Many core features are missing from this game. I get the feeling that Bungie took on too much to produce in effect four game engines from scratch rather than buying in a unreal port. The everything you see and all the background toolset was built from scratch. This would explain the 5 year development cycle. I could believe that Microsoft took all the ip from Bungie when they took Halo. Bungie to their credit started again from nothing to in effect recreate their 3-d toolset. We have enough antidotal evidence to say that the game was bigger with more story one year out but that story was altered with a lot of content changed in the final year. I personally like the game an will continue to play not for gear or rep but just to enjoy the gunplay. As in not fast enough for the crucible I continu to take pleasure from the box battles