: How about "What were the goals with Locke's character in Halo 5?" -
: "Why those?" "Well that's interesting" "I think
: Halo 5 does/does not meet those goals for these reasons"
: "Doesn't this goal conflict with this other goal we have - how can we
: resolve that?"

Firstly, I'm different in person than I am in real life. I may be an asshole around here, but I'm not about to walk up to a writer in the flesh and say "You just fucked the whole thing up."
Yes, I just acknowledged that I am affected by the GIFT theory.

Again, if you're a low-level employee, is your opinion on aspects of the game outside of your expertise going to count for much? Until the last stages of the game's development, you might not even have access to the full story, just rumors and snippets.

: With the Forerunner weapons, I know at least one of the reasons for the
: design this way was so that they would actually be used. So that players
: would pick them up, fire them a couple of times and immediately realise
: what they do, what they're useful for and keep them.

Yeah, I remember. They said that players didn't 'get' the more sci-fi weapons, which bummed me out until I learned what 343i considered "Sci fi". One was a weaker Sentinel Beam, the other created a bubble ~4m in diameter that cut movement speed in half. Oh, I guess the Stasis Gun also scared Covenant out of turrets, so at least there was one enemy it was useful against.

As far as gameplay goes, the whole problem with the Promethean faction is that it was designed by people who played it safe. It's like they were terrified of diverging from Halo's established formula, so the Prometheans aren't actually all that much different from the Covenant. It's the same mix of Elite mooks and cannon fodder that all drop weapons when they die, and now they pilot vehicles.

If 343i had been willing to take a risk and make something that functions outside of Halo's standard sandbox, we could have gotten something awesome. Promethean weapons should have been incredibly powerful or gamebreaking, balanced by their rarity or difficulty to acquire.

: To their credit, they achieved that.

Boring.