Am I the only person who assumed Canon armor would refer to Mark VII + stuff that is already known to exist in the Halo franchise?
I’m not going to knock the idea of doing something new in general. But I really feel like if they wanted to go with this patched together armor look, they could have just selected one of Halo 5’s more makeshift armor sets as the core, adjusted it visually for Infinite’s art direction, and created all these new helmets and armor attachments for it. Instead of introducing yet another brand new core of armor to the franchise. There are so many potential cores that are already canon to choose from. Mark VI, Mark IV, various non-Mjolnir armor cores introduced in Halo 4 and 5, SPI, ODST, etc.
Mark VII, attachments (for any core), and the non-canon armor cores already provide ample space to inject new designs into the franchise. And there are more than enough canon armor cores that exist in the Halo universe to focus that part of the experience on nostalgia instead of creativity for the entire lifecycle of this game. This means every season can give us both one new (non-canon), and one old (canon) core. As well as new (both canon and non-canon) and old helmets and attachments.
Halo 4 and 5 both already did a lot to bloat the canon up with all these various non-Mjolnir Spartan armor cores. I don’t think we need to keep pushing down that route further. Having the non-canon fracture armors is the best way to add more without further breaking the immersion of just how unique, technologically advanced, and expensive Mjolnir armor is supposed to be. But that’s just my two cents.