I'm glad you enjoyed the game ! I don't work for the game industry but still in a big company with a lot of organization problems, I was venting a bit on my own job...
For the golden path, I'm not really sure why I picked that up. It seemed like obvious to me to call it like that but I read Dune something like 25 years ago (realizing that instantaneously gave me grey hair, I resent you for that). It's totally possible it that expression was stucked in my mind for so long but it wasn't a voluntary reference, sorry :/ Though I should read Dune again, seems like it didn't age too bad.