You know, because of the layers. Layers of detail, like the layers in Frankie's latest Bungie Update. Between those layers are morsels of information: like the fact that every campaign level is now in the game, which is playable "from end to end"; like the fact that the usual levels of difficulty: easy, normal, heroic and legendary, are in the game and being tuned; like the fact that Robert McLees just found Ling Ling.

Okay, it could be cake. Everybody likes cake.

Don't call it a gun. In fact, don't even call it a rifle. It isn't even a weapon. It's a system. The MA5C Individual Combat Weapon System. If I didn't know better, I'd say that KP made that up himself when he penned the description of Halo 3's default spawn weapon, that hybrid of Halo 1's loveable bullet hose the Assault Rifle and Halo 2's pistol replacement the Battle Rifle.

One useful tidbit:

Fully shielded Spartans can take two blows from the rifle before dropping.

Granted, that's at close range, but that seems to indicate that under certain circumstances, the new AR might be just as, if not even more powerful, than previous "go-to" weapons.

UPDATE: For clarification, "two blows" mentioned above refers to melee strikes and not bullets fired, as the comparison to other weapons might seem to suggest. My bad.

Due to one thing and another, including chetz, h4x, modified weapon spawns, beastly brute spiker dual-wielding, and the fact that Ferrex rulz and Staten droolz, the Halo 3 Multiplayer Team defeated the Bungie Community Team 2 games to 1 in the latest internal humpday. See KP's writeup on Bungie.net for details.