Well, after Bungie bought their independence from Microsoft, Xbox was ready to retire Halo. Bonnie Ross stepped in to take over, and insisted "
I want to be George Lucas" with absolute control of the franchise. Her direction was evidently simple: make Halo into Star Wars. Buckle up.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary started the downward spiral, reimagining the original entry as borderline fanciful high-concept sci-fi, instead of the sci-fi military shooter with a twinge of the grandiose that Bungie had originally created.
Halo 4 was a soft re-boot, cannonising the shift towards their Star Wars ambitions: genetic destiny, special powers, terrible naming conventions. The gameplay suffered as 343i struggled to COD-ify Bungie's "30 seconds of fun", leaving the gameplay in terrible shape, earning the moniker: "Lightrifle: The Game".
The Master Chief Collection was their attempt to package the series up and propel it to new heights. It stands as one of the worst video game releases of all time. That something this broken was ever released to the public will forever be a black eye on Halo. After literally years without a single update, 343i eventually brought on help for a PC port - which was also fucked beyond belief - and their support studios worked for years fixing 343i's fuck ups one by one. Today, it's a decent purchase - but it's horrendous launch and 343i abandoning it will never be forgotten.
Halo 5 was a hard re-boot and the culmination of Ross' vision: multi-media Power Rangers in Space. The reception was nothing short of disastrous. The ensuing backlash was so intense, so universal, so un-ending, that it resulted in the series going on hiatus as 343i attempted to reboot Halo. Again. The gameplay was transformed into "Titanfall Lite" with a focus on mobility. If it weren't called Halo, it might have found a niche.
Halo Infinite was another soft re-boot, attempting to basically undo an entire decade of 343i's incompetence. They wound back their art style, their story, their gameplay changes, and their Star Wars aspirations. The covenant are back, Chief's armour is back, Cortana is back, Bungie's sci-fi military shooter is back. Unfortunately, with zero idea of how to evolve Halo, 343i stuck it into a bland and pointless open world and hoped for the best. The result is a complete mess. It started with the gameplay reveal - who's visuals was so universally unimpressive that Microsoft delayed the game an entire year and elected to launch their next-gen console without a game. When it released, the turned out that moment-to-moment gameplay is actually outstanding - but that's about it. The story is garbage, the presentation is lackluster, the pacing is atrocious, and the missions are almost entirely boring filler trash. The GAAS F2P multiplayer stands as one of the worst managed live services in history, currently enjoying fewer players than the decades old games of the disaster-redeemed MCC collection.
And that's where we are today.
Bonnie Ross ran Halo into the ground because she didn't understand it. That's how 343i fucked it up so badly: she tried to force it to be something it simply wasn't. The result is the biggest fall in the history of gaming. At a time, Halo was the biggest franchise in the world. Today, it's a fucking joke. The damage she did to Microsoft's core franchise is unimaginable and uncountable. Who knows where Xbox would be today if it had a star franchise that continued to deliver the hits that the platform so badly needed.
After Halo Infinite blew its $500 billion dollar budget on a wet fart, Bonnie Ross was fired from her position as 343i's CEO. Xbox appointed three new executives in her place - one of which was the man responsible for ultimately getting the MCC collection into the great shape it's in today. They have since re-branded as Halo Studios in order to put as much distance between themselves and 343i's legacy of failure as possible. Their first project is over-seeing a complete, ground-up remake of Halo: Combat Evolved in Unreal Engine 5. We're hearing mixed reports on it's progress, with the early footage they released having a questionable take on Halo's art style. But what we know for certain is that Halo Studios has lost senior staff who still weren't very happy with the studio and its management. Who knows where we go from here.