xhonzi said:

I have to say I'm not sure if Bungie will fare better without Halo than Halo will without Bungie.

Well said.

From all that has been revealed about Halo 4 so far, it does sound like they do intend to take it in a whole new direction, which is what it needs. Not only was the gameplay nearly the same throughout the series, but the story continually rehashed itself too. Another Halo, Guilty Spark is back, oh no! Here comes the flood, run! I think that is part of the reason I love ODST so much, it was Halo, but it felt fresh and different.

To this day H2 and ODST are still my favorites, and I think that is because those were the two that did the best job of being a different experience. While Halo 2 rehashed a lot of Halo:CE, there was the whole Arbiter campaign going on alongside the Master Chief campaign, which I thought was fantastic. Three felt like an enhanced version of H1 mixed with a striped down version of H2. Reach felt like Halo 3 plus a few extras with a storyline and characters I couldn't force myself to care a thing about.