Holy shit... I watched latenightgamings video on the troubles development of h5 and mcc and it explained a ton. Some employees at 343 told him what happened and the reason for halo 5 launching unfinished as well as the buggy mcc launch. I'm not a 343 fanboy or hater. But this definitely makes me feel better about 343 and the path of halo. Now this isn't 100 percent confirmed but supposedly late night gaming has been told this by 343 employees. So take this with a grain of salt even though it sounds legit imo. To sum it up, Microsoft wanted cortana to exit the halo series because of their cortana assistant thing so they forced 343 to kill her off. But, when fans outraged they had 343 bring her back. Also, halo 5 was meant to be an open world spin off game, where you do what the trailers of h5 said you were going to do. But the voice actor of chief told 343 he wanted to retire soon so they are planning on killing him off in h6 so they didn't have time for a spinoff, hence turning the game into halo 5. ( if you remember halo 5 was originally called "Halo". ). So they had to rush the game out, as they were around halfway finished the game but had to start all over as the fans would outrage if the game didn't stay true to classic halo mission style. Originally, fire team Osiris was going to be just a one time thing and fire team majestic was supposed to replace chief. But when Spartan ops wasn't received well and they had a new team in their new game, they gave it a chance, which failed. Supposedly, 343 is planning on getting rid of fireteam Osiris and they are bringing a new character along with brutes back in halo 6. That'll be interesting. As for the microtrans actions, those were forced upon 343 by Microsoft as they saw how well it was doing with other games so they thought, "why not halo?" As for mcc, it was SUPPOSED to be halo 2 anniversary alone and they only had one year to do it, but Microsoft wanted a console seller for late 2014 and they thought it would be easy to port all 4 games to Xbox one in 1080p 60fps. So 343 ended up having to dedicate even MORE of their staff away from h5 and to mcc so that they could finish it. Of course, they did finish it but it was a buggy launch. One year isn't a whole lot of time to bring 4 games on one disc to Xbox one, especially with only half your developers working on it. So before you guys go bashing 343 for halo 5s story and lack of content, think about how many rewrites and and the behind the scenes shit going on. Supposedly 343 really loves halo and if you watch their live streams, it seems like they do. They are enthusiastic and they are doing everything they can to bring halo back. They are a very new developer and they have finally matured imo. Halo 4 was a test, halo mcc was meant to be a "we're sorry for halo 4", halo 5 is "we will bring back halo" and halo 6 will be "halo is back" TLDR: Microsoft made poor decisions that affected the future of halo. 343 didn't plan for halo 5 to be halo 5. It was supposed to be a spinoff game, that's why it was originally just called "halo". Mcc was originally supposed to be just halo 2 anniversary but Microsoft forced them to do all four games in one year.