People are being needlessly contentious. Pick a word and die on that hill at all costs. There is no possible way to give an absolute metric unless every person who has ever played is polled, there is enough small scale samples in every Halo video, every Halo youtuber poll, every Halo forum it’s just they’re not conclusive and don’t get considered. I’ll go ahead and remove the word objective and give 2c.
The floor textures in 4 and 5 are poor in many places, more noticeable in natural terrain. Lower resolution textures that have a repeating pattern were used and it doesn’t neatly repeat, so the ‘seams’ of the texture are visible. Where it clashes with its repeated texture is very easy to find.
The lighting in both games was too harsh with less respect for the player experience, many times staring directly into glare in key places, Haven is a great example, though it happens frequently. The brighter the light the darker the dark areas are, so a result of their choice to use harsh lighting is crushed blacks. The lighting direction 343 went with in 4 and 5 is of poor quality.
When there is an established item in game say the Banshee, there is certain design language each design uses. The expectation is that when it changes it’s usually to make it more interesting or to try something new. With most classic weapons and vehicles the use of colour was more monotone and made less interesting, many were over-designed which weakened their silhouettes. The combination of both left both games with less visual pop as a result. Most items in game retained their general appearance so most alterations detracted from the established design, not built upon it. Texture quality is another component that taken a downgrade for in-game items. Halo may have been a less graphically impressive game before H4, but the artistry of the texturing was better than 4. A common criticism i’ve always had is that whether it is a tree, a rock, metal, whatever really all textures have too much eccentricity and low texture detail, it makes everything look like clay.
If I was to word the aesthetic of the 3 main factions the UNSC had a more rigid look that leaned toward retro-futurism, the Covenant used a lot of sleek curves and tiled texturing for their look which gave it a more insectoid appearance. Finally the Forerunners Had brutalist architecture, when mixed with the blue lighting leaned towards magical science. I’d put forward that the choice to make the UNSC look like it’s using 90’s / 00’s war aesthetic grounded the game, the Covenant delivered the sci-fi, Forerunner the fantasy and Flood the horror and grotesque. In 4 and 5 new UNSC additions like the railgun, mantis, mammoth, saw etc were more round and ornate like Covenant weapons. Covenant suffered from overdesign which detracted from the sleek look established over 6 games to something more rigid. Forerunners began to use tiled texturing like the covenant and a night and day overhaul to it’s entire aesthetic. Whether it was design language criss-crossing giving less distinction to each faction or the radical change to the Forerunner i’d call both a lesser change that what came before.
It would be far easier and quicker to just do a video essay to highlight the differences. The word objective can’t be used because it is absolute. What I will say subjectively is that Infinite will be in a much nicer position re-establishing design choices they actively made worse with their previous games. The awestruck comments about the return of the forerunner aesthetic, chiefs armour, the return of the SPNKR, or conversely the hate they received for how they initially shown off the covenant or natural environments should be telling enough that leaning towards the games that didn’t die in 6 months is a wise choice.