@Adavanter Haha well I chose to replay the other 8 awesome levels a lot more than the Cortana level... that was really bad (though not any worse than the Library or some of the terrible H2 flood levels)
Halo 2 was "surprise! New aliens!" but I thought it was pretty clear about demonstrating the tensions between Brutes/Elites which led to the civil war. Could they have told that story better? Probably. The Arbiter levels certainly could have been a heck of a lot better.
But Halo 4 is "Surprise! The forerunner who we've talked about in 3 previous games as being long gone actually aren't long gone and are back! And oh by the way they have unexplained superpowers!". Halo 2 comes across as a surprise new addition to the canon; Halo 4 comes across as a surprise retcon of canon.
Disclaimer: I have not read the Forerunner saga novels but I've read a bit about them and they just seem like a classic retcon of the original fiction to me, in order to give an excuse to keep making games post-H3.
It doesn't really matter what Sony wants... as long as there are millions of sheep willing to throw $60+ at terrible, terrible MMS games every year, that's what publishers are going to release.
@Adavanter Yeah I couldn't enjoy Reach's story or characters at all, because I had already read Fall of Reach. There was so much potential there, and I will never for the life of me understand why Bungie felt the need to retcon the whole thing.
@Adavanter You can't criticize H2's story without criticizing H4's, because they both rely on similar methods of storytelling. Much of their stories are told through obfuscation and material presented outside the game. And while I agree that Halo 2 is a rush job when considered by itself, when you consider how the whole trilogy winds up working it is actually very good IMO.
I actually thought that H3's campaign was the most fun for replayability except for CE.
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