I'm going to go ahead and guess that Staten leaving bungie is the reason the story got gutted so hard. They probably couldnt use a huge portion of his stuff and didnt have the time to implement a whole new set of stuff for the release. Why else would they just cut so much content ? makes no sense to have that much done then just wipe / dumb it down. Im pretty sure the development hell & talent leaving the team that went on with this game is the cause of it coming out a shell of it was said to be.