They really think the industry is in the shitter and that studios are being closed and developers being laid off left and right because Gamers are boycotting video games that have too many female/gay/black characters or not enough booba and because video game studios don't employ enough white dudes. I know they're terminally stupid and wilfully ignorant but the way Microsoft's shitty hiring practices have affected Halo are well documented and they have nothing to do with developers having blue hair or pronouns on their bio
THEY WILL FIND OUT THE HARD WAY
lmao
Early Halo started before that trend though, the first few were bright and colourful, but were radically different from your Dooms and your Quakes which were the cornerstone of the FPS genre at the time. As the brown muddy slop FPS market got started afterwards, Halo also jumped onto that trend, and become generic brown muddy military slop, yeah, around Reach like you said.