The HEK is great, it did its job of making cool maps put out by Bungie and Gearbox and even a few great maps that we saw come from the community. That said, the HEK isn't without its drawbacks and can be improved in many ways. Prometheus aims to make improvements over the HEK's setup any way it can and simplify usage for map creators.

Let's take a look at some drawbacks of the HEK:

1. Broken into three separate applications. The applications - Guerilla, Sapien, and Tool - must all be used to make a map; this means that users have to jump between applications to do their work.
2. A bit lacking on the documentation side. Apart from tooltips, there isn't much documentation on the functionality of tags.
3. Tool is a command-line utility. Most people can use command-line tools just fine, but they're usually slower to use than their GUI counterparts for novices and it is easier to make mistakes.
4. Somewhat buggy. Many users reported crashing issues with the worst of crashes resulting in a full reinstall of Windows.
5. Unsupported. The HEK is unsupported by Gearbox and Microsoft, the natural choice since the tools weren't designed for end-users in the first place.
6. Restrictive to what can be done with it. Many parts of the HEK are locked up, some for good reason and others for no apparent reason at all.
7. Lack of project management. There is no way to see all the tags that are in your map project or to manage your project in a straightforward way.
8. Difficult to preview animations in-engine. While it's possible, seeing how your compiled animation tags look isn't very straightforward or obvious in Sapien.
9. No script editor and virtually no scripting documentation. The HEK seemingly acts as an intentional impediment to scripting as there is no editor for scripts and hardly any documentation on scripting.

Now don't forget that a lot of these drawbacks are not priority tasks to get to when you're programming the tools for internal use only and doing them during a game's development; most aren't even needed for an internal editor. There should always be a programmer on hand with access to the source who could look into something or fix a bug that needed fixing when a toolset is designed to be internal.

The biggest problem with the HEK does not stem from the fact that it was designed for internal use only; the real issue revolves around simply handing off the tools to the public with no improvements.

Now, let's take a look at how Prometheus looks to correct the above listed issues:

1. All-in-one design. You don't need to jump between applications, everything is in one place.
2. Extensive documentation. We have documentation on how to use Prometheus, a full handbook on the scripting language, every tag is documented, and tooltips everywhere in the program itself, not to mention searchable help within the program. I think we even have documentation for documentation!
   
3. No more command-line. As stated above, Prometheus is all-in-one, which means Tool now has a GUI as its functionality is all integrated.
4. Still somewhat buggy, but better. Every software application has bugs, but we strive to get them all fixed throughout the project's life.
5. Supported. We support our project through ever-expanding documentation, updates with bug fixes and feature additions, and the community helps support itself through forums and chat rooms.
6. A bit less restrictive, but easily unlocked. We still have fields locked that have good reason to be locked, but you can easily unlock these fields with a press of a button if you're feeling adventurous.
7. Project management included. You can browse through your project with the Project Explorer and easily load up tags and scripts with the double-click of a mouse.
   
8. Animation viewer. You can view your animations easily with the right-click of a mouse.
9. Full scripting support. While Sapien does have a script compiler and provides easy debugging, we add on top of that a built-in script editor on par with Visual Studio's code handling, documentation of all scripting functions, and a guide to using syntax properly.

That concludes our look into Prometheus compares to the Halo Editing Kit. Of course we feel Prometheus is a better choice for a community map editor than the HEK, but we're biased; so, the moment it's released, you should give Prometheus a shot and be the judge.