We had no idea what we had.
That period of time where Halo 3 was on the horizon, the talks of the Halo movie, the Believe campaign, Landfall etc. Halo was always a casual franchise but it was our casual franchise damn it. It was our sci-fi universe to play in, it was our military kino to experience, it was our alien bastards that we killed for shooting up our ride. I hate this current era where nothing is allowed to rest, everything has to be a franchise to live forever destroying the legacy of what came before. Every sci-fi IP is going through this and I fucking hate it.