I am still somewhat hopeful because 343 Industries did make a couple of good things along the way.
I really have not much to complain about Halo 4 besides unpleasant sound design and story slowly starting to be stretched between games, novels, comics, etc. Media around the game should be complimentary, not mandatory to getting the full picture in my opinion.
Saw an opinion on Halo 5 that I totally agree with — best multiplayer, poor campaign. Even though the REQ Packs are lootboxes, I never felt forced into buying them and could earn Gold ones without much trouble.
Halo Infinite felt like a Halo themed playground. Grappling hook and open world are fun as hell, and I really enjoyed collecting audio logs for the first time since Halo 3: ODST. Loved the post-rock sounding soundtrack wich still has familiar tunes. But in all other directions it's a bit of a letdown, even after they mostly fixed everything after a disastrous launch.
I really want to believe that the situation here can be better than simple "they want to sell everything until it's not profitable". The universe is massive, there are loads of stories to tell, worlds to explore, guns to shoot, vehicles to ride even without further expansion of the universe. Everything is there, just do something good with it.
A half of self loafing.