Halo: Reach was probably the last super good Halo FPS title.

Halo Wars was a good RTS for a console game... And Spartan Assault was a different take as well.

Halo 4 was a technical showpiece for the Xbox 360 console and gave the Xbox 360 a good send off... But it's Multiplayer and Story left much to be desired, I did like the inclusion of the Prometheans to mix up the flood/covenant stuff that we had experienced already for years.

Halo 1, 2, 3, ODST and Reach was made by Bungie.
Halo 4, 5 and Infinite were made by 343i.
Halo Wars was made by Ensemble Studios. (One of the best RTS developers... Microsoft closed them.)
Halo Wars 2 was made Creative Assembly.
Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike was made by Vanguard Games... With Spartan Strike being the only Halo game never to release on an Xbox console.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary original game code made by Bungie, remaster done by Saber.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection gets tricky... As Saber Interactive did the remaster of Halo 2 with Blur Studios doing the cut-scenes which was incredible, Saber Also did the original Combat Evolved Anniversary Remaster...

343i work involved the combining of all the titles into a single package which ended up being a logistical nightmare, resulting in an absolute unplayable, buggy, terrible mess... Requiring a complete top to bottom rebuild of the set... Microsoft also issued an apology and a free copy of ODST, 1 month of free Xbox Live.

Without a doubt... Bungie made the best Halo FPS games, all of 343i games have fallen short.
Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike were good, albeit short low-budget romps... And Halo Wars 1+2 is a basic, simple, bare-bones, shallow RTS, but has it's charm if you can get around the lack of online population and support.

Here is the kicker... Did you know you can still connect the Original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and play the original Halo 1+2 over LAN via backwards compatibility on all the consoles still?

I do it with my consoles on the odd occasion... But I also have a ton of PC's so it's easier just to fire those up instead.

I think that's part of the issue... People are expecting 343i to be like Bungie.
They aren't Bungie and never will be... But 343i also needs to realize this and lean on it's own strengths rather than just trying to stick to a formula or continuously make the same mistakes. (I.E. Lack of Content and expected features with Halo 5 and Infinite on launch.)

One advantage of having their own in-house engine was that they could engineer the engine to the consoles strengths and weaknesses... I.E. Halo 3 used the Tessellation unit (Something Sony didn't have until the PS4) to make Tessellated water effects.
But they also pushed a ton of Alpha Effects which the Xbox 360's insane bandwidth was really amazing at handling.

And Halo 4 they leveraged the extremely flexible shaders on Xbox 360 to implement subsurface scattering on skin to give a very realistic effect... Which ironically is ray tracing.

What did Halo 5 and Infinite do that wowed people to want to buy an Xbox console? It wasn't class-leading graphics, Halo 5 was a terrible looking game and it didn't even have 60fps animations, it was built as a 30fps game.
And Infinite was ridiculed heavily for it's flat texturing and lighting, which forced a delay in it's release.

Technology matters, I just hope that a shift to UE5 isn't going to make the games feel "samey" to all the other UE5 games.

The move to UE5 is kind of disappointing to hear. Less bespoke engines on the market now.

But it should make it easier to port to PS consoles, and to get additional support from other teams also using UE5.

Like most trilogies, it always goes down hill, like we have seen with Star Wars or Indiana Jones etc. It's extremely hard to maintain such epic story telling when the best parts of the stories have already been told.

They didn't do Reach but I still agree with you. 343's biggest issues were seemingly being unable to put it all together in one package but they did show signs of greatness for each entry in one specific area. For example, Imo, Halo 4 had a great story but the multiplayer was meh. Halo 5 had a meh story but the multiplayer was great, however it was lacking content with missing Forge on launch and a lack of unique maps.

Halo Infinite actually came the closest for me to them putting it all together, a great story, a great multiplayer, the art-style and Chief model is among the best in the series, I'd also say the best Chief in the series, the core gameplay is Halo at its best. Unfortunately they fucked up on content again, a lack of biomes for the campaign, no Forge on launch and they utterly fucked the post-launch support of multiplayer.

When Forge finally arrived, it's by far the best Forge mode ever, the multiplayer at its core is awesome due to the gameplay but it's a multiplayer title and they shit the bed on the post launch support and that's where the vast majority of criticism came from, if they didn't fuck that up then we'd be looking back at 343i differently, they may not have been going through this huge revamp even.

Unfortunate it is too little too late for Infinite to recover but at least they still support it. Halo Infinite's core gameplay is the best in the series. I really hope they don't change that for the sequel, I also hope they don't change the art-style for the sequel or soft-reboot the story once again, Lol. They need to fix their content pipeline (which Unreal Engine should help with).

Also, I really hope they stick with Atriox, he is Imo one of the most interesting Halo villains, I loved him in Halo Wars 2 and Halo Infinite but they didn't have enough of him, his backstory is great and he is more complex of a character than the Prophet of Truth and more badass than Tartarus. He has a lot of potential as a villain. I also loved Didact (he's amazing in the books) but they shit the bed by not keeping him on as a villain and fleshing him out more, Didact should have been the villain in Halo 5 instead and it would have felt more like there was some sort of long-term story plan.

Exactly. They never will be bungie and they'll never capture that lightning in the bottle that bungie has. Wether people are expecting it or not, they just don't have it in them. And graphics performance aren't the problem, it's the core gameplay and how they design the games. Pretty sure that fan base wants a semi linear game with little fluff but one that has core gameplay as addicting and feels as good as Destiny 2 and well designed MP maps to be able to use the perfect fps gameplay against other people. That's it, there's no more to the equation and 343 can't seem to do that. 

They do have it in them because the gameplay of Halo Infinite is about as close to a Bungie Halo as it can get. If you played it, you would know the gameplay for Infinite is why people even kept playing as long as they have because it's damn good. It's the other problems it had like missing content and long delays between new content.

The difference between 343 and Bungie seems small but it's the difference between great and exceptional. You pick up Destiny 2 and it instantly feels incredible. The difference might be small in length but there is a vast casm between them.

They do have it in them because the gameplay of Halo Infinite is about as close to a Bungie Halo as it can get. If you played it, you would know the gameplay for Infinite is why people even kept playing as long as they have because it's damn good. It's the other problems it had like missing content and long delays between new content.

Why is everyone still mentioning 343 as if they exist anymore? Everyone that led 343 throughout these tumultuous years and missteps are now gone. 343 doesn't exist anymore. The whole point of this thread being "The New Era Begins" is because this is a completely fresh new start for the studio.

New leadership from top to bottom, a LOT of new creative leads since the entire creative team was laid off, new tech, and from what's been said so far, a new concept on making Halo games. Which I imagine stems from not having to create and maintain their own internal engine now.

343 was always good from a gameplay perspective, like 343's Halo games always felt good to play. So they have talented gameplay developers. Infinite's gameplay in particular is fantastic. So what I'm personally hoping for now with Halo Studios is an entirely new group of leadership and creatives that know Halo and want to bring back those epic stories that all of us fondly remember from Bungie's Halo days.

New names, all look the same, all speak the same.

You're welcome to buy into this blatant marketing scheme (which is basically just the Infinite sales pitch 2.0), other people are welcome to feel indifferent.

Halo was a massive part of my adolescence, I have no problem leaving it there and moving on. They haven't proven they can recreate what made this franchise special and there's no reason outside of blind optimism to believe they ever will.

I have no expecations but good luck to them.