This is what makes Halo such a historic game series: people who are willing to go above and beyond the average and assemble such a wonderful work of love to this amazing game.
Thank you for your passion! I know the Halo devs probably have the same love for the game, but I hope the corporate overlords see how much the fans appreciate your work and loosen the reigns on 343 devs
They also cut a story element where it was established that Miranda Keyes is angry at Chief because she doesn't understand why he couldn't save her father. ONI kept all information on the Flood top secret and forbade Chief, Cortana and Johnson from telling anyone about it. Consequently, the true circumstances around Jacob Keyes's death were withheld from everyone including Miranda. Apparently Miranda was originally going to be really cold towards Chief until the 2nd half when she encounters the Flood and would have realized it wasn't his fault and that Chief did her father a favor by crushing his skull.
All she would have known is the Chief had killed her father, and she was going to get revenge by somehow using him as a sacrificial bomb against the Flood. It's honestly a sub par story idea and better off cut.
@kassarc16 The way it was planned, with Miranda tricking Chief and trying to kill him basically, is absolute garbage, I agree. But the way OP described it sounds way better and I would be on board with it. Regardless, I'm happy we got Halo 2 the way it is!
Thank god they cut that out. It wouldn't make any sense. I don't know when the expanded media came out that detailed how there were additional survivors from Halo CE (and explained how Johnson escaped), but originally, Chief and Cortana were the only two to make it out of there, with Johnson escaping on his own because plot armor. Everyone else on the PoA died as well. I don't think it would make much story sense, nor would it be fair, for her to be demanding why Chief couldn't save her father when he was unable to save _anyone._ Honestly, she would probably across as a "Del Rio" type character, and I don't think I've EVER heard anyone say he was a good character. I dunno, I figure having that dynamic would just have players hating Miranda and I couldn't see this story arc doing her character any favors really.
@@Dylan-xx2tk They explained how Johnson survived in a book called First Strike that takes place immediately after the first Halo game. Him and other marines were in a pelican when the Halo exploded and Chief picked up their signal when scanning for other possible IFF tags and docked with them.
The original original version was going to have even more levels and The Arbiter and Chief banding together to fight Truth on earth at the end! That would've been epic😭
i can't believe they restored all this content. i wonder what Marty O'Donnell has to say about this, it would be so cool to hear his thoughts about this
Although if that had happened we probably wouldn’t have any more halos which some people would say is a good thing but I’m glad we’re still getting games even if they are… rough around the edges. Plus getting halo 3 odst and reach were indirectly caused by halo 2s rough development
Definitely reminds me of the two elites who chat during the gondola ride in Quarantine Zone. *Tatarus flights Phantom to harass the humans* Elite #1 "That fool! He'll alert them to our presence!" Elite #2 "Look on the bright side, maybe they'll shoot him down?"
There's another one at the very beginning of high charity too. A pelican drops off some carrier forms, but I'd you keep watching, it flies off overhead of your spawn and you can watch a banshee desperately chase it into the lower city, it's so cool
The fact that this game had such a rocky development and came out as probably the most successful addition to the franchise is still mind blowing to this day 😂😂😂
@@TheBig451 I've never heard of that game before, I've heard of "5 Guardians", but with the Halo suffix? Are you sure? Nah, I would have seen it in the shops or on Xbox Live!
Other than pioneering console multiplayer Halo 2 is not the most successful addition to the franchise. Halo 3 sold better and honestly handled multiplayer better (especially custom games and forge). Halo Reach was also great in its own way, despite having a more controversial multiplayer it was a much more fully realized game than Halo 2.
The shields above the radar is something I desperately want the ability to put back. It doesn't have to be the default, but it was perfect because your eyes are constantly glancing there...meaning you look to one spot for both points of info. It's not weird. It was the best IMO.
So that's why the Outskirts mission has so many snipers and why they're so strong, you were meant to sneak past them while taking out the enemy silently with detection being punished by those aimbot snipers.
You could actually get out of the map a tad and run it like the sniper mission in CE. Although you won't have that massive ammo count so you'd be stuck with a beam rifle and sniper. It didn't feel the same but it was close.
@@MOxMOxDAMONSTER Yeah I remember having to pull that trick with a friend just to get past the courtyard bit on Legendary because the snipers would just spawn in randomly and one shot ya. Same as with Delta Halo, on your way to the Temple you can get out of the map too, only issue is that no enemies spawn and you cannot leave the level unless you drop back into an arena before the last checkpoint.
The extra survivors on Sentinel Wall would have been such an amazing way to set the levels mood early on. Now that's not to say seeing the scattered bodies and the dialogue of the survivors didn't do a good job. But it really hits that much harder how dangerous your situation is when you gather up those survivors, feeling like you have a good sized and well equipped team, just to watch them all get cut down. Being left alone and caught between two enemies that tore through your allies like they were nothing.
I remember as a kid trying desperately to get the Wraith's mini-turrets to work, literally hours and hours pressing the most random button combinations refusing to believe I just couldn't
Also with trying to pilot the Shadow in Metropolis. Or the pelican you could flip in the same level. Or the phantom that's docked at the beginning of High Charity.
My boys, use the Unit Possession glitch to play as a marine or Elite and watch as your wraith can now use the mini secondary turrets. Not perfect but they absolutely work! 👌
I think I'm having a berenstein bears moment because I remember them working, I might be thinking of a halo:CE mod that added the halo 2 wraith though. I also don't remember the needler being bad. So who knows
the fun thing about the jackal shield is that part of spartan training was to have them pick up the shields any time they came across them and in at least one of the books we actually see spartan 3s(i think) picking them up and strapping them on. i remember hearing rumors of the jackal shield supposedly making an appearance in every single game after combat evolved.
I just wish it was an actual thing in gameplay, both multiplayer and single. Would’ve been fun to mess with, forcing the enemy to change tactics on the spot, getting rid of enemy fire on you briefly. Urging you to rush them by having the sword and sheild on. Seriously that would be FUN!
Halo 2 will always be one of my favorite video games of all time. The story, the characters and the OST. I honestly couldn’t imagine it being better until now.
I remember as a kid being so intrigued by the Great Schism because it reminded me so much of Order 66 from Star Wars. And so hearing Cortana say the Jackals and Drones were loyal to the Brutes while the Hunters allied with the Elites but the grunts were too scared to choose, sounded so neat
Same, but I never understood why have Hunters ally with the Elites in Halo 2, then turned enemies in Halo 3. I can see why logically to have the tanks as enemies play wise, canonically they should’ve remained allies. Unless it was solely for the Arbiter, then learning he sided with Humanity, they turned.
@@Outcastsage9033 But where were the Hunters that sided with the Elites? The reason why the Grunts were enemies because they remained neutral out of fear, so that makes sense. And Arbiter was yelling at the Drones to rebel
I genuinely felt disturbed at the part where it’s found out the flood spores were inside high charity life support systems, would also explain why the flood spread so fast, because they were inhaling the fungus, genuinely had my jaw dropped to the floor at that one..
The dialogue of Cortana mentioning which Covenant members sided with is cool as hell. Imagine how cool it wouldve been if the Hunters kept their alliance with the Elites through Halo 3. We wouldve been fighting with Hunters along side us AND possibly gotten a new heavy unit for the Covenant as their replacement
I think it's more realistic that individuals of each race choose separate alignments, rather than them all acting as a hive mind. So Halo 3 was still disappointing in that regard.
I didn’t realize it at the time but when I was coming up and playing Halo 2 as a kid and waiting for Halo 3 to drop I was living in one of the most legendary eras of gaming.
When I tell people I think cut content would be a great way to monitize MCC I absolutely mean it. Seeing cut content like this would be incredible, can be optional, and acts as a great way to add additional content that's 100% worth paying for.
@@cursedhawkins1305 Yeah money talks but theyre only in that position because of not adding what we wanted in the first place so maybe learning the hard way is what they outta do to fix what they broke to begin with you reap what you sow
@@Green-IV The problem I see with the whole "not adding what we wanted" when it comes to an entire community is that it can easily alienate that community, I mean look at what happened with Halo 4's launch and the leak prior, people didn't want to believe there was ADS or sprint in the game but the game launches and both of those were in the public release which caused a massive uproar.
@@cursedhawkins1305 Yeah well ADS is sure as f*ck not what we wanted most nor requested, I cant speak for the sweaty nerds playing H4 and H5 all day who wanted the game to play in their favor or at least preference, but as far as I can remember 'what we wanted' consisted of many things aside from the way the sights looked when you zoomed lmao- at least before that became an issue- the fact that it is is again 343s fault. You dont have to add that shit. The reason its all ppl talk about when they do, is because its all they have to talk about. And bcuz thos eppl are newbies they attracted via selling Halo Incorrectly lol If they were actually adding content to the game, some of these problems wouldnt have so much weight- H5 proved that pelicans, where tf are they already??? a file browser that works let alone exists in the game- its been roughly 14 years since we had one lol and thats just a quality of life feature *Also commendations: in reach they gave xp and there o loads for MP, Campaign, and firefight, halo 4 had that feature if I recall correctly I could go on but my goddamn essay has had you read enough so Ill leave it at that
MY favorite moments in ANY Halo game was always having a small militia of forces following you and watching them fight. Halo 1, Assault on the Control Room, you could get up to 11 marines to that final moment when you see the hunters chasing them at the bottom of the canyon. Between that and the short bit where you have a marine army at the end of 343 Guilty Spark, I just loved the feel of fighting with a large force and trying to keep them all alive. Loved that stuff in every Halo game. It really makes it feel like a warzone rather than a one man army bashing through everything. Even just moments like in Truth and Reconciliation where Cortana calls in marine support to land inside the covenant hangar if all your initial forces die, feel really impactful towards making the game feel like a fight for survival. Just finding corpses around doesn't do it justice.
Hehe bro I'd often revert to the last checkpoint if I couldnt keep as many allies alive as I wanted XD. Like an extra challenge. It's also fun to find out that the allies can sometimes actually come with u way further into the level than you expected and still do their job!
@@JorisWeima Yeah, or there are moments where they won't follow, but if you manually push them past a certain point, they'll continue again. I remember doing some eird stuff like getting a marine filled warthog past the security checkpoint in Silent Cartographer where you see that gold elite, and if positioned a certain way, they'd sometimes survive the wipe that kills them all and even hill him in the cutscene. Or just get a warthog there to roadkill him. There was always something fun to do with them though. Really wish tehre was more focus on the marines. Infinite had a great opportunity for that and they squandered it.
@@JorisWeima haha, same. on classic xbox after having beat the game a dozen times on legendary since it was my only game and i was on EI at the time that was the natural next step. Plus contextually, I always figured, you're the master chief, marines shouldn't die when you're around to back em up
The dialog of cortana and Chips in the under water section on regret was in the final release, I use to listen to this dialog all the time on this mission growing up. It was never cut.
@@ThommyofThennAll I've ever wanted was the books recreated as campagins by modders. You think that's possible? Some of the best moments happened in the books.
@@beeman4266Don't know if this is any help, but I was at an arcade a while back and they had a Halo game that followed the novel's story pretty well. Game play was a little wonky, but still, it worked out ok I think.
i know for a fact that my sisters would have dual-wielded them in co-op. they were pretty bad at halo games for a while. those shields would have let them be a tank now and then while i did the shooty parts.
one small point. I don't think allied brutes were cut cause of dev time. I think it was cut because it didn't fit the theme and impression they wanted to give you of the brutes. The brutes during no section of the game are your friend. Even before the schism the brutes are antagonists to the arbiter. They are the ones who band him, and are never portrayed as friendly in any way to him or any of the elites at any point. I think same *kinda* goes for jackals, but we just got 1 level with them as allies for shock value and to make us feel like part of the covenant. I think having Tartarus (the most antagonistic person in the entire covenant from the arbiters pov) be the closest thing to an ally we ever see from the brutes is on purpose.
Exactly. It's the same reason we didn't fight any humans as the Arbiter as well. He's still part of the Covenant, fighting to annihilate the human race and to help activate the rings. We play as him under dramatic irony until the end of the game where he finally accepts the truth about the rings and the Covenant. It would be against our motivations and goals in saving the galaxy to kill the race we're primarily trying to protect, even if we are doing it from the opposing side.
This isn't the 'original' Halo 2 campaign, Halo 2 was radically different in development and there are entire levels, mechanics and story beats which are not very well known and can't be restored. None of this takes away from the great work Vadam did in restoring details from the cutting room floor, however this is not the 'original' Halo 2 campaign, it is a reinterpretation of the Halo 2 retail campaign.
If I had a nickle for every groundbreaking early 2000's fps sequel that had the entire game scraped and development restarted from the begining, I'd have two nickels.
I like a lot of what's been done here. Some of the cut dialogue especially is pretty nice, like Cortana's messages about what's going on in High Charity during the infection. However, and hopefully not to come across as rude, I don't think the line Cortana mentions about In Amber Clad being flood controlled worked well. The delivery seemed off, or maybe the audio mixing, and it definitely feels weird that she seems to know immediately that it's flood infested. How does she know? And the cool part of Amber appearing was the mystery of wondering why it's here. A better compromise would have been having her crack the joke about the pilot being accurate with the jump (which would have some later horrific implications when you realize it's flood controlled). But if I had to choose between the two lines, I think the lines they went with on release were better.
Its crazy that these mods that are just original cuts from the first version somehow feel so much more natural to Halo 2, like they give a definite feel they were meant to be
I’ve always wanted a “directors cut” version of Halo 2 with the extra missions, original ending from the storyboard, and assets. This is the closest we will get. Pretty cool we can do this now. I think it’s amazing that the Halo 2 we got is one of the best games ever and it’s just a shell of that it was meant to be. I love the Halo 2 from our timeline tho
@@gitupmechavvy2569 > As Expected, Palpatine doesn’t return. > First Order has captured Coruscant, Kylo Ren finds a secret Hologram map hidden by Palpatine, which explodes, forcing him to wear a mask for life support like Darth Vader > Rey has a duel-sided Lightsaber. Think Darth Maul but blue. > Rey and her gang has a big fight with the Knights of Ren, she uses the force to read their minds and finds out they killed her parents. She gets so mad she kills them with Force Lightning. Horrified of the Dark Side within her, she sets out on her own to find Kylo Ren. > Kylo Ren uses the coordinates he got to find a planet that has Darth Plagueis the Wise’s Master, some creepy spider thing. It teaches him how to Force-Drain Life Energy out of things. Kylo then kills him with this power. > Finn used his Stormtrooper origins to inspire the other Stormtroopers to rise up and help form a new resistance on Coruscant. > Luke’s Force Ghost talks to Kylo Ren, Kylo tries to swing him away with his Lightsaber and Luke uses his hand AS A FORCE GHOST to catch it. > Kylo Ren and Rey have a big fight. Rey gets blinded and nearly dies. She talks to Luke and tells him they made a mistake in ignoring the Dark Side, as their fear of it only made it stronger. > Rey speaks to Kylo through the force and convinces him to stop. He uses his Force Drain powers to heal Rey (eyes back) and reveals her full name is “Rey Solana” Kylo dies himself. > First Order defeated, Rey Solana builds a new Jedi Order and teaches them to master both sides of the Force to maintain balance.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 no that’s fine, anymore to add? Holy fuck.. I only asked because it was 2am and felt the impending doom coming if I took a minute to look it up followed by the soul crushing agony of what could of been but I merely postponed it… Star Wars is kill
man thinking about all the cpu power you would need to run this all back then, i can see why it was cut. also cortanas comment about the flood having great accuracy kinda lends to the lore they were establishing i think, hinting that the flood is able to easily use whatever equipment it comes across *including* a ship
THIS is what a remaster should be. Adding cut content, updating graphics, making what wasn't possible then, possible now. Bringing the original dream back to fruition. The soulless remasters have nothing on this besides owning the IP, and just by right of passion, knowing, and bringing the dream to life, you have completely and utterly humbled the whole industry of gaming at this point. Bungie was the original dreamer, 343 was the nightmare, TheVengefulVadam is another addition to the dream!
They kinda wanted to retry it on the original h3 Cortana mission script one last time with the semi destroyed scarab that Cortana would try to make run so you could try to kill the gravemind... Sounded metal af as well
Sounds like fighting off waves of enemies on a big piece of moving geometry. Which is nothing special when you play The Oracle or Quarantine Zone. Probably for the better something like that didn't make it in. It becomes a little too on rails and doesn't give much choice to the player, and Halo was known at least back then to usually not do that kind of stuff.
@@SeriousRyno I don't think it was so much like that, It does sound similar, but they literally didn't got enough time, you were supposed to drive the semi destroyed scarab against gravemind tentacles, same happened to the act where you got inside the arbiters mausoleum, and some flood infected arbiter corpses would be a mini boss fight.. it was just not enough time n resources, if I'm not mistaken for example the whole covenant level (where you seek truth before shooting the rings) was just a 35% of the whole stage, after you destroyed the scarab, a whole new stage inside the forerunner ring central controls were going to be an standalone level, I may have be mistaken in some small points, but commentary walkthrough had those info about unfinished/scrapped ideas
@@tobbeborislyba I was actually replying to the first comment I don't know why it didn't do the @. I just meant Forerunner Tank doesn't really sound like it would have been that interesting of a level to play. About the Cortana level though I've read about and heard unused dialogue about the whole scarab thing and I don't you were actually gonna drive just ride on it which wouldn't have been as fun as driving it. Also yes there was gonna be another level after The Covenant where the Citadel part was bigger and more like a Forerunner city but Bungie decided the less known about Forerunners the better.
To be honest, I think the coolest thing would have been if the Forerunner Tank level had somehow been restored. I never thought it made sense how Chief just jumped into the water and got plucked out there, meaning anyone could have been grabbed at any time. And apparently, Gravemind had just been holding Chief in his tentacle for like a full day. Having Chief run around the lower levels of that structure that got glassed and use an ancient Forerunner weapon to mow through Sentinels would have actually made a LOT more sense.
I don't think there was enough level even created for it to be restored. I think they had storyboards and maybe some geometry but other than that Forerunner Tank was still just an idea.
all that was restored was what was in the game files, whole levels would need basically an SPV3 type deal where they create whole new geometry and then like custom campaigns make new scripts encounters and flags with whoever they can find to voice them, would be neat but also tough and to some jarring
A cool detail is that the opening cutscene to Outskirts is slightly modified. There are now odsts on the pelican, and in the cutscene they actually have a custom animation on them putting their helmet on. It’s a small detail, but a cool one.
"Offensively little about" i swear thats the understatement of the century. Hoping to hell and back 1000x that 343 comes to their senses and gives us a horror-survival game set in the streets of high charity as the flood spreads and in the words of hidden himself, "the lights go out."
I would love a Halo 3 ODST style game set in High Charity starting with the great schism and ending with the flood taking control of the station. Maybe as an elite force trying to fight off the other factions, then trying to stop the flood, then getting decimated and having to find a ship to flee the station which is now a lost cause.
I was gonna say, I remember hearing Chips Dubbo’s response back in the original Halo 2 game. But I had to wait for a while for Regret to talk, and made sure the marines were alive for that
Good news is that you only need Halo 2 Anniversary to run it, not all of MCC. Just bought it recently for 10 bucks, not too bad for the opportunity to play Halo 2 on my laptop with mods while I travel.
This is so beautiful! Halo 2 was already one of the best Halo games, and Vadam made it so much better. Absolutely beautiful! So much stuff cut now returned, it's just so amazing.
The flood juggernaut should have been added because same concept as the MAW you're basically fighting the flood and the sentinels. But for anyone who played that little battle in that room just never felt right. I had expected something more than a small swarm since that room was so open lol
The smg is likely to be open bolt and have an empty mag catch for the bolt/sear, therefore not needing to be cycled when a new magazine is inserted - at most it would need a small bump to reset the magazine safety/stop, but even that could be engineered to deactivate with a hard mag insertion.
I didn’t know what Xbox live was as a kid. The amount of times I played through halo 2, countless. I imagine playing through this mod again almost makes the game feel “new” again. One day I will have a PC and experience this beauty
I have said and always will say, the modders of our Halo community is why this game continues to thrive, not 343 industries....Love to all of the modders out there for halo that have made it fantastic for us to play bringing our imagination or in this case cut content to life ❤
I mean I agree but you also need to give 343 some credit while yes it’s not the same they have added some pretty nice things to the halo franchise and they were also the ones to give the info and any surviving source code of most cut content to our modders
I disagree. I wouldn't be playing Halo for the first time ever this month if it weren't for Master Chief Collection on Steam... made by 343 industries. But we'll see how I feel about them once I reach Halo 4! 😂
I assume the SAW and the Promethean Light-rifle from Halo 4 was the predecessor of the carriable LMG and the 3 round burst Covenant Carbine from Halo 2. Very neat, I love it!
Ever since I saw c3 sabertooth's videos on Halo 2 I couldn't help but wonder what game we would have gotten if it was delayed a year and came out as a launch title for the 360.
It always surprised me they didn't add some of the cut features and missions when they remastered the game. I think halo 2 was one of the OG broken promise games, but it got away with it because it was still an amazing game and didn't need fixing post release.
I'm not sure it really got away with it. At least in my group lol. 8 of us went to the midnight release and all played through the campaign in co-op duos. Come morning when we're all close to wrapping up the campaign, there were successive bursts of displeasure when we realized we hit the ending. There had to be more! We thought, anyway. We passed tf out and dug into multi-player when we woke up so the wound was lessened, but still.
I've actually played this mod to Delta Halo, (working on a Halo series for my channel) And I have to say this mod is phenominal! The semi-auto, 1 shot BR did feel wierd at first, but once you get used to it, it can make quick work of most enemies. Overall Vadam outdid himself with this.
This sounds like it's so close to making the complete Halo 2 experience. Now, if only the rest of the audio would dim when Cortana or other characters are talking.
Nah man that detail about having a Warthog run in every faction’s architecture is absolutely relevant. It even makes sense to have it in the order of Human > Covenant > Forerunner. Saying we were robbed of what H2 should have been is an understatement.
On the topic of fluid melee animations: in Crysis 3, if you keep hitting the melee button, Prophet will begin just punching with his fists after hitting a few times with the weapon in hand. It’s not quite the same as the BR animation in this video, but I thought it would be worth mentioning
Fun fact. You have technically been running around with a jackal shield from the very beginning. Chiefs, and all human energy shields, are based off the jackal shield that Spartans recovered whilst on mission.
I remember that mission with the militia covenant against the flood and managed to actually save everyone except one grunt but unfortunately after that gondola part it seems the AI just break and refuse to do anything (I have no idea if it was a bug or intended for I was unable to replicate the result)
7 месяцев назад
Yeah I did that too, no matter what the AI just doesnt want to work after that
I am curious, what's different about the "stealth" encounter in the gas mining facility? You can stealth through that section in regular Halo 2, it's hard to do and not really worth it, but can be done. Great vid BTW! Loving your showcase of the uncut stuff!
