Yeah, i'm actually overall a lot more postive on 343 then most people, and I think on a story to story basis, they've actually done a great job, 4 and 5 aside, since Broken Circle, Last Light, Shadow of Intent, and the Forerunner triology were all great and most of their novels other then that are still pretty decent, but them rushing the state of the universe so the UNSC recovered so fast and then bringing Jul's covenant remant into the fray, getting rid of them, bringing the Ur-Didacts, then getting rid of HIM, and not introducing the Created and Banished, is way, way, WAY too much, way too fucking fast.
Where the state of the universe is now in 2558 is where it should be in like, 2630. They are rushing plot lines and story threads like crazy. If they hadn't done that, that alone I think would have resulted in 4 and 5 being like 50% better story wise.
Well, he wrote Shadow of Intent for 343, so who knows. He was on stream for one of Xbox's weekly dev hangouts or whatever a few months ago, actually, and I *think* it got asked there if he would do more Halo stuff, but I don't recall for certain.
I unforantely only found out about it after the fact, I wish so badly I could have asked him what his original plan for Truth's endgame, what he wasgoing to use the slipspace crystal shards from First Strike for, and what was responslbe for the personality change in him we saw in 3.
It looked pretty polished for a prototype, if nothing else. A bit peeved the guy running the channel won't leak the build but I understand that he sort of can't or else MS will bumfuck him. Though Gamecheat13 and lordzed and co get away with that sort of thing all the time, the absolute madmen they are.