't great, they're at the very least
: entertaining. If Halo were to have a similar template or series of
: guidelines to follow, in your opinion, what would they be? Do you think
: that Halo can even follow a production template to success?

I'm not familiar with Marvel's template, what's it like?
For Halo, and just stories in general, a template doesn't sound like a good idea, even a checklist doesn't sound so good. Constraints can help creativity but that kind sounds like it would do more harm than good.