"What are you talking about?" The art designer says, "It's got a spinning cylinder bit in the middle, is made of grey metal with glowy stuff on it, and it shoots a laser beam, that's exactly like the old one, even added a handle to have it make more sense." Could be worse, they could just retcon the entire thing(glares angrily at Halo Reach). But in all honesty they didn't call it just a sentinel beam, so I assume there's some sort of cheeky background as to why it looks very different. Looks more in line with other Promethean weapons, so they probably changed it to make it more recognizable as a Promethean weapon at a distance. However, if it does the disintegration thing to targets I will nod approvingly, yeah didn't happen in old Halo games but would sure as hell make the thing more realistic as a weapon for fighting the flood, and if we're going to change shit it better be to fix issues from previous games.

"I get my original recon helmet next year, I don't care what the sentinel beam looks like." -Stretchy Dec 7, 2016