343 Industries have ruined the Halo franchise

To begin with, I would like to apologize to my opponent for taking so long to post my argument. In order to prove my point, I would like to look at a couple of factors that the series is renown for. These are:1. Depth of the campaign2. Other game modesAs this debate is about the effect of 343 on Halo, I will not be making any comparisons with other FPS games, and would kindly request that my opponent also attempts to refrain from doing so.Argument 1 - 343 put no time or effort into the campaign for Halo 4 / AnniversaryWhilst I appreciate that Anniversary was just a remake of the original, and as such was not a direct product of 343, I would like to point out how absolutely underwhelming the game as a whole was. 343 showed themselves to be an extremely lazy development team, as they simply updated the graphics of the previous title for the campaign when they could have improved upon some of the simple design flaws that were present. As an example, I will take the mission 'Assault on the control room', which sees you battling your way through endless identical corridors with little to no deviation, aside from the occasional outdoor portion. Surely it would not have bothered fans if 343 had decided to improve upon this clearly poorly designed level? Furthermore, the mission which I believe is titled 'Two betrayals', is nothing more than the level I have just mentioned but in reverse. I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that this is terrible stage design, which could have been altered even slightly to make the stage somewhat enjoyable. In terms of the Halo 4 campaign, it delivered an experience so shockingly poor that it makes Anniversary look like Halo:Reach in comparison. The first level sets up what promises to be an action filled story, complete with well executed quick time events, and is truly a joy to play. Sadly, the joy of the first level is short lived, as you are swiftly dumped onto the games main world, and are presented with no further exciting gameplay until the final mission. The characters in the game are all one dimentional and boring, especially the villan, and the voice acting for the aformentioned character is so bad that I often struggled to make out what he was saying. The new types of enemy that are introduced are more frustrating to kill than the covenant, and the 'plot twist' surrounding their true identity has little impact on the player or the story. For the rest of your journey, you will not encounter a single quick time event until the end of the final level. Picture the scene: You've just chased the main villan through slipspace to the skies above Earth. You blast your way into his ship, following which you shamble your way through hoards of repetetive enemies. You charge into the central room in a bid to stop him from firing his devestating weapon at the planet. Tragically, you are moments too late. The weapon fires, and begins to devistate the planet below. Filled with rage, you charge across a light bridge towards where the villan stands, eager to finally lay waste to him. You draw your weapon, ready for a climatic final fight, and... a cutscene starts...? You assume that this is just a pre - battle scene to build the mood further. However, you soon realise that the ENTIRE FINAL FIGHT is taking place within this very cutscene. You're prompted to perform one final quick time event, bringing the grand total in the game to 4 (Oh... I get it! It's called 'Halo 4' and there are '4' quicktime events! Clever!!) before the villan plummets off of the light bridge and into the depths of space below. To cut a long story short, you detonate a nuke IN YOUR HAND and survive thanks to the sacrifice of the other main character, who dies in a completely emotionless and boring cutscene. The earth has also sustained no damage from the weapon and everyone is happy. the end.343 may as well have ended the game with Master Chief waking up in his cryopod from the begining of the game, summarising the campagin with '...and it was all a dream.' I think anyone would struggle to argue with the face that 343 have taken one of the greatest aspects of the Halo series and completely ruined it, in favor of other aspects of the game. This, however, doesn't mean to say that these other aspects are any good either following the arrival of 343.Argument 2 - 343 tried to alter a good system, and failed miserably.Returning to Anniversary, the additional game modes within this game were alsohandled in an extremely lazy maner, with 343 simply copy and pasting the multiplayer, firefight and forge engines from Halo: Reach. As such, they can be given no credit for the high standards of these aspects. However, they can be credited with the lack of effort put in to creating new maps for these other gamemodes. Whereas the release edition of Reach contained 9 brand new maps, inculding a further 5 within one of these, Anniversary contained 6, and all of them were re-makes of old maps with updated graphics. Anniversary also came with a grand total of 1 firefight map, making the whole game feel more like DLC for Reach than anything else.In terms of Halo 4, the multiplayer system is needlessly overcomplicated in an effort to make a balanced system which allowed for custom loadouts. the end product was a shallow and confusing system which offered little flexibility, but ensured bewilderment from whoever tried to use it. Purchasing upgrades was a laborious proceedure, as credits were only given out upon leveling up, which could take long periods of time. The catchy and interesting titles that accompanied levels in Halo : reach were also done away with, leaving behind nothing but simple numbers. Firefight was also disposed of, and in its place we were given 'spartain ops', which in short were the exact same as firefight with all the fun removed. Instead of the freedom to take down endless waves of enemies, spartain ops offered a vague mission based system, which was boring and repetetive. Although the mode was meant to add extra depth to the campaign, it instead came off as a dull and lazy replacement for firefight. 5 missions came bundled with the game, and a further 5 are now released on a montly basis, which I believe there is a charge for.I welcome my opponents arguement, and hope that he has had a better time with the recent installments of the franchise than I have.