Rampancy.net reader and games programmer OldNick (MobyGames profile) expands on some complaints observations made about Halo 3's NPC behaviors during the last podcast episode; namely, that sometimes getting marines to do what you want (or even what seems reasonable) seems unreasonably hard:

Having started with a random male-marine voicing, when he finally succeeds in reaching his scripted destination and dismounts, he switches to the Australian marine voice... and stands there like an idiot yelling about the urgency of the situation and the need to do something about it quickly - rather than doing something constructive like manning the Gauss gun and taking out the Ghosts, while the poor player sits in the driver's seat watching his shield evaporate.

OldNick thinks this is one of many problems that results from a disconnect between art and engineering in the games industry; check his blog entry for the entire article.