The handoff from Bungie to 343 was always strange to me, as the quality of the novels shot up considerably, while the game writers decided to insert their dick into a blender by requiring you to read all those books to understand the games.
I'm quite serious when I say that Halo 4, 5, and Infinite have very good plotlines that make perfect sense......................if you've read every single novel in the entire franchise like I have. It's an unforgivably bad method of storytelling to bury important plot points, and character development in other media than the one you're telling the story in. FF15 had the same problem, a very poignant Hero's Journey with memorable, and likeable characters, an amazing villain, and they fucked it all up with needing all the DLC, and watching a feature length movie plus a short anime series to understand anything.