: The blog post is helpful in clarifying why I was so confused by the trailer's
: circumstances. To be honest, I remember nothing about the final conflict
: or resolution in Halo 5 and I only remember a little more about Halo 4. I
: was trying to remember why Halo 5 would have ended with the Chief floating
: in space next to a broken Halo but failed.

: So it's like a "soft reboot" where the events of Halo 4/5
: technically still happened and are canon, but 343 will introduce some time
: skip and some hand-waviness to make this effectively a new story. That's
: interesting. I guess they eventually figured "The Reclaimer
: Trilogy" (it was a trilogy, right?) was a lost cause and changed
: course?

Sounds like it.
It's also an attempt to prevent continuity lockout. You know how the problem with comics is that if you're going to buy a new comic, you have to buy five years of the back catalog to understand what's going on? It's a massive turn-off for new readers who just want to pick up a story and enjoy it.

Since the biggest complaints leveled at 343i games is that Halo 4 was too reliant on the books, and Halo 5 was incomprehensible even if you've read the novels and comics and the miniseries about Locke, Halo 6 is going to start with a clean slate. They're going to tone down the callbacks and the extraneous characters as much as possible.

Bonnie and Frankie have both (IIRC) said that the media is going to stick to its own swimlanes from now on. That means that we're back to the good ol' days when the games only occasionally mention stuff from the books. Meanwhile, that TV show that's still in production? It's probably going to be kind of in its own bubble too. Maybe it'll mention characters and events from the extended universe, but if so, it will go to the trouble of introducing them proper as if the writers came up with the idea themselves.

: The graphics are unimpressive. The models are cartoonish too, but that seems
: intentional. I can understand if they're trying to get "back" to
: the cartoonish style of Halo 1/2/3, but it feels overdone here. Almost
: like the artists pinned this image to their cubicle and used it for
: reference rather than how the armor actually looked in-game . That's the
: charitable read, anyway: the less charitable read is they're doing the
: classic 343 maneuver of copying things that became really popular three
: years ago and going for a Fortnite aesthetic.

Graphics look fine to me. Some of the coloring is off, but I really couldn't care less that it doesn't look hyperrealistic. I've been saying for years that Halo ought to step off the graphics treadmill and adopt a clean, stylized look so that assets can be reused from one game to the next.

Trouble is, I'm a layman when it comes to vidya game design, so I don't know how much work that would save compared to the sales it would cost 343i. I dunno, is ultra-realistic-next-gen-cutting-edge graphics that much of a game seller anymore?