I think what changed is Bungie got bigger and they lost their humbleness. Back in the H2 days, Bungie was not sure of themselves. At all. Likewise, they relied very heavily on the community to help them make a good game so that they could give the fans what they wanted. Now, Bungie basically tells us what we want because they believe that they know what we want (without listening to us) and that they are the greatest gift known to man. Did you read that one weekly update where they answer some of the different complaints people are making (like the broken melee system) by basically telling everyone to suck it up because that's the way it's going to be? In this process of changing from making games for the community to making games for themselves, Bungie also lost many of the employees who worked on H1 and H2 who truly cared about the franchise in return for "industry experts". These experts are good at making games and they have a lot of booksmarts, but they don't truly care about the Halo games they make and their competitiveness. To them it's just a job, and its all about money.
I really hope Bungie gets slaughtered by Black Ops. It might send them a message. It. Was actually a very good marketing tactic by Infinity Ward though. Bungie tried to fight back by releasing the rank cap and new maps right around the release of Black Ops, but I bet after November 9th Reach's players will be cut in half.
