I remember feeling the change almost immediately after the announcement that Halo 3: ODST was going to retail for $60, after Bungie had stated months before that they didn't view it as a full $60 product.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but I think you're right. That was probably the turning point. I don't remember the updates during Reach's development being anywhere near as compelling as the ones for Halo 2 and Halo 3.

Now, I think developers and the community at large are far too interested in building hyped expectations and avoiding revealing any actual information because of spoilers or some shit. I'm not sure when this changed.

I remember feeling the change almost immediately after the announcement that Halo 3: ODST was going to retail for $60, after Bungie had stated months before that they didn't view it as a full $60 product.

I suspect someone at the top decided to make some sweeping changes to how cavalier Bungie was regarding PR and talking about future products, because after that the ramp up to ODST's launch seemed unusually quiet... and it's sorta stayed that way ever since.

Let the record show that I think ODST is absolutely worth $60, if not more.

Precisely.

Bungie used to communicate far more open and honestly, until it burned them. Personally, I would argue that any reasonable person who was paying attention could piece together what happened along the road to launching ODST (Bungie themselves covered things very well on their podcast). Not once did I blame Bungie in the slightest for trying to "mislead" the fans, or any other such nonsense that I'm sure they were accused of at the time. But that's the point: a lot of fans accused Bungie of "lying" to them, and I totally see why people at Bungie would walk away from that saying "we cannot let anything like that happen ever again".

The irony is that because all of their public communication is now so thoroughly calculated, I'm less inclined to believe any of it. Not because I think they'd overtly lie to us, but because their messaging is now driven by marketing. It is lead by where they are aiming with Destiny, rather than where Destiny actually is. I think that is an important part of the equation when it comes to communicating with a fan base, but it feels incomplete without the open, honest reflection we used to get about how things actually turned out. Something as simple as hearing Luke say "There is a story this time... It's something new we're trying" felt like a breath of fresh air after months and months of PR-sanctioned post-release messaging. That one sentence did more to reassure me that Bungie actually "gets it" and genuinely hears our concerns than anything in the updates.

I feel the new Bungie is not the old Bungie, for better or worse. Most of the old guard that had great influence over the culture and communication of the studio seem to have moved on to other things after being jaded by the 10+ years of systemic, creeping fingers of Microsoft's control, and now the death grip of Activision.

It feels like they stuck Lukems in a box to shut him up post-TTK.

I doubt it, if he isn't the director on the Rise Of Iron, and the rumors are true that he's Lead on Destiny 2, then there's no reason to have him chatting anyone up at the moment.