I think 343i can look at why people tend to overwhelmingly adore DOOM '16 and implement some of the same ideas/attitude into what they’re doing with Infinite, sure.
DOOM’ 16 really works for me because it modernized and updates the feel of the classic DOOM experience without changing it in a way that makes it feel fundamentally different. DOOM has always been about soaring around immersive hellscapes at breakneck speed, rotating through an insane personal armory that is constantly at your disposal and dispatching enemies you come across with maximum efficiency and style (DOOM 3 is the outlier for the series in this regard, but everything else so far which I’ve played has accorded very well to this formula).
DOOM 16 changes it up in that it adds modern elements like sprinting and jumping/ledge grabbing in, but it doesn’t feel like a betrayal to the classic formula. The fast and intenze pacing of the gameplay is extraordinarily intact, so battling through the modern DOOM feels very accordant to the classic experience. It’s a very faithful modern adaptation to why people loved playing the old games.
Even if you just look at pacing, then, Halo’s not taken the same approach to modernizing its classic formula. I loved Halo: Reach from the get-go, but Sprint and Armor Abilities in general messed with the more methodical pacing present in Halo 1-3, and modernization attempts in Halo 4 and 5 have only served to further divide the pacing of gameplay in both PvE and PvP gameplay. Beyond the pace of play, though, there are also considerations like the complexity of the sandbox to take into consideration. In classic Halo, there was a simple, niche-oriented sandbox with variation typically centered around role (Sharpshooting, Spray and Pray, noob tube etc) and then delinieated by faction (Human and Covenant alternatives in classic Halo) to add a bit more variety.
Modern Halo’s Sandbox feels overwhelming in comparison, which further distances the feeling of “playing Halo” as originally experienced in the original trilogy. DOOM gets away with it because the classic formula established a large weapon wheel (although the DOOM usable weapon sandbox isn’t even as complicated as Halo’s has become).
Halo wasn’t about any of this originally. It was a medium-paced game with a limited, function over form weapons sandbox and moderate player mobility and speed. That’s the formula that made Halo hyper-relevant and the leader of innovation in the console FPS market in its prime. And it’s the formula that Bungie stopped fully endorsing with Halo: Reach, and which 343i hasn’t gone back to with 4-5.
People won’t regard Infinite with the same reverence as they do DOOM '16 unless 343i can bring back some of that Halo feel. They may be able to make a great new feeling game of their own, but it won’t be treated as a return-to-form in the sense that DOOM is unless it reclaims and modernizes without compromise that Halo 1-3 sense of pacing and simple to pick up but difficult to master gameplay.
