It may just be me but all the footage I’ve seen of the Light Rifle makes me think that it looks like it fires and feels a lot like the needle rifle, just without the super-combine.
So in a way we still possible have the needle rifle in the game, just with a different skin.
I highly doubt that. You have to remeber fired from the hip it is 3 round burst yet less accurate than the BR, but when scoped it is like a DMR, shooting one powerful bullet. The carbine might be a little closer to what you want.
The Needle Rifle is special because of it’s Super-Combine, you take that away and it’s just a Covenant DMR. I like to think of the LR as a mix between the BR and the DMR.