Halo 4 is functionally a hard retcon of the entire franchise. It's not the same universe anymore. And no amount of forced sad scenes where a violin plays in the background while Cortana goes through AI-schizophrenia (never how rampany was meant to work) will help it in isolation.
I think the reason that Halo fans hated on Halo 4's story is because they couldn't handle anything with more depth than a shallow pond.
"WhAt aBouT HaLO Two!?" They hated that back then too lol (and that's why every character from Halo 2 lost 85% of their braincells in Halo 3)