Halo Stopped Being Relevant A Long Time Ago

Halo: the flagship game of the Xbox brand. The #1 reason to buy an Xbox. The game that inspired countless clones and purported "Halo killers." All of this was true once upon a time. But the reality is that Halo's place in gaming today is not what its legacy would suggest. Consider this--Halo has been irrelevant for longer than it was ever relevant. This realization dawned on me amid the Xbox "reset" news, and while it felt surprising to think about in those terms initially, it's true. Halo's peak lasted for about a decade: Combat Evolved released in 2001, and Reach closed out the Bungie era in 2010. It was around then that things started to go downhill. The exact point at which things started to turn south differs from person to person: Was the brand diluted and beginning to become overexposed with the release of the exceedingly fine Halo Wars in 2009? Was it the mediocrity of 2013's Spartan Assault bearing the Halo name? The shoehorned-in Kinect support of Combat Evolved Anniversary in 2011? For me at least, the cleanest answer is the departure of Bungie from the franchise, and more specifically, the moment that Halo 4 leaned into Call of Duty-style loadouts. (Reach introduced th…