So I had a really full schedule of gaming this weekend and I managed to plow through a couple of titles on Saturday that had been lingering on my conscience (mostly due to being about 80% of the way through the both of them). The two titles at issue were Haze, a generic, if somewhat underrated FPS, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with. I felt a great sense of accomplishment in finally beating the both of them, but was also met with an overwhelming sense of relief.

The relief came not from what you might expect, such as knowing that I would no longer have to suffer the nigh unbearable plot of Haze or the awful menu load times of SW: TFU. Instead, the source of my relief was the knowledge that I would never again have to listen to the idiotic AI grumblings of either game, each of which had moments of ENDLESSLY LOOPED audio that drove me to the brink of violent crime.



If I had to hear the phrase, "Rip it out of the sky!" or "Remember your promise to Merino!" one more time...well, I probably wouldn't have done anything, but I would have continued to think it was a dick move on the part of everyone involved.

Anyway, my question to you is: How do design elements like this get through QA? Are you telling me not a single person during testing had the balls to stand up and say, "Yo, that line is annoying as all hell." As a public service to fellow gamers, are there any other examples of said phenomenon that folks should know about?