: Back when I was still involved with the Halo Homefront mod, one of my odd
: jobs was taking the models done by Ringleader and cutting down on the poly
: count. And good lord, the guy loved detail. There would be all these
: windows and lights and stuff that could easily be left to the texture.

: Later, when I was working on a Company of Heroes mod, I told him that the
: budget was something like 5,000 polies for infantry, 10,000 for vehicles.
: (That's easily five times the detail in Halo:CE, and this was an RTS) and
: he promptly asked for 7,000 for the infantry units and 15,000 for the
: vehicles... and we planned on increasing the population cap.

: I think that creative people hate limitations. Modelers want more processing
: power for detail. Authors want less editorial input. Comic book artists
: probably want more lead time and more panel space. So, as consoles and
: computers get more powerful, artists are layering more and more detail
: into their creations. Because they can, and they want it.

: But as much as we hate them, limitations breed creativity. Mega Man's iconic
: color palette came about because the artists had to budget the colors they
: used, for example. By contrast
: And the requisite Star Wars example: the movies were great back when Lucas
: had to struggle for every VFX shot and muppet alien. But as soon as he had
: a server farm and a team of artists to turn his every whim into reality,
: Return of the Jedi got a song-and-dance number.

: What 343i needs is, they need an art director who can look the artists in the
: eye and tell them "Go back and cut this out." "Tone down
: that detail." "Turn that cobbled walkway into a smooth
: surface."

: I volunteer!

Yes!
Artists want to create.
Heck, their bosses may say "no limitations! Go nuts! Be creative and see your vision!" (isn't that sort of what concept artists do? obviously within their medium tho).
I think there are may just be artists across each stage of the development process.
As you said, there does need to be people at stages that will optimize the vision/input practically for the required output/hardware.

I say do not limit the artists who design and create the Halo vision. Just do some better (and that's the loaded term) sanding down :P. I think "garbage" may have been put back in by programmers who saw room to increase complexity, not necessarily the initial artists. :)
Each stage in the process should have an expected output standard. If you start handling stuff outside your 'zone' you could really mess things up.
For Halo 1 maps, I think it was a combination of artists also being programmers (smaller dev team?) and much tighter hardware limitations, plus I'd say a very different gameplay expectation/philosophy than what exists now.

I'd think that to drop a Halo 1 style (complexity) map in Halo 5 would ruffle the feathers of many people along this development process :)

I get the same way in my webapp programming. I want to drop lots of stuff/fluff in to make the system and experience 'better', nicer, but sometimes there isn't time to make it work or the necessity, and as much as I push, the higher-ups can just easily say "nope".

I feel like there'd be lots of people like that if TPTB say "Halo 1 map in Halo 5! Go!"
"...but it needs this" "Nope" "what about that feature" "Nope" "but more of those" "Nope" "...just...flat?" "Yep" "...just...boring?" "Yep" hehe -- which of course is technically what it needs to be by comparison to today's map standards, because the requirement would be to return to the Halo 1 map/experience (which today many (likely more in development) may consider flat, boring, empty).

What's needed are artists who can be creative within those limitations (or at least given those expectations), as mentioned above; increased creativity with tighter restrictions.

Honestly, I don't know if a Halo 1 map would fly today - at least on a same release scale as official primary content. I'd think it would quickly go down the 'novely' line as Schooly mentioned.