&c.

All you saw were some eyes and some wrinkles. You know what he looks like from the books, so this is not a big revelation or anything. Nothing distinguishing was revealed. I liked seeing it, because it rammed home the fact that he is getting old, and just being told that by some DB captain doesn't do it. You are working yourself up over nothing.

It does not matter if certain gameplay aspects have existed in earlier titles, having all that stuff in one game is what makes it like cod. Not to mention the way it is implemented is similar. The Hit markers, unlimited sprint, white text points that pop up in the middle of the screen that tell you how awesome you are every time you hit a vehicle once and someone else blows it up. Kill steaks, point based scoring, loadouts and so on. The whole points in the middle of the screen thing every time you kill someone or do something would have been enough to cry foul for me, but it just brings it all together. And it is bringing all of this stuff together and wrapping it up in a package that looks like cod is what makes people think it is like cod. It may not play like cod, but it certainly looks it. And imo, Reach plays too much like cod for me tastes (compared to 3) and 4 only introduces more cod-like elements, so I don't see how this helps the issue.

Yeah they did some serious retconning in Reach. It really didn't make any sense at all. But I think the more important point it, we will not be fighting Brutes in Halo 4, which I welcome. I thought they were super duper boring in 2, and kinda interesting to fight in 3. Don't really miss them.

It will be a close quarters thing, I don't think people will have much trouble with it on more open maps where anyone using it will just get shot in the head. It looks cool, but there really is no point talking balance just yet.

It is just a stylistic choice. Each incarnation of halo makes changes to the way the enemies look. What they did in the web series is fine.