Really, the whole situation explains a lot about why Nu-Marathon looks and feels nothing like Marathon and why it was easy to dismiss it as slop: because the overall wider art style and direction wasn't Bungie's to begin with. They took a shitload of designs and graphics which, in isolation as standalone pieces, were generally great on their own merit, and then shovelled them wholesale into the same environment with zero coordination until the end result looked like a disjointed mess. Whichever way you look at it, it's disgraceful.