It worked for the Sonic movie
...A rather optimistic viewpoint, I know but there's enough crap that's talked about game development by people with no idea how it really works, that I really hope 343 can turn this around and shut some of those dissenting voices up.
The interesting thing is, delays with massive overhauls are not unfamiliar for the Halo Franchise.
(Various versions from 1999 and 2000, including the 3rd Person play; final game shipped Nov 2001)
(May 2003 unveiling, using the PSTENCIL graphics system and a level that essentially became 2 or 3 levels in the final; game shipped November 2004)
Granted, this was back before games took half a decade to make (and Halo 2 clearly showed the compromises of its evolution,) but the series has gone through changes and come out alright on the other side at times. So, cross your fingers...
The initial trailer looked really good, if they could step up the graphics to that level, that would be more than enough:
Hmm, I don't think the current game is really too far off (if not actually the same, just bad circumstances?) from what was shown in the 2020 Showcase?
There are some flukes of choices going on with the visuals in the 2020 Demo clip (and some of that gets cleared up in the 2020 Trailer clip, though not nearly enough to save it,) but the 2019 Discover Hope trailer doesn't seem to show a drop in detail (I'm not an expert, somebody correct me if wrong, but I haven't seen "DOWNGRADE!" rage exploding about the various reveals,) just more conducive lighting conditions to show it off.
That said, I was nonplussed by Beardguy Pilot or even the more detailed MC armor myself when everybody was wowed by what seemed to be the first next-gen game footage in Discover Hope, so I was bracing myself for it being just that level of impressiveness (and then the unveiling came...)
The Slipspace Engine unveiling of 2018 (which has kind of gallingly been named "Halo Infinite - E3 2018 - Announcement Trailer" on the official Halo YT, despite not seeming to be a demo of the actual game or maybe even the engine) caught my eye a lot better. Granted, there was some past-gen tech in it (that Warthog cruise seemed to be about what I actually expected of the game reveal quality,) but the world variety and some of the extreme-condition effects (the bloomed-out desert, the haunting glow of twilight) are what I have in my mind as the target even after seeing the Halo Infinite reveal show relatively little of that promise. (Surely the world variety will be a big feature in the final game and maybe it will have stampeding beasts or rolling beaches, but did they show the Unveiling stage to highlight classic Halo looks and save getting into some of the more interesting new biomes for future shows, or do all of the Halo Infinite areas suffer from the flat look of what we've seen so far?) If Halo Infinite ends up looking more like the 2018 trailer then it'll still be somewhat dated but otherwise IMO a good-looking Halo experience.