: " We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" says
: O'Connor. "

: We seriously could not make this stuff up.

You could include the full quote though:

"We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" says O'Connor. "But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input' that I'm going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I'm passionate about proving it.' So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team."

The thing on getting rid of the more traditional first version bugged me more than this, although I think now this bothers me more. Anyway, whether he was correct that that meant "I feel like this game could be awesome because of Y input that I'm going to bring into it", we don't know. We also don't know how much simplification is going on there; we don't know what actual questions were asked or how they were answered.