Halo canon needs a break from constant crisis

The biggest point of lore breakdown I see in the trend of Halo games is the constant desire to "one up" the original story. The original Halo trilogy dealt with the Covenant and the Flood so we need an even *bigger* threat than *that* for the next game etc. The Prometheans, Rampant AIs, the Banished etc.

At the end of the original Halo trilogy humanity survived but its industrial base and total population was shattered. I can recall the exact number, but it was something like 90% of colonized worlds along with several major human cities on Earth getting glassed. It was catastrophic. The THREE advantages humans had on a galactic stage were AI, advances in understanding and reverse engineering Forerunner technology, and the SPARTAN programs.

Now with the later games we're expected to believe in the few years of time between Halo 3 and 4, humanity is ready for a NEW round of epic galactic wars with advanced races and other militaries with multi-world manufacturing capabilities. It's ridiculous.

The solution? Small stakes stories with smaller Spartan and UNSC Marine fireteams exploring distant worlds, encountering exotic threats, dealing with them or in the worst case calling for the cavalry and having a small UNSC fleet or Sangheli force showing up to assist. Or that combined with John and his team going into cryosleep for a hundred odd years. "Wake me when you need me." It keeps the gameplay focused on, for lack of a better term, Star Trek "away team" scope. It allows for more creativity with the story and while you can still have a multi-game threat, as G0-T0 from Star Wars would say, "These constant galactic crises are getting tiresome."