To be fair, the guy that made most of these questionable decisions was a guy they brought in from FASA that worked on a whole bunch of "okay" stuff and never had anything to do with the series before Reach. So it's not like Arteen is second-guessing the guy who made Halo, he's second-guessing the guy who made MechAssault.

Not that Sage isn't a bright guy. These choices might be good choices for any series except Halo. When you start getting into discussions about % chances of things happening, when Halo is the one series that's always said, "Fuck it, if an Elite gets killed, the nearby Grunts will always lose their shit. No dice rolls needed", it feels like some pen-and-paper game and not a Halo game. To me, anyway.