Moving Halo to Activision Is the Right Call | Unpacked

You kind of touched on this in Firelink, but I would be so interested in a postmortem book or doc on 343/HS. They were one of the less transparent studios out there, being one of the pioneers of the "say nothing and let pure conjecture presented by 'leakers' dominate community discussion" communication strategy, and what has slipped out has not sounded good

I’d argue Halo has been doomed since Microsoft bought Bungie. From then on Halo was A Tentpole Franchise and making a good game became a secondary concern. I remember being disappointed by 2’s story, it felt like CE again but focused group tweaked. They never trusted Halo to not take place on a halo or involve the Flood (see Reach and ODST being left hanging). Then there’s the 343 era which…certainly happened. It was the second tranche of novels, Legends, and the DoA 5 tie in that made me press the pillow down hard on the face of my lingering nostalgia. It screamed “we just want to copy Star Wars” (see the multiple rereleases and remastering of the first three games plus the introduction of a split canon a’ la both wars and trek). Handing off to Activision suggests they’ve want to do a CoD but with an IP they can keep platform exclusive.