: 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.

There's something to be said for giving test runs of every part of the game, not just the multiplayer, and the people working on it are about the only ones you can share the story with. There's a lot to be said for anyone working on a project being able to give feedback on any issue with it and least have a bit of consideration given to it. No one's suggesting the writers and art department should've screamed at each other for being idiots until they changed. (I would love to see that and I think it would've really helped Halo 4 and parts of Halo 5, but for the most part it wouldn't work and people know that). Also, not all the employees are low-level. You might write off concept artist #3 or code monkey #5, but what about the art lead or the programming lead, what if they say a plot twist doesn't make sense or a texture looks muddy or a gun is a pea-shooter? What if they get the people under them to agree?