: Guilty Spark flat out says "You ARE Forerunner." You can't point to
: in-game canon and completely ignore what guilty spark says to you in a
: cut-scene. If you are going to rank the canon, cut scenes that everyone
: sees would be above a text-filled terminal that has to be sought out.

: not to mention the "record of all of our lost time. human history is
: it?" from Halo CE.

: We also don't fully know where Bungie would have gone with the whole
: "Precursor" thing. and how that relates to ancient humans on
: earth.

So, as The BS Police point out, Bungie was internally inconsistent, even in their own games. Second, to some extent, Spark is an unreliable source of info. He introduces himself as if Chief does not know him at the end of 343GS but then believes Chief is someone who'd asked him a question a long time ago at the beginning of Two Betrayals.

Ultimately, I believe 343i has the capacity to write a better story than Bungie did, if only because they are trying to be consistent throughout all their media, and I appreciate that. I'd say 343's biggest narrative failings are:

A. Telling the stories in an understandable way to the non-EU aware audience (with allowable exceptions for confusion where the character is also unaware)
B. A failure to characterize many of the characters well, either consistent with prior characterization for existing characters or with any decent characterization for new ones.

If they can shape that ship up I'll be very happy.

Knowing what I know now about how many of Bungie's leadership did not want or like the EU makes me wonder if I would've wanted more Halo from them and it helps me to handwave the retcons 343i did to reposition the story after taking over. I loved the games they gave us and I appreciate all the hard work they did; there are plenty of aspects of Halo that Bungie did better than 343i has done so far. At the end of the day, however, the EU is what made me as big of a fan of Halo as I am, and it sucks to hear that many at Bungie looked down upon it.