They can still have a rich and diverse universe.... I think that many people were just pissed about 5000 pages worth of necessary backstory to fully understand what they were doing and why being off on b.net and not in the actual game. It's like what 343 did with Halo 4. There's a weak story in-game (this weird old alien dude wants to compose humanity and for some reason there's a faction of Covies who want us dead) but if you read 6 books of external lore, you fully understand Jul Madama and the Didact.