I've been saying this exact same thing for months and although Bungie would never publicly admit it I'm betting that behind closed doors they're saying, "Our fans aren't stupid. They figured out what really went down." and are pretty pissed at Activision over this on the inside. Oh and it was about half of the Halo team that went back to 343. The others are still there, but their head writer went back to 343 after some kind of falling out with Activision it seems.