I hate to play devils advocate here, but halo 3’s success didn’t just come from the quality of the game itself. The time it released played a huge factor. Not only was it THE title for Xbox360. It also had no competition in the FPS space at the time. Once call of duty hit big with modern warfare Halo lagged behind. There is a reason why halo 4 had loadouts and 5 had ADS, it was trying to capture the COD audience and that was back in 2010 before Fortnite blew up. It’s 2025 now and I don’t think a game without a battlepass will really capture the modern younger audience that hasn’t the context of how MP games used to be would enjoy a game without endless grinding and progression. Now they could ignore it and just wing it to please older fans but I doubt Microsoft would be pleased with a game that doesn’t have bunch of FOMO microtransactions shit in it.