Halo 2

Prototype Info Prerelease Info Unused TextHeadhunters? Arcanus? Making Marty upset??? Digsite ContentA polished collection of prerelease content ported to the MCC version in 2023-2024.

Version Differences#

On Xbox, the controller settings pages use graphics of the Xbox "Duke" Controller, while on Windows, an Xbox 360 Controller is used instead.

Xbox	Windows

Unused Level Scripting#

To do: Go through the H2EK tags and check for any other unused assets.

The 2021 release of the Halo 2 Editing Kit contains the scripting for every campaign level, including encounters that were disabled prior to release, comments from the developers ranging from vulgar jokes about marine sodomy, to angry comments about the AI not doing what the designer wanted, to depressing comments about how once the player defeats the final boss, "I get to take a vacation". Scripts of interest include all the level scripting for the famous E3 2003 demo, and the original scripts from before the game was reworked after the demo, such as the cut Alpha Moon level being fully scripted, the original Earth City, as well as the original Delta Temple which involved Metal Gear like stealth sections and took place at night!

Unused Enemies#

There are several unused enemies that still exist in the game's data.

Flood Juggernaut#

The Flood Juggernaut would have been a huge Flood enemy that would have been very tough to kill. To balance this out, only a handful were planned to ever be encountered in the entire campaign. It can still be spawned in the game. Its files are in the .map file for the mission "High Charity", and there are script files for a battle with the Juggernaut in the level "The Oracle" in the section labeled "Juggernaut" (The flood below the glass at the start of the mission was intended to include the first glimpses of the Flood Juggernaut, judging from the script and the volume trigger names). Bungie's Robt McLees was kind enough to explain how this terror was planned to work:

“The Flood Juggernaut was the progenitor of the pure form seen in Halo 3. There is nothing left of any host in this form other than the raw materials. Even the calcium has been broken down to form armor. Whereas the earlier combat forms were hosts used as vehicles, with the pure forms, the host material is used as building blocks to craft the ultimate form. And that’s what the Juggernaut was supposed to be.

There would never be more than one of these in any give place. Once you eliminated it, the combat forms that were supplementing it would go offline. ... It has four to six infection forms – brains – running it. It was supposed to be this uber-intelligent mini boss, but the suggested intelligence was way too high for what design needed to use it for, which was as a big tank.

It’s a fine line to walk. Make the enemy too hard to kill and players won’t find it intelligent at all. They’ll find it cheap and frustrating. Too dumb and it’s just another Combat form. For a more in-depth exploration of this same phenomenon, you should check out Jaime Griesemer and Chris Butcher’s tag team publication, “The Illusion of Intelligence.”

Shielded Flood Carriers#

Flood carrier forms have energy shields similar to that of jackals. Their shield, known as the Kig-Yar Point Defense Gauntlet would be very durable so you would need to attack them from behind. They appear to be unfinished due to the fact their arms pass freely through the shields. When killed, the player would then be able to use the shield, taking the place of a secondary dual-wield weapon. Watch on YouTube

Space Blimp#

A large ambient creature on the mission The Arbiter. It has no collision, but it can be moved with explosives.

Unused Vehicles#

Troop Transport Shadow#

An unused variant of the Shadow vehicle on the mission Outskirts. Where the Shadow would normally carry a Ghost, there is now a floating bench that elites, grunts, and jackals can sit on, complete with unused animations of them climbing on and off the bench. Surprisingly, the bench was remastered in Halo 2 Anniversary, despite being unused.

Unused Areas#

Warthog Run#

On the map High Charity (07b_forerunnership), in the final BSP which is normally inaccessible by the player, lies a Warthog Run similar to the ones from the ends of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 3. Thanks to 343 releasing modding tools for Halo: The Master Chief Collection's version of Halo 2, anyone can now access this BSP through either switching BSPs in the debug menu to 5, or by typing the command switch_bsp 5 in Sapien or halo2_tag_test, though the scripts and AI spawns no longer exist for the section. It takes place along one of the lengthy power conduits connecting the Forerunner Keyship to the city of High Charity. The run would've been populated with Flood, Covenant, and would've had long gravity corridors that transported the player and their Hog from one section of the run to the next, however through the passage of time, these no longer work by default today and require fixing. At the far end, before the last cutscene would be triggered, is a large metal... object. It shares similar textures to the Keyship, and seems to be a gameplay placeholder for it. According to level designer Tyson Green, the reason why the level was cut was due to there not being enough time to set up enemy encounters during the run.

Unused Scripts#

Sprint#

Watch on YouTubeSprint still exists as a function in the game code, but it is set to the same movement speed as regular walking. Animations exist in the tags for sprinting with numerous weapons, but they're unable to be used normally without replacing the standard moving animation.

Armory Skull#

Of the 15 implemented skulls in the game, the one in Armory is the only one that doesn't print its name to the screen upon collection. This is caused by an unassigned string ID in a lookup table used by the skull unlock function. To fix this on the Vista release, change offset 0x3BCB00 in unpatched halo2.exe to 02 07 00 11 to supply it with Cow Bell, or 03 07 00 11 to supply That's Just... Wrong. The skull functions by treating all noises the player makes as loud as a rocket explosion in the AI hearing routine.

.ass Error#

The 3DS Max model export tools included in the Windows Vista port contain a cropped image of a Bungie programmer mooning Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.¹ The discovery of this asset led to a delay and recall of Halo 2 Vista to add a 'Partial Nudity' line to the ESRB label. Some copies of the disc made it out to the public, and a post-launch patch removed it from the files.

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References#