A former 343i employee (Skybox Artist) shared some insight on Halo Infinite. (video is in mandarin, so I tried to translate his words into English)
His overall feeling on Halo Infinite: "In fact, I think the finished product will still be great. The story is a big improvement, and the gameplay is much richer, though the development cycle is too long. Don't expect it to be an epoch-making masterpiece."
The company executives were overly ambitious. They wanted to make Halo Infinite a semi-open world game, so the engine needed to be changed significantly. They had to make the game and develop the engine at the same time (Due to engine defects, many workflows were not ideal, though they are now much more improved than before).
Last year's disastrous demo was because many engine features were not fully implemented at that time.
For a variety of reasons, the game content compared to the original idea has been cut (same for multiplayer). "This has led to some things I've made over the years that no one will probably ever see."
The team at 343 (especially the low-level employees) works very hard, and many of them have experienced working overtime until the early hours of the morning in the past few years. (Crunch confirmed
Now he works at Certain Affinity, still doing some HI outsourcing work, and he feels good to be out of 343's baggage.