EGM November 2002 Halo 2 Article shows what Halo 2 could and was supposed to be...

Wow... just wow...

https://imgur.com/a/GcZ4s

Sounds like it would have been quite the different game.

I'm glad they took out melee combos. Either it would have made rushing in a much more viable option or a single melee would be so underpowered it wouldn't be worth going for unless you knew you could complete the whole combo.

*cough* BXR *cough*

I mean Halo 2 is still awesome either way

Yeah, they kinda kept some of the leftovers of the would-be melee combo system with BXR and stuff.

The article was actually pretty accurate on a lot of stuff, but it was written in a way that made it seem like there was going to be more than what was actually there. Maybe some of that stuff was planned but then cut due to balancing issues (with sprint being one of the more obvious examples), but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the nonexistent stuff mentioned just couldn't be fit in because the game was already very ambitious for that time.

Also it still blew Halo CE out of the water content wise, so I can't really complain about what it could have been.

Well, they ran out of time and simply couldn't add these features in because of that. The 2003 E3 demo just barely worked, and then it stopped working entirely after that. So they had to scrap that and finish the game in a year, leaving no room for any of the stuff they had planned (including an ending that's actually good). There are some things not mentioned in the article that they had planned, but never got to see the light of day, as well.

Fun fact Halo 2's original campaign was also going to end with a cliffhanger
But it was going to be in Voi where the Portal to the ark opens and the screen goes black with Cortana saying "This is the way the World ends"

So in a way the first few missions of Halo 3 where intended for Halo 2 :P

JaggyNos wrote:Well, they ran out of time and simply couldn't add these features in because of that. The 2003 E3 demo just barely worked, and then it stopped working entirely after that. So they had to scrap that and finish the game in a year, leaving no room for any of the stuff they had planned (including an ending that's actually good). There are some things not mentioned in the article that they had planned, but never got to see the light of day, as well.

I loved Halo 2's ending.

Am I the only one that cant stand halo 2 as a whole? I don't know why but I never really liked it as much as all the other games in the series (Halo 4 being an exception, that's the only game I like less than H2)

Once you get over the graphics, the campaign has more replayable missions imo. Taking down the scarab was better than it was in Halo 3 (although jumping out of a hornet onto the moving thing is more awesome than jumping off a bridge) and Halo 3 never had any close-quarters action like the first half of Outskirts, besides maybe Crow's Nest but that involved too much moving through deserted hallways getting lost and some of the sections were kind of repetitive and shared almost identical layout to the next/previous section.

The multiplayer is also pretty good gameplay wise, more or less on par with Halo 3 imo. The main difference between Halo 2 and Halo 3 multiplayer imo is that Halo 2 has Headlong and Halo 3 has Sandtrap. Headlong is simply a favorite for me in both its iterations but especially in Halo 2 when I was playing splitscreen with some friends and one of us found you could fly the banshee up the ramped side of one of the skyscrapers and reach the rooftops, where you could sneak around and snipe people from nowhere and view the infinite sea of nothingness. The best part was that the guy who found it made everyone who went up there chuck all their grenades off the edge and shoot all their ammo into the ground if they wanted to stay. Once we all got up there, you had to watch your back for people assassinating you and once you were down you'd have to walk all the way back to the banshee and fly back up.

I'd say they're both pretty great. Halo 2 seems to have some kind of charm that Halo 3 doesn't but Halo 3 has better graphics and some better balance (in H2 if someone has a br they can overpower an smg at pretty much any range but in H3 ars can do the spray/melee combo and brs take much more time to get the shots in for the one-melee kill, so you can take a br user off guard in close quarters and take them out).

I personally feel like Halo 2 had some of the better designed multiplayer maps tbh. Coagulation, Lockout, Headlong, Elongation, Relic, Burial Mounds, and Zanzibar all were great maps (The H2 versions actually outdid some of the H3 versions, looking at you Last Resort), but I honestly didn't like the way halo 2 as a whole played.

Halo 2's multiplayer was a fun change from Halo CE's combat, especially with the melee lunge, but overall the way the game played seemed to irk me. It could have been controls or just the way that the new systems meshed together, but whatever it was didn't suit me. It got cleaned up in Halo 3 a decent amount but I didn't get to play Halo 3 as much as I did halo 1 and 2 (I got my 360 in the same year as reach launched, and I didn't get H3MP until months later, wherein I was liking the HR play a bit more because it was different).

I always had an issue with H2's graphics, but I got over those pretty fast. I also didn't like that the H2V-EK was so damn locked by comparison to H1EK. Made me very sad

If they planned to put sprint into Halo 2, why not put it into Halo 3? O_o

deadofmind wrote:If they planned to put sprint into Halo 2, why not put it into Halo 3? O_o

Because 4 and 5 happen.

Because they did not include it because the original xbox limited, they did not include it for other reasons. Maybe because they'd completely have throw any current map designs in the trashcan if they did.

Leave it to moot to make mountains out of anthills

The reason they cut sprint out was because it messed with gameplay pacing, namely just overall movement. There was a mini-interview that was given and you can see that a lot of weapons in H2 have their sprint animations still in the game (mostly the weapons that were available in H1)

What? The question was asked why they didn't include it in Halo 3. I voiced what I think was the reasoning behind it.

You're exaggerating.

If I had to nitpick on Halo 2, it would mainly have to do with the way they balanced the BR. I'm not just talking about how the duel wield weapons were weak as hell like Heat mentioned, but also the fact that the spread pattern (or lack thereof) made it more of a semi-auto rifle in disguise rather than an actual burst fire. There's a lot of maps where cross-mapping is just way too easy, which in turn encourages camping instead of movement. That's why I liked the way H3's BR was balanced better. Yeah, people complained about how spread made it inaccurate, but that's what got people moving around the map instead of sitting back on red base in Midship while picking off enemies in blue base across the map.

Minor campaign nitpicks include the lack of UNSC enemies for the Arbiter missions, and the bullet-sponge nature of the brutes that made the Carbine and Needler the only two non-power weapons that were actually viable against them. Also the nasty default "Ironskull" resetting of co-op Legendary campaign and the fact that skulls were only unlockable on Legendary difficulty. I'm too busy trying not to die from outrageously OP enemies to be fumbling around the level looking for skulls.

Honestly I didn't have any other problems with Halo 2 other than those minor nitpicks. Otherwise I would probably hold it on a higher pedestal than Halo 3.

Edit: Oh, and sniper jackals. f*** H2 sniper jackals.

Let me just disclaimer here to make everyone understand I haven't played Halo 3 on legendary, but nobody complains about these things in Halo 3 like they do in Halo 2. Wouldn't that mean that H2 legendary is simply more of a challenge? Brutes may be dumb, but I've never had problems with Halo 3's sniper jackals on heroic like I have had moderate issues with in Halo 2 on the few levels that have had them that I bothered playing on heroic. I'm sure some people would consider the jackals pluses rather than negatives.

Those brutes though. Even on normal, they sometimes survived my shotgun to the face. I doubt anyone considers them a positive, more challenging or not.

Halo 2/3 had the most irritating sniper jackals ever. They were wallhacking aimbots that ALWAYS were a one hit kill. Halo 3 had some lenience by not having them see you before you turned the corner, but damn if their aim wasn't perfect.

That's because Halo 3's jackals don't get a damage boost on legendary. In Halo 2, if a jackal sniper hits you anywhere...even in the foot, you're dead, period. They're also incredibly hard to see, although H2A fixed that by giving them the purple laser headgear from H3. A lot of H2's levels also had some really bad sightlines that gave jackals an advantage over you, mainly when they spawn on a rooftop that you can't see from the alleyway below and end up popping out to shoot you in the back when you thought you had cleared the area. I found myself double- and triple-checking the rooftops every 5 or 10 seconds mid-combat just in case another one of those sneaky bastards decided to peek out.

Minor campaign nitpicks include the lack of UNSC enemies for the Arbiter missions

From a game design aspect I think it'd ruin the allegiance imposed on the player with the UNSC / protagonist, severing any 'bond' created with the 'good guys'.

What about the Arbiter's "bond" with the elites and grunts he commands?

Heatguts wrote:What about the Arbiter's "bond" with the elites and grunts he commands?

This is carried on through having elites help you later on and Halfjaw as a back up character (can't remember his official name [vadumee???])

Neesy wrote:

Minor campaign nitpicks include the lack of UNSC enemies for the Arbiter missions

From a game design aspect I think it'd ruin the allegiance imposed on the player with the UNSC / protagonist, severing any 'bond' created with the 'good guys'.

Oh come on, you and I both know everyone kills the marine allies for sport now and again. Hell, I even did it by accident not too long ago, and I didn't give two shits about it. That idiot deserved it:

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/SilentGamer64/video/13021579