: Haven't really noticed the difference in combat dialogue, but I think perhaps
: the rearrangement of the mission dialogue was overshadowing that (343GS
: doesn't have most of his normal dialogue cut, as far as I know, it's just
: a lot of it was shifted into the intro cutscene.)

: At least on Xbox it's been stable and haven't run into any technical issues,
: except for one lock that forced a restart of the mission which I think
: might have been in CE too, Rockslider might know—the marines had turned
: hostile to me (I'm guessing they were getting taken out by explosions and
: blaming me) and so when I got to the final rockslide area, once I cleared
: out the dropships Echo 419 did not trigger.
locked on

I'm curious if your Xbox get hotter then normal running the game? I noticed the marines in an mission they are in are quicker to turn on you. The game soft locked on me in three missions. But I think the recent update was supposed to fix that and address a few other bugs and glitches as well.

: I think a lot of it isn't worse, but different... I think the more simplified
: corridors or AOTCR and 343GS are probably an improvement, as is pruning a
: little of the repetitive sections, but I also felt like there was more
: room to be ambitious with those elements rather than just removing them.
: The Library is very different and I can appreciate the changes, though I
: wish it had kept at least some of the more cathedral-like, desolate
: passages because that mood was lost with the new version.

I enjoyed the new design of the Library, it wasn't as tedious and repetitive as the original. I think I was rather underwhelmed with AOTCR was on the snowfield because it seemed like there was a lot less enemies in this battle. I'm sure I'll warm up to the new AOTCR the more I play it.

: Ultimately I feel like for most casual fans and newbies, this is a solid
: introduction to the series and feels appropriately modern without throwing
: the CE goodness out with the bathwater. But while us hardcore fans were
: always going to be picky, I think there were plenty of unforced errors
: they could have figured out. Some I'm hoping are going to get patched or
: balanced (the excessive waypoints, which I was surprised to see even
: regular critic reviews pointed out as too handholdy) but the more systemic
: choices are really just going to have to wait and see if it's reflected in
: the (possible) Halo 2 Campaign Evolved, similarly to how Saber did a much
: better job the second whack around with H2A.

I agree, Cortana's hand holding is not needed.

: I think I'm mostly bummed from a fiction standpoint they didn't do more to
: integrate The Flood. Mobutu doesn't get named despite appearing in the
: Library, Alpha Base doesn't get mentioned (and what the other Marines were
: doing would have been more interesting missions than the prequel stuff.
: You could still have had Johnson, too!) and little touches like giving
: Zuka Zumamee his shade turret in The Maw would have been really nice.