Halo 2: Uncut Episode 1 (Cut Content Restoration Mod)

salutations my restored halo 2 juggernaut encounters video was received tremendously well however one of the encounters i uncovered in that video specifically the one with a cut marine squad going up against a juggernaut a quarantine zone got me thinking what else is tucked away inside halo 2's campaign that didn't see the light of day welcome to halo 2 uncut a mini-series on this channel as well as the name of this halo 2 mod that aims to analyze and restore as much cut content from this game as i feasibly can for this mod i wanted to take this multiple steps further compared to what was accomplished in the juggernaut encounters video not only am i going to re-enable the other encounters and squads in general but i'll also be reintroducing a whole assortment of other forms of cut content as well as elements that appear to the director's cut cinematics that were included with halo 3's legendary edition something to keep in mind when witnessing all this cut content there could be a wide variety of reasons as to why one thing was cut from the game but try to remember what console halo 2 is being developed for the original xbox you might question why bungie's mission designers opted to cut these two shielded jackals from this alleyway and outskirts you're likely thinking to yourself two jackals that's not hard why did they cut them it's no secret that halo 2 had a turbulent development history and bungie was trying the best they could to keep the game running as smooth as possible on the original xbox it's likely that these numerous small infantry cuts were made to keep the game's frame rate stable i'm not going to pretend that i 100 know what i'm talking about when it comes to how game engines work but from my point of view one singular enemy ai unit comes with a lot of information to calculate its art assets its ai behavior what weapon it's using as well as the projectiles that come from said weapon all of that and more are factored in now multiply this by four which is the typical squad size in halo 2 then have say 3 or 4 enemy squads in a given area that's 12 to 16 ai in a given encounter that the game needs to pull information from that's not even counting friendly ai squads that's child's play for modern games but again halo 2 is running on a console that only utilized 64 megabytes of ram alongside a 733 megahertz processor just to put things into perspective and halo 2 was already pushing the console's limits concessions needed to be made when they were required anyways we have a lot of information to cover today and for this first part we'll be looking at the cut content that would have appeared in the first three levels of hilo 2 which include cairo station outskirts and metropolis let's begin [Music] [Music] i did mention that i'm taking things a few steps further compared to my juggernaut video and this is one of them for this series i'll be including pre-release versions of hilo 2's weapons and vehicles as added spice for these beta encounters the functions that i've chosen for these weapons come from the private alpha their private beta and other external media and the ones i've ended up using for the video were the renditions i found to be the most interesting i'd like to give a quick shout out to dragonflair921 for his continued development on assembly plugins for the halo 2 private multiplayer alpha and beta builds that we have access to having these made documenting the stats of these older webmaster vehicles so much easier and his work only made this content project that much better we'll start with arguably the most halo 2 weapon ever the battle rifle of course i had to reference the single shot battle rifle seen in halo 2's e3 2003 demo this rendition of the weapon is a special case because the assets for it are custom made but are still heavily inspired by said demo the animations for this weapon were made by members of z team and with the port was done by shaun t the founder of vkmt the rest of the weapon statistics were drawn from the halo 2 private alpha which still had access to the exclusively single shot battle rifle he featured a 12 round magazine fight at a rate of 4.5 rounds per second when spamming the trigger is capable of carrying 144 rounds of reserve ammo and each singular round dished out 15 points of damage compared to the final game 6 which when factoring in the 3 round burst comes out to 18 points of damage for each trigger pull there's also the rendition of the battle rifle seen in the halo 2 private beta which featured two firing modes a single shot mode when zooming in through the scope and a through round burst when out of scope i'm a lot more nostalgic to the e3 br however so that's the variant i've opted to use for the video next is the needler which draws from its halo 2 beta counterpart it sports a faster fire rate firing between 9 to 11 rounds per second compared to the final game's 8 and a slightly larger super combined prerequisite of 9 needles compared to the final game's 8 but the biggest difference lies with its wild projectile velocity each fired needle starts traveling slowly upon being fired then suddenly rocketing away at 5 times the initial velocity it goes from 6 world units per second to 30 world units per second within half of a second it makes the weapon much more viable in the players hands especially in multiplayer matches but i'm assuming this was dial backed heavily due to how tricky it was to dodge ai fired needles in the campaign if you thought the final games plaza pistol was broken you haven't seen the betas its charge shot might have had a weaker tracking ability but it traveled twice as fast in the air flying at 10 world units per second compared to the final game's five but the projectile itself had splash damage expelling its plasma damage through a pretty wide area of effect it's even capable of stunning multiple shielded elites with one shot making them all vulnerable to headshot weapons soon after i'm glad this was changed the plasma rifle is the only weapon that i'm mentioning in this part where i opted to not use any of the pre-release values for this mod and allow me to show you why it's all in the projectile velocity to put things into perspective the final game's plasma rifle projectiles have a velocity value of 14 world units per second let me begin with the halo 2 beta's plasma rifle in that build the plasma rifle projectile is traveled at 25 volt units per second the same as halo 1's plasma rifle in fact well what's the problem vatim you're a huge halo 1 stand aren't you surely you see how much better this makes a plasma rifle your correct youtube comment section at surface level this seems like a pretty notable upgrade it takes one of halo 2's under appreciated sandbox elements and turns it into a very competent shield tripping weapon at range but there's one thing that needs to be considered the enemy ai have access to this buffed plasma rifle too there's no fun strategy to counter the setup or any real hope to try to dodge these projectiles while on the move you'll just get shredded no matter what halo 1 is able to get away with having the plasma rifle fire projectiles as fast because the enemy ai aren't nearly as cracked in the firing pattern department as the halo 2 ai is it's way more forgiving to tango with a lethal ce considering they don't fire the weapons that fast nor do they have near perfect leading accuracy like the halo 2 elites have it also helps that master chief has a lot more health than halo 1 than he does in halo 2. sporting 75 shields and 75 health in halo 1 while on halo 2 he has 70 shields and 30 health all this being taken into account you would have a very miserable experience that the plasma rifle was configured this way in the final game oh but i'm not done yet because we still have to get to the halo 2 alpha if you thought the halo 2 beta plasma rifle was op hold on to your butts the halo 2 alpha's plasma rifle projectile is traveled at a whopping 100 world units per second to put things into perspective that's actually faster than halo 3's assault rifle projectiles with travel that 80 world units per second i don't think i need to explain how bad this would have been basically re-watch the last few minutes but imagine it being four times worse it's almost like going up against human weapons moral of the story is i didn't want to make this mod genuinely unfun to play from start to finish and i've opted to instead just keep the pre-release versions of the plasma rifle to this video i eventually plan to release this mod for people to play and my goal is to primarily showcase the cut encounters having either of these plasma rifles would have been a consistent detriment to the experience and while there are some encounters at a restored that end up being pretty terrible on their own at least those experiences only happen once going back to the halo 2 alpha plasma rifle for a bit though i have a theory for why this weapon had such fast projectiles in multiplayer halo 2 was originally going to include a multiplayer mode called warfare this would have essentially been a lot like halo reaches invasion mode with the unsc and covenant being different teams but on a much larger scale it's possible that the plasma rifle had this projectile velocity value as it meets the balance of the weapon versus unsc weapons like the battle rifle or smg as a plasma rifle would have been a likely candidate to be the covenant player's starting weapon however warfare was cut pretty early on in halo 2's development and the halo 2 alpha build that i've been mentioning was compiled in november of 2003 and was tested in january of 2004. warfare was likely long dead by this point so i'm not 100 sure if my theory holds any water but it was worth a shot anyways finally moving away from the plasma rifle i like to mention two cut weapons that'll be featured in today's video there's currently no evidence regarding where these weapons were going to appear in the campaign but considering they were planning to be in the game at some point i wanted to include them the first is a general purpose machine gun or gpmg for short this is one of the two weapons that were added to mcc's multiplayer shared map in 2020 it's a portable version of the unsc's machine gun turret and it has just as much stopping power however the jpmg sports a 40 round magazine and the weapon is considerably inaccurate compared to the mounted version the weapon also includes a placeholder hud using many of the battle rifle's hud elements while using the smg's reticle from the e3 2003 demo and the chosen weapon animations are the sniper rifles the speculative way that incorporated the gpmg into the campaign was a habit drop when a turret was destroyed much like how the turrets in halo 3 and onward functioned the other cut weapon is the suppressed smg like the gpmg it too was added to mcc's shared map in 2020 but it's been publicly available since the release of halo 2 vs editing kit in 2007. it's almost a carbon copy of the regular smg in terms of function but there are key differences weapon tags in halo have what is called a firing noise setting and this controls how well ai can hear a weapon when it's fired the suppressed smg has the silent setting enabled which makes it nigh impossible for enemies to detect users of this weapon based on sound for comparison halo 3 odst suppressed smg actually uses the medium noise setting which eludes the user from detection of far away enemies but anyone in close proximity will still be able to hear the weapon being fired the surprise smg in halo 2 is also considerably more accurate in short bursts than the regular smg is lastly dual wielding this weapon is broken and i might have an idea for why this is the weapon was likely cut before the official implementation of dual wielding was added to halo 2. the smgs seen in halo 2's e3 2003 demo are not two separate smgs being dual-wielded by the player but rather a single weapon tag emulating the feeling of holding two smgs certain halo custom edition maps have a dual smg weapon just like it just so you can see exactly what i mean i brought this up because a halo 2 multiplayer alpha build does not have dual wielding in any shape or form but the halo 2 beta build does have dual wielding meaning it was implemented at some point in time between the alpha and beta another thing i'd like to point out is the smg in the alpha has a default reserve ammo set to 100 spare rounds while a suppressed smg weapon tag also has a value of 100 rounds there's a very likely reason why this 100 value is here despite it not being divisible by 60. marcus lato recently uploaded footage of the mac world builds the halo 1 on this twitter page and one of the weapons he uses is the smg that was originally going to make it into that game and if you count how many rounds are in the magazine it's actually 50 rounds which is a number that 100 is divisible by this likely means that both of these smg variants were originally going to have 50 rounds per magazine at some point and that's why the reserve ammo is set to 100 on pickup moving on to the vehicles we have the ghost which draws from its halo to alpha counterpart its guns fire at the exact same time like it does in the e3 2003 demo and at a slightly slower rate of fire but the main difference comes from a cut overheating mechanic that the ghost was originally going to have after about seven seconds of fire plasma will vent from the sides of the vehicle and the player won't be able to fire for about 3 seconds this would have radically changed the way the ghost was used and probably not for the better so i'm glad this was cut the banshee won't be used by the player during the first three levels but it still makes an appearance so i'll mention it anyway this iteration draws from the halo 2 beta banshee just like with the ghost the banshee's guns fire at the exact same time but the banshee bomb behaved very differently after about half a second of being fired the projectile will start to plummet to the ground with a bunch of gravity applied to it making the banshee bomb a primarily close range option the last vehicle i like to talk about is the wraith and it's an entirely different beast which references how it behaved in the halo 2 alpha its trigger behavior uses a charge up sequence rather than firing immediately like it does in retail the user holds the trigger for one second and while that happens a charging effect that is similar to the scarab's charging effect plays by the raid's mortar turret the wraith will then fire the projectile after the charging sequence is complete i can see why this was cut it only delays the firing sequence without adding any benefits for the wraith pilot charging up the mortar doesn't make it any stronger and the scorpion is already much more viable than the final game's rendition of the wraith so cutting this gave the wraith a boost and viability before we finally move on to the cut encounters i'd like to talk about one more weapon that won't be featured in the encounters for this video the coveted carbine it has two different pre-release iterations and actually i can take this opportunity to ask you guys which one you'd like to see use for future episodes as well as the mod itself first let's talk about how the carbine functioned in halo 2 beta like the halo 1 pistol as well as the needle rifle in halo reach and the vk-78 commando and halo infinite it was a fully automatic precision weapon it also had a 36 round magazine like the final game's battle rifle and its projectiles had a unique trait that had a very high instantaneous acceleration value applied to it allowing the weapon to push certain objects when continuously firing at them the other pre-release iteration of the carbine resides in the final game's version of the weapon tag but goes unused once re-enabled it turns a carbine's trigger behavior into a dual firing mode much like the battle rifle seen in the halo 2 beta when scoped in the carbine fires in single shots like it does in retail but when you're not using the scope the weapon fires in two round bursts among the weapon and potentially kill more than one enemy with a single trigger pull i'd like to throw up a pole it'll be up to you guys to determine which of these variants i should use in the future let me know in the comments below comments are good for the youtube algorithm after all [Music] i did not expect to fall into the cavernous rabbit hole that i ended up going through when i started working on this project and i'm glad i did there's so much hidden trivia that i got to excavate and i was so happy to witness each and every one be reborn at least the best of my ability anyway i can't guarantee that the following content is 100 the way bungie intended it to be during halo 2's development but i'm confident that at least most of it is pretty much what they had in mind i'll also be implementing various elements seen in the director's cut cinematics while it doesn't technically count as cut content joseph staton said during the developer's commentary for those cinematics that he wished that he had more time to implement more polish into halo 2's cutscenes so i'd like to include them since we're on much better hardware than the original xbox now anyway your new suit's a mark vi but i mean i remember i remember that morning distinctly just being being heartbreaking for everybody on the team when you know when we realized it was just it was just too late it wasn't that time to put that to put that polish on the game don't worry that was that was pretty heartbreaking for everybody let's begin with cairo station during the opening cinematic i included camera flashes from the news drones that surrounded johnson and the master chief it's not the exact same effect used in the director's cut but i at the very least did my best to time each snapshot as close as i could to the original versions moving on to the gameplay we make our way to our first encounter during the third wave there's a two elites dual-wielding the plaza pistols however there are going to be three grunts included in the squad one of which being a plasma turret user however having all three grunts spawn didn't allow them to pathfind properly whenever the elites would push them out of their way so this is likely why they were cut the gunner grunt also didn't have a point set placed on this floor that would coax it to deploy its turret point sets are markers placed on a level by the mission designers and they're typically referenced in scripts to have something go to it and in this instance it could be used to command a grunt to deploy a turret in this spot so i placed a custom point set in this spot here to have a grunt deploy its turret on this floor to use it against the marines across the room having only the turret grunt spun ensured that the grunt's pathfinding didn't break shortly after this there's the fourth wave it would have included another heavy grunt using the turret there are four pre-placed point sets that go unused in the final game and the gunner would have chosen between these four spots to place the turret there was also going to be a fifth wave added to this encounter but it was cut the only remaining reference to it is a commented out ai place command for a squad named first cuv wave 5. but when looking through the scenario tag squad list such a squad doesn't exist meaning we'll never really know what units are going to be used for the squad so what i ended up doing was having one of the previous squads respawn to make a new fifth wave moving on to the next area there are going to be two dress marines wielding magnums inside this room and there would have been a marine mining the machine gun turret instead of him being dead on the floor downstairs to the right near this elite by the back wall there was a cut squad consisting of two grunts we won't see our next cut encounter element until the second hangar room where a squad of three grunts was to spawn by the two gunner grunts on the top platform further along in the mission when you meet up with miranda and johnson a squad of odsts was to come through the doors to the right to offer cover fire and would then proceed to escort miranda and johnson to the in amber clad after the bugger section you make your way outside into space where the ranger elites are and to your left there was actually going to be a banshee swooping in to attack you this banshee is interesting not just because it would have appeared so early in the game but also because it's set up to not be hijackable by the player even if the player gets close enough the pilot is another ranger elite and you can see its jetpack clipped through the top of the vehicle a funny quirk about this banshee encounter is that the vehicle will clip through the covenant boarding craft that are in this area due to them not having any collision this was likely cut due to a combination of jank that came with all the affirmation clipping issues as well as for content introduction reasons this level might have proved to be too early to introduce the banshee for bungie's taste and they preferred it to have its first appearance take place in a later mission which is in this case metropolis the last encounter in the ballroom has something rather peculiar here that was cut from the game in the regular version of this map there's a small pillar that stands next to the bomb and this is where cortana is supposed to appear during the cutscene however there are originally going to be four of these pillars in total and each one would appear in the four corners of this room the interesting thing about these pillars is that cortana will appear on one of the pillars when you're in close proximity to the object and when you walk to another one of these pillars she'll dematerialize from the pillar she was just on and reappear to the newest one that you're close to i don't really know what purpose this little event was supposed to serve and i guess the mission designers didn't know either hence why it was ultimately cut also fun fact even when playing on a vanilla unmodified copy of this level this pillar object does not have a halo 2 anniversary asset before we go to the ending cutscene i like to bring up two more pieces of cut content first let's talk about the cut warthog sequence for this level this has been known about for a while now it was even referenced in the director's cut developer commentary now the pickle jason do you remember why we put the covenant space pickle in in halo 2. okay jason explain this i just remember you were supposed to hitch it to the back of a jeep and drive it that's right i forgot about that you're supposed to drive it all the way across the ship that would have been awesome that would have been awesome the warthog the space original space station right it was supposed to be a zero-g training facility where there was a big open environment with warthogs and all that sort of stuff right and you were supposed to put the put the bomb in the back of a little trailer right that attached the warthog and then drive it through the human to the human space station that would have been fun that would have been a good time that would have been awesome players have been able to glitch their way into this warthog in the past but i bet you didn't know that something else related to the sequence remains in the map there's a script that references the warthog attaching to a rail of some kind and then playing some sort of animation if we boot up sapien and go to where the warthog spawn is located as well as making master chief invincible so he doesn't die while inside walls we'll see what happens when we enter a few commands from the unused script when entering this script into the command line the warthog becomes invisible as it attaches to the rail which is also invisible if we enter this command followed by this command the invisible warthog will begin to move forward along the invisible rail it will continue to move all the way to the middle of empty space until eventually stopping this could have been a test script that bungie wrote when working out the logistics for the war talk sequence before they decided to cut it the other form of cut content that i wanted to bring up is a bunch of cut pieces of dialogue that are referenced in the map scripts but unfortunately their sound tags have been completely scrubbed from the game so we can't hear what they would have sounded like during the intro sequence right before the first enemy wave shows up there was supposed to be some grunts and snarls that were supposed to play after the standby their latch line not really sure who or what was supposed to perform those as the voice line designation has an acronym of gjc that i don't recognize in the same area right before johnson's supposed to say feel the fire on that bulkhead it was going to say everyone would be cool or something along those lines keep in mind that these dialogue entries will be written out one way but the actual line will play out differently for example on outskirts johnson has a voiceline that says i'll keep an eye on him chief good luck but the text entry in the script reads out bye chief off to wars after going outside of space for the first time cortana and lord hood will have their exchange about the covenant bomb that appeared on cairo station before hood tells chief to go after it there would have been another exchange between lord hood and one of the admirals within the unsc fleet alert the covenant fleet is on the move order sir engage admiral aye aye sir right before going out to space for the second time there would have been some more back and forth between lord hood the admiral and probably a crewman that would have been with the admiral lord hood would start off with the exchange by saying that's the last of the cruisers damn fines shooting cortana followed by the crewmen saying admiral the point defense is too intense my grit is max i don't think and then it would resume as normal with the admiral saying the carriers are breaking through sir they're heading straight for the cairo now we watch the ending cinematic which features a bunch of new additions that i've added in reference to the director's cut cinematics there's a lot more usage of dynamic lighting in the in-app clad some more effects playing out in space and quite a bit more i'll let the whole cutscene play in full for you now me inside your head now [Music] how much time was left you don't want to know cairo this is an amber class the carrier shield is down i'm in position and ready for immediate assault negative commander not against a ship that size not on your own sir permission to leave the station for what purpose master chief to get the covenant back their bomb permission grant i know what you're thinking and it's crazy so stay here unfortunately for us both i like crazy [Music] just one question what if you miss i won't [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for a break he flew pretty good chief get inside gear up we're taking this fight to the surface one more thing i'd like to bring up before wrapping up my coverage of cairo station is relating to the long sword bombing runner that happens before chief detonates the bomb bungie actually cut three extra explosion effects from the scene and this cut likely happened because these extra explosions can overload the effects for the original five explosions at play in retail [Music] the message just repeats regret regret regret [Music] and we most definitely regret the core just blew up our raggedy ass fleets [Applause] it's your call sergeant we're going in get tactical marines master chief get aboard that carrier secure the prophet of regret this is the only place on earth the covenant decided to land prophecy to tell that 30 seconds out stand by to whoa [Music] let me show you what i have done for the opening cutscene i paid very close attention to all the audio and visual effects that were used in the director's cut version of this cinematic it did my best to emulate what was shown there i added some fire and smoke effects through the buildings during the initial pelican scenes as well as a few firing effects during the second half the anarch clad received some dynamic light i hope the mcc fixes the muddiness of these shadows it's a quark introduced with the vista port that remains in mcc to this day inside johnson's pelican we see some odsts that replace the marines not only is this a reference to the e3 2003 demos introduction but there's evidence inside outskirts mission script file that says the player was going to be backed by odscs at the beginning of the mission big shout out to sean t for providing me with a custom odc helmet prop for this cutscene moving on to gameplay right before we move up i re-implemented a cut script that would have had johnson play a move-up animation after he gets his orders this will likely cut because a vast majority of players simply couldn't see this happen unless they turn around let's take a good look at our modified squad two odsts replaced some of the marines seen in the base game but we also have the two pelican pilots from the intro cutscene surviving the crash as well in the same note stating that odsts would back the player so too would the pelican pilots and they would opt to hang back while chief johnson and the odst did most of the fighting fun fact the pilot variant is technically in the realm of unused content while it doesn't show up in gameplay it appears in cut scenes which were in game for halo 2. however halo 2's anniversary mode does not utilize in-game cutscenes which means this variant goes unused in anniversary graphics despite this the pilot helmet has an anniversary asset applied to it but the design is nowhere close to its classic counterpart or even the design used in the blur cut scenes the helmet asset itself sticks out like a sore thumb due to the lack of pbr materials this helmet is actually closely related to the pelican pilot's helmet seen in combat evolved anniversary the design was likely going to be reused like how a lot of the cea assets were refined and updated for h2a but it appears as if sabre interactive realized that this variant doesn't get used whatsoever during the in-game segments of halo 2 so they stopped working on it as it would have been a waste of time and resources we now move on to the wave defense portion of this level and let me tell you right now there's a lot to cover here i'll try my best to showcase everything in the simplest way possible so i'm sorry if it's tough to follow along first let me introduce you to these eight enemy squad names right here on screen these consist of the different covenant squads that appear after the first enemy away from the rooftops are killed however only five of these squads get used at all in the base game and one of them was supposed to be a bit different at some point and i'll talk about that soon this wave defense encounter goes through two phases one before the rooftop buggers wave and one after the rooftop buggers wave as you know sergeant johnson uses various lines of dialogue depending on which wave appears across the street down low we got jackals in the courtyard however there was a cut set of script lines for this wave defense encounter that would have made johnson much more vocal like i said previously johnson uses a specific line of dialogue depending on the wave but he was originally going to use alternate variants of these lines depending on which phase the wave spawns in just to remind you the two phases are pretty bugger wave and post bugger wave so to make things easier to follow i'll refer to them as phase 1 and phase 2 respectively let's talk about the waves themselves including the cut waves alongside the cut johnson dialog we'll start with 2-0 one of the cut waves this is actually the only one that doesn't have an existing spawn script written out for it so i made a custom one that copied the others besides the squad name this grunt and elite squad is rather jank as it has spawn points that appear in plain sight by the windows of this building i couldn't find any johnson callouts for the squad so it's the only one that lacks any next i'm going to talk about both 2-1 and 2-6 at the same time because they're actually very similar in the base game they're both elite and grunt squads that make their way through the alleyways across the street from the holdout building squad 2-1 is the only one of these two that has any johnson clouds play in the base game and it's this line that plays in phase two across the street down low okay but hold on a second i said this was an elite in grunt wave so why are there jackals and where's the grunts in the mission script file for this mission it states that 2-1 was originally going to consist of jackals instead of grunts likely to help differentiate the way from 2-6 more here's johnson's cut phase 1 line for the squad down low across the street moving on to 2-6 this was planned from the get to be an elite in grunt wave however this squad actually doesn't use any johnson call-outs at all in the base game and the lines that he would have used here were cut from the game here's his cut phase the street one the building followed by his cut phase 2 line on the buildings across the street next we have 2-2 our next cut wave according to the mission script file this squad was to be an elite and bugger wave that would appear on the rooftops across the street this squad didn't have any spawn points set for it so i play some speculative ones that i think made sense johnson only has one callout line for the squad regardless of which phase it spawns in the building next is 2-3 which is the grunt and elite squad that spawns in the streets furthest to the left of the holdout building phase one's johnson line is used in the game street left side more final however his phase two line was cut more left side street our next cut wave squad two four is yet another elite and bugger squad that spawns to the right side portion of the street towards the gate both of johnson's lines for the squad are unused here's his phase one line counting these right side in the street followed by his phase two line in the street right side squad two five is the famous jackals in the courtyard wave the iconic johnson lionesses face one line we got jackals in the courtyard he has a phase two line that was cut from the game courtyard jackals since we went over 2-6 already we skipped 2-7 our last squad which goes unused in the base game this one only makes up of buggers it would have spawned to the tops of the taller buildings across the street the johnson line that would have been used for this squad is acted the same one used for the original bugger wave freaky mouth better buggers heading over the rooftops perhaps this was an older version of the buggers over the rooftops wave before it evolved into what we have in the base game before i move on though i'd like to take a look at the top of the outskirts mission script file that talks about some general issues bungie were facing during development in the e1 section which means the first encounter one of the issues was regarding the length of the wave defense portion is it too long should i prune a wave out well they did print out a bunch of them in the end also while we're here one of the general issues for the level is with the jackal snipers being too hard i don't think this issue was resolved after we're done with the wave section the phantoms make a return to drop off enemy reinforcements however this scene was to play out much much differently allow me to hang demonstrate everyone help is inbound you heard the lady grab some dirt let him have him there's another one sergeant i need you on that bird my pelicans are going to start airlifting armor and reinforcements into the city still need an escort that isn't afraid of a little hostile ground fire understood i'll keep an eye on him good luck oh boy this took a while to set up as you know in the base game johnson is picked up by a pelican in the next area after you kill the two hunters however johnson was supposed to be picked up before the hunters arrive and it wouldn't be a pelican that comes to get him but the cut falcon instead this is all outlined in the mission script document which states that a falcon comes in to drive the phantom away drop off marine reinforcements and once the lz is clear johnson and the surviving pelican pilots board the falcon and evacuate the area in fact the marine reinforcements that are dropped off by the falcon which go unused in the final game are all that remains in the scenario tag of this cut falcon sequence this entire scene that you saw was not left over in the scenario and was scripted by me making the execution of this scene speculative another aspect of this that was speculative are the rocket pods used by the falcon it was stated in the mission script file that the vehicle was supposed to scare away the phantom and adata could have done that with just a machine gun the leftover weapon tag for the falcon is pretty much a carbon copy of the warthog turret but on the falcon model it says two preset marker locations for a secondary trigger and these were placed on the rocket pods so i added a secondary rocket launcher weapon to the vehicle's weapon tag for some added spice in an alternate universe where the falcon doesn't show up johnson has yet another cut line about the two hunters breaking down the gate after commanding someone to get a satchel on the gate he says never mind behind the two hunters there's a squad of three draggles that are commanded to watch you fight the hunters once the hunters are killed the three jackals attempt to make a run for it back to where the other jackals are waiting i also want to point out that in the script document there's a reference to a not safe for work adult line of dialogue about the marines fighting a hole classic bungie we won't see our next cut enemies until the alleyways all the way to the end of the alley where the jackal snipers spawn there's an unused point set in place for a plasma turret to be deployed by a grunt there's no spawn point for this grunt gunner nor were there any scripts for it so i made a speculative scene that has a grunt spawn at the start of this encounter there's also a cut shielded jackal squad within these alleys one to the left standing guard and another to the right that burst out of a corridor the hotel zanzibar scene was supposed to have medic marines according to the mission script document but there's no medic variant that exists in the game the following aren't examples of cut content but for fun i wanted to include the odsts from another day at the beach for those who are unaware another day at the beach is a short film that was included in the multiplayer map pack disc for halo 2. this showcased what happened to the troopers that weren't a part of your squad that survived the scarab encounter i paid very close attention to the classic version of this cutscene when implementing the elements of it to the mod all four of the odsts that were featured in the film making appearance even the one that used the plaza pistol i had them scripted to follow you after you meet up with them at the end of the dark hallway there's a cut effect event that called for a plasma grenade explosion there was supposed to be a door at the end of this hall that the plasma grenade was supposed to destroy but the attack for it no longer exists at the hotel wreckage i implemented more references to the another day of the beach film with the dead jackal sniper and his beam rifle and the plaza pistol that one of the grunts dropped when they panicked on the other side of the building debris there's the dead elite with a deactivated energy sword moving on to the vehicle section the covenant gun tower was originally supposed to be active and was scripted to shoot at various points towards the buildings the gun tower is an elite driver they can kill together to stop shooting towards the back of the area the mission script file mentions that there is to be a parked creep which is the internal name for shadow guarding the entrance to the next area there actually is a squad used in this final game that has a shadow in its name but neither the jackal sniper nor the grunt gunner spawned in one so i added a third member to the squad that spawns a grunt in the shadow's gunner position oh yeah grunts do in fact have shadow animations for both the driver and gunner positions they've had them since the e3 2003 demo is shown in this picture in the same area killing the enemy ghost will spawn another one if you're far away enough from the entrance to the next area the second gun tower area once again has the giant vehicle active doing the same thing as the previous tower fun facts about the gun tower the tower itself makes up of two parts the base which is a scenery object and the gun which is the vehicle itself both of these objects actually have destroyed variants that go unused in the final game this is likely a holdover from the e3 demo when the longsword does a bombing run to destroy the active tower i think this is the case because both model tags for the gun tower pieces don't have health and destruction data despite having destroyed variants meaning it was likely going to be a scripted set piece from far away to see these variants like in the demo in the next area there's a cut covenant squad that's pinning down the marines top of the bunker building when approaching the tunnel entrance cortana uses a cut line of dialogue talking about it perfect the covenant have already cleared away inside the mission script file talks about a grunt plasma cannon as well as another covenant shadow being a part of this encounter so i placed a grunt gunner near the sniper tower and had the shadow drive up to the entrance to the tunnel to begin guarding the entrance we won't see our next cut squad for a little while shortly after the scarab shoots of the warthog we come across a cut squad consisting of two shielded jackals and three buggers now for the final outskirts segment of this video the shadow run the scripts from this segment reference an unused passenger sequence where any troops on the shadow's passenger seats will get out if the driver exits the vehicle if you're confused by the mention of passenger seats for the shadow it's because there's actually an unused passenger variant of the vehicle which is weirdly enough labeled as the default variant the fact it's labeled as default is likely why it has an anniversary asset saber probably opened the shadow model and looked at the variant names and saw the passenger variant as the default one and made a model of the passenger seats not knowing it was unused content so for fun i decided to have two of the three shadows be the unused passenger variant to show you what it's like to have the vehicle carrying troops their first shadow consists of a grunt driver and gunner as well as two grunts and two shielded jackals on the seats and you can see how jank it looks to the jackals on the third shadow that had two elites with one sitting on each side of the vehicle here's what a fully loaded shadow would have looked like when playing this segment on easy or normal there's going to be a waypoint system in place that directs you to the closest shadow this was pretty much useless information hence why it was cut this shadow sequence is going to be an absolute nightmare on higher difficulties that's because there was going to be quite a few more shadows taking part of this encounter in the base game there's one extra shadow that appears after passing the initial three but there were going to be at least two more shadows that spawn alongside it making six total during the run segment there's also a cut script that determines how many shadows spawn in that area for example if you killed all three of the first shadows three shadows will appear at the next part or if you only kill two of them before reaching here only two extra shadows will spawn it doesn't help the difficulty whatsoever that there was going to be yet another shadow at the very end of the tunnel waiting for you next to the one that spawns in the base game you could just have this massive dog pile of shadows in this spot and it gets so strenuous for the game they could start garbage collection way sooner than normal and just delete most if not all the shadows sometimes i'm glad this was all good oh i know what the ladies like metropolis is very special allow me to show you why when getting into a vehicle we'll notice that the pelican is taking a slightly different flight path than it does in the base game when you start to move up the pelican will actually follow you providing fire support with its machine gun turret across the bridge a second wraith appears and two wraith mortars begin hurling toward you when making it to about the halfway point of the bridge ascent the pelican will break off and leave the area the mission script file for metropolis mentions jackal snipers making pot shots towards your scorpion as you make your way across the bridge there's an unused squad block for the jackal snipers but no spawn points are placed also funnily enough when placing a spawn point and having the jackal spawn as is it spawns a shielded jackal holding a human sniper rifle imagine if these were the main jackal snipers anyways i made a speculative scene where two jackal snipers appear behind cover to start shooting you after the pelican leaves now this entire scene of the bridge apex was going to play out very differently there's going to be this extravagant infantry ambush encounter behind one of the trucks there's a squad of grunts lying in wait trying to spring an ambush inside the hole in the bridge a squad of buggers was supposed to fly out and attack you to the right side of the bridge there was meant to be a small squad of elites that rush out to attack the player as well however the most drastic difference here revolves around the two phantoms that appear in this encounter in the base game these phantoms fly past the player and take pot shots at you with their turrets before zooming off to the end of the bridge one of the pre-release differences is that the right side phantom was also going to have a wraith just like the phantom on the left but the real kicker here was that these phantoms were going to drop off infantry near the player before leaving the infantry squad that's mentioned is e15 curve imp zero this squad actually still exists in the scenario but all that remains of it are a bunch of grunt heavies with plasma turrets and i highly doubt two phantoms are going to drop off a total of three grunts i suspect that these grunts were the result of a later encounter design after the phantom drop-off sequence was cut one of the grunts spawns right on top of the rocket launcher marine that spawns there so it's likely that the marine and grunt squads replace a different point of development as for my recreated phantom drop off sequence it's all speculative outside of the phantoms placing each squad on opposite ends of the bridge like it states in the document the first squad consists of a standard group of grunts and a single elite i got a bit more fun with the second squad while there's no evidence of them ever being planned to appear on this level i wanted to show you what it's like to have hunters appear in a halo 2 tanks section there's good reasons as to why you don't see this interaction in the final game not only are the hunters very susceptible to rockets and explosions in general they're actually pretty scared of the scorpion's turret halo's weapons vehicles and characters use a scariness value that determines how ai interact with whatever they're up against if the scariness value for the opposing force is too high the ai act much more timid the scorpion cannon in this case goes over the hunter's scariness threshold and they lock up in fear whenever the scorpion cannon aims at them so for the mod i fixed it so that the hunters actually engage you properly and now we have our first halo 2 tank vs hunter encounter hard to believe we don't actually have this in the base game but it's true the bridge descent scene plays out as normal until they get to the tunnel entrance after killing the two wraiths the phantom was going to make a flyby and shoot you with its turrets and would break off and the turrets were destroyed for the tunnel descent there was to be an elite internally referred to as the last stand elite crouching by one of the destroyed civilian vehicles as an active defiance going further down the tunnel reveals a grunt gunner that was planned to make an appearance here as well there are two possible turret deployment sites at the grunt picks at random along with this gunner grunt are some extra infantry units hiding behind the abandoned vehicles it's here where we get to what i think is the most exciting part of this entire video as you can see across the tunnel there's a waterfall coming out of the ceiling that's because this part of the tunnel was supposed to be flooded at an earlier point of halo 2's development not only is this mentioned in the mission script document it was even referenced by joe staton in the developer's commentary did you get any laura prep on now at one point that part of the level was filled with water wasn't it that's true there was some water yeah at least one of those areas jones and his anti-water ways you used to like water so much man in marathon what happened yeah water's in one spot in the game like 20 square feet of water and it doesn't work in the last two weeks it's one of the things that doesn't get fixed sadly sadly enough there's even a preset trigger volume called e17 in water if i didn't already make my point any clearer the water shader is actually unused content it would have been used here if this entire segment wasn't cut the water is speculatively placed by me but considering there's a huge hole in the ceiling i felt it made sense two cut cortana lines would have played upon reaching this area your armor is water tight and your air supply is maxed unless you've eaten recently you're free to go into the pool if you crouch the water's deep enough that they won't be able to see you to reference the second cortana voice line the gameplay segment that i created here is entirely speculative simply crouching underwater won't hide you from enemies due to the lack of collision so i wrote a bunch of scripts and created a new trigger volume to create a completely custom stealth sequence relating to the water when you're either standing up or completely out of the water you're inside my custom trigger volume and enemies will see you but if you're crouched you leave my trigger volume and enemies won't be able to detect you until you kill one of the enemies evade their detection for about seven seconds and enemies won't be able to find you again when crouching this encounter was going to solely consist of jackals and elites since they're tall enough to stand above the water with the exception of the grunt gunner that was also cut from this area however i'm unsure if this gunner was here during the time this tunnel would have been flooded or after the water was cut but i added it anyway before we move on to the next section i have to give huge shout outs to shelley herself bartholomew and crisp for helping me get all this set up this wouldn't have been possible without their assistance and i'm eternally grateful we won't see a cut encounter until the second part of the park section where a second wraith is perched on this platform the mission script talks about there being two rates for this part one by the exit and the other on top of a platform that was pretty vague so i speculatively placed a second spawn here which gave the wraith the best sight lines against the player also in this area the ghost reinforcements are going to be air-dropped by a phantom instead of driving here on their own so i made a custom flight path for a phantom to drop off more ghosts after the initial ones die the hospital siege encounter has a ton of cut content associated with it the first one is this phantom carrying a wraith it's scripted to be shooting the hospital building with its turrets the problem is the phantom turrets are separate entities that use generic turret ai so they can't be controlled via scripts the same way standard ai can so what we're left with is a phantom just staring at different points of the building it's also stated in the mission script that one of the wraiths that's present in this encounter would be dropped off by this phantom so ahead of carrying one of the raids and when the phantom notices the player it flies to the original spawn point for that wraith and drops it off this phantom is scripted to leave when you destroy its turrets you can make some funny jankery happen when you time this properly as the other phantom flies in to drop off the ghost reinforcements likely one of the reasons why this phantom was cut in the first place speaking of ghosts they're supposed to be a small squad of them covering the wraiths at the start of this encounter but they were cut from the game as the cut phantom is on its way out a cut squad of marksman marines at the top of the hospital building would appear to provide long range support however they're scripted to go back into the building when the encounter is done but often times the doors won't open for them so they're stuck walking in place until you open the door for them we're not quite finished with this area however off to the left side of the hospital staging counter there's an entire cut side encounter involving a parked shadow a bunch of coveted infantry three ghosts and a squad of two marines pinned down behind the abandoned vehicles everything except for the shadow which needed its assets to be re-implemented into the map were already set by bungie but it was all ultimately cut from the level likely because at this point there was so much ai in this entire encounter that the original xbox might have been struggling to maintain a steady frame rate since this scene was off to the side from where the main action was taking place there was no need to have all this here taking up resources when the scarab begins its assault on the hospital we could see a squad of marines held up on top of each side of the street two with turrets two with rocket launchers and one crouching behind the scorpion as the scarab begins charging its weapon all of the marines begin firing on it but to no avail as the scarab passes by us we can see that it has two turrets mounted on its flank the scarab has an unused variant that has four phantom turrets mounted on its body with two on each flank eagle-eyed fans can actually see this variant in the opening cutscene for outskirts so in a way i'm kind of restoring some continuity here now it's time for the final segment of metropolis and let me tell you it's a doozy a cut squad of three marines can be seen on the second platform waiting for the scarab to arrive overhead there's a cut pelican sequence that has two of them fly overhead but it's so quick and off to the side they can only really see one of them easily now onto the scarab itself once it passes underneath the first platform the two turrets will then activate and attack you and your marine allies and you can lock onto them with a rocket launcher to take them out this is likely one of the reasons why there's so much rocket ammo present in this encounter here's what this looks like in anniversary graphics by the way since these turrets are the same ones that appear on phantoms they naturally have anniversary assets however the shaders simply don't mesh well with those of the scarab's hole and they stick out fairly easily once the scarab passes the last bridge and finishes with its 90 degree left turn the phantom turrets on its left flank begin to activate and surprisingly its top anti-air turret activates as well while this is happening two assault pelicans appear from across the waterway and begin firing a barrage of missiles against the scarab fun fact about the scarab's a gun the projectile that i chose for it is actually not what it came with originally if i were to use the unmodified variant of this the turret would fire a hunter's particle beam but the marker for where the projectile is fired from it is wildly offset this is because within the weapon tag for this turret the checkbox for the projectile appearing at the weapons origin is not checked off basically what this is referring to is whenever someone is holding a weapon the fired projectile will appear in one of two locations if the aforementioned setting remains unchecked the projectile will shoot directly from the center of wherever the camera position is you can see this happen a lot with projectiles in first person and is the reason why the projectiles fired from player characters are so offset from the gun it doesn't look pretty but it provides the best form of gameplay for the first person perspective in the halo games however if you check this box off all projectiles will accurately fire from the weapon's primary trigger marker which is typically located by the weapon barrel so when we check this off for the scarabs aa turret it properly shoots out of the barrel the issue is that the particle beam doesn't last long enough in the air to reach the pelicans on the opposite side and because i wanted to keep some level of consistency between this scene and the outskirts cut scene i opted to have it shoot the phantom projectiles at the same fire rate as a turret in the cutscene and these actually reach the pelicans we then get to what i think is the coolest part of this entire cut sequence the scarab was originally intended to use its scarab gun to fire at the opposing pelicans the scarab will choose one of the two pelicans at random and as the walker begins its charging sequence the targeted pelican will perform an evasive maneuver and dodge the incoming charged particle beam the pelicans will continue to fire their missiles against the scarab and will stop doing so when the player jumps onto the scarab we finally reached the end and it's totally possible to have the master chief hold the gpmg in the cutscene and it looks badass i'll end this segment of the video with the ending cutscene where i've added more director's cut references with added dynamic lighting within the in amber clad bridge that's right you mothers run not if we can help it sergeant extract the chief and return to an amber clad roger that status sir the prophet is bugging out request permission to engage negative commander i'll vector two heavies for star side intercept ma'am slip space rupture off the target's bow it's going to jump inside the city there's no time sir green light green light to engage punch it get us close ma'am without a destination solution we are not losing that ship [Music] [Music] and that's going to wrap up this video once again let me know in the comments below regarding which variant of the coveted carbine i should use for the next installment of this series if and only if you enjoyed this video hit the like button leave a comment about your thoughts on the content subscribe for more halo content from this channel and hit the bell icon to be notified when my next video is uploaded i also have a patreon where you can voluntarily donate to further support the channel i'd like to thank my segali zealots as well as counselors joe antonetti conor daytona lauren kleckner rad mayan and kyle dielman this is davinci of atom and i'll see you on the great journey [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Vengeful 'Vadam

Views: 136,628

Keywords: halo, halo 2 cut content, halo 2 beta, halo 2 campaign beta, the vengeful vadam, halo 2 artifacts, halo 2 mod tools, secrets, 343, hidden, generalkidd, hiddenxperia, halo ce, halo 2, halo 5, halo 2 anniversary, cut content, halo beta, halo infinite, halo infinite multiplayer, halo mcc mods, halo mcc, h2a, halo mcc pc, halo mod, halo 2 pc, halo cut content, halo 2 falcon, halo 2 falcon campaign, halo 2 director's cut, halo 2 director's commentary, halo 2 mod, halo 2 uncut

Id: 5c0RsNiRWYg

Length: 60min 9sec (3609 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 13 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/TheVideogaming101]

I love it, I could only imagine a "directors cut" setting or skull to readd your work into retail.