Valve works differently than other companies. Internally everyone works on what they want when they want. You can literally wheel your desk to a new location if you decide to want to work with another team. Because of this though it creates an odd dynamic that isn’t always going to work out best for the developers or the consumers.
This is why it feels extremely random whenever valve releases something new. You would think they would just release banger after banger of hot AAA titles. But it’s more complicated than that unfortunately. This is also reflected in things like fixing cheats in team fortress 2 etc etc.
This video will answer a lot of your questions
Reading your post and then reading the replies made my chest hurt lol.
Bungies halo campaigns were just something special. I don’t know when we’ll see a co-op fps at that level of quality again. Those titles have lived rent free in my brain for the past decade
One thing you could do, depending on how much you and your friends enjoy a challenge. Is to do the halo 3/ODST Vidmaster challenge. My friends and I did it together twice when it was first released and those are some of my fondest gaming memories