But in H2 an AI-Elite didn't need to have "snappy response to a button click" either, because there was nobody playing it. It's not clear to me how AI-Elite animation should be affected by the set-up for player-controlled Elites. Granted, you'd want to have the same Elite appearance in each case, but the animation is another matter, and I doubt anyone would've ever been expecting AI-Elites to behave similarly to player-controlled ones.

: Similarly, Halo 1's elite animations didn't have to worry about the
: characters strafing around and rotating in unexpected ways during the
: actions. Halo 2's did.

I think I'd be making the same sort of point in response to this bit too.