: In his first cutscene he is very much believable. He reminds the Chief that
: there is a whole boatload of people aboard Infinity that are his, Del
: Rio's, responsibility to protect. He insults the scientists, and looks
: down on Master Chief's heroic inclinations. I have worked with people who
: behave very much like him and know enough military personnel to know that
: this kind of behavior is common and expected.

Again, a single instance or two of good writing does not make a good character. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

: What I'm saying is, is that it is very believable. More than this, though the
: player might not get the warm fuzzies while meeting him, they will realize
: that what he is saying does have a grain of truth to it. The value of
: living to fight another day is, in fact, underestimated by Chief.

If the rest of his character had been written well, you'd have an excellent point.

: We then see him deciding not to send in LAND recon before acting. He already
: has recon of what the mission objective will be, a network of particle
: cannons. He then explains that he believes there is no time to send in
: "force recon" to get better knowledge of what is on the ground.
: This is believable. While it is always preferable to go in with lots of
: recon, sometimes it isn't possible. Here, Del Rio thinks it isn't possible
: and Chief thinks that it is possible.

And this is the thing I already said you got right, and again, one or two things done right with a horribly written and mostly incorrect character does not make the character a good one.

: But remember, Chief has just tried to undermine Del Rio's plan, suggesting
: that they stay on Reqium longer. So when Chief suggests taking even more
: time he is a little bugged but yet another suggestion of the Chief's.

Well considering Chief was on the ground first, has firsthand knowledge of the situation, saved humanity, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. (get the point?), I'm pretty sure there's precedent for Del Rio to listen, consider, and take more into account than saving his own ass, especially if Master Chief is claiming that humanity could be royally screwed if this isn't dealt with now.

: Lastly we see Del Rio being confronted once again with Chief trying to
: pursuade him to stay on Reqium and put more lives in danger. The Chief now
: tell him about a "vision" he had from an old imprint of a real
: forerunner. You will understand if he is skeptical.

So the fact that the Covenant are around and care so much about this place doesn't make Del Rio worry? The fact that the Infinity got dragged in and basically locked down, give or take the Chief, doesn't make him worry? The fact that whenever the Covenant get all zealot-y over something Forerunner doesn't make them worry? If Del Rio had had his way and was around in H1, he would have left the ring to the Covenant and gotten out of there. That sure would have ended well for the galaxy and humanity.

: Imagine if an old legend (frozen for years) suddenly appears on your ship,
: starts trying to tell you that you are doing a bad job of being a captain,
: and then tells you that he has been chatting with long dead Forerunners
: and that they "unlocked" some kind of power within him. Now
: imagine that you watch his AI (which you know is going rampant) flip out
: and literally explode break all sorts of shit on your bridge. She is
: clearly unstable and needs to be removed from your system.

: After all of that, yeah i will him a little slack for being pissed. Also, I
: still think he is kind of a douche and should have listened to the Chief,
: but at least I can see it from his side.

I can't disagree with you on anything you just said. Oh yeah, he can be pissed, but even before the Cortana outburst or anything else, he's refusing to listen to anything or anyone. He's in a unique situation, and he does need to care about his crew, but he may as well be in a war zone right now. Covenants, Forerunners, doom. Time to step up and listen to the boots on the ground. And even then, if maybe, just maybe Del Rio's going to be a huge threat, what happens? Chief tells him to go to hell, walks on out, and not a single person on the ship tries to stop him. There was never any true threat or anything impeding Chief in the character of Del Rio. He's there for show and used as a plot device to have Chief leave the ship and be around to follow the Didact. Del Rio's character thus becomes nothing more than a paper tiger, pretty much like the Didact.

: If this was real life, I doubt the military would have immediately taken the
: ship away from him. Honestly, that was bad writing.

Oh so true. Or mutiny. Or whatever the hell happened. It's all so unbelievably off camera that even the impact of that transition to Lasky is lost. The military writing in general is blundered throughout the campaign and Spartan Ops, too.