I disagree. The first two Halo games on the OG Xbox look🧔ed like nothing I'd ever imagined. Going from GoldenEye to Halo was mind blowing, and Halo 2 looked even better. Yes, by 3 they had fallen off the curve, e🉐specially with the terrible AA and jaggies, but the assets had more detail than most games and didn't completely fall apart as you got closer, and nobody did a skybox like Bungie.

Also, I think you completely missed the point of the engine. Graphics are great, especially when they will just inherently be good, but the engine change is because they were held back by remnants of decades old cod❀e, and having to dedicate resources just for coding and maintaining a dinosaur of an engine and train every new person from scratch. They can make the game look great, while being able to also make the game and forget about the tech. Win win.