https://www.resetera.com/threads/bloomberg-343-industries-is-all-but-starting-from-scratch-with-halo-layoffs-new-engine-mp-main-focus-for-now-more.681661/page-11#post-100552033
I enjoyed Halo 4 a lot, after falling in love with the franchise thanks to Halo Reach.
Halo 5 was a mess.
Infinite was extremely ambitious but it had... a bumpy road, to say the least. Not even a supposedly monstrous budget avoided the tranwreck. From meme factory to unexpected redemption to brand destruction, all in just over a year.
343 never felt "organic". Many employees have more or less explicitly indicated that there were an extreme reliance on contractors and vast, long-term incompetence in the upper management. Ross and Wolfkill leaving their roles probably signals the advent of a new beginning for the studio.
Also: I remember Frank O´Connor being the franchise director of such a flagship while still having time to post dozens of trivial messages on NeoGAF per day during some of Halo´s darkest days. That always caught my attention: the Xbox crown jewel was on fire and one of the guys in charge was spending literal hours talking about the audio system in his high-end car o some other non-related stuff. In retrospective, it felt that something was not right.

spoiler (click to show/hide)
Plus he was a virulent racist

I still believe the Xbox anniversary stream killed Bonnie Ross' career.
You had Peter Moore and Ed Fries talking about exciting new technologies and all these stories about Xbox and they hadn't worked on anything Xbox for years.
All Bonnie could say was that she liked working on Fuzion Frenzy, that she now had a nice office and that HALO was a big IP. It was clear that she had no fucking clue what was going on at 343i.
Peter Moore tried his best to help her too.
P: "Oh wow, HALO 3 now that was a launch, we spend our nights play testing it to perfection. That must've been the same for HALO 4 and 5 right Bonnie?"
B: "The team is always working hard on new HALO experiences"
P: "Ok... yeah awesome, so no looking back but always looking at the future right? All these new things like games as a service, VR, AR, Web3. It must be great to work on the future for HALO"
B: "With HALO we are always innovating"
P: "So like any new things you can share..."
B: "Well I'm really excited just how big HALO is now. When I go out and I meet people and I actually learn they work at our studio even though I've never met them before"
at that point there was an awkward silence.