: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/29/what-went-wrong-with-halo-4s-prometheans/

: Some thoughts:

: - 343I is unhappy with the new bad guys in their Halo game.

: - They feel the prometheans are robotic as many of us have pointed out or
: lamented. Especially compared to the Covenant.

: - The Watchers and even Knights "encourages a one dimensional
: approach" when interacting (aka fighting). As they also said,
: "that, over time, can tip the scale to where it's less fun to
: interact with him."

: - "Our Prometheans don't do that very well, they're very – I hesitate to
: use the term 'robotic', but they tend to not show a lot of emotion or
: communicate their state very well in terms of what we'd like to do, what
: we think would be ideal for those characters. So that's one big area of
: improvement we're looking for as we move along with our character
: development in future games. *"

: I think the statement of them going from 0 - 340 employees before the game
: shipped* is really the key to everything Halo 4 and obviously the most
: important in this Joystiq piece. I believe we as the general public
: probably have no idea how CRAZY that is as a game developer to even think
: about! As well, the "absence of high level vision" at the
: beginning probably set them back more than we know, which I can only
: imagine is frustrating particularly for a BRAND NEW company backed by
: mega-corporation-we-need-to-see-profits-or-else Microsoft.

: Their ending result of a great* AAA title and good* Halo game is a
: testament in my opinion to the quality of staff 343I has assembled. Count
: me as eager to see what they can do next after experiencing their growing
: pains and maturing as a team now.

: *=my emphasis

: - MacGyver10

They could've just taken some more time. Sure, maybe MS corporate would've had a problem with that, but if everyone refuses to get the game done on time, what can they do? There's the worry of job security there, but for the most part I stand by what I said a few months ago: I would be embarrassed to put this game out, especially with the legacy, manpower, brainpower, and money that 343i were dealing with. This makes it sound like at least some of them are far from proud of what they accomplished and several of them are not happy with it (for reference, if you're feeling that way during development, you should probably go with that feeling and change what you're doing). Also, doesn't every company start at 0 people? We don't know what time frame they're talking about there.