Should we coax Frankie into revealing it in, perhaps, the special features of an upcoming Halo game? Maybe if they ever remake Halo 2, since he did say they might if there is the same amount of demand for it as anniversary, they can get that in as a special feature. ‘Deleted scenes’ if you will. Marty says he has the audio for it under lock and key, but the other Bungie guys seemed eager to talk about it in the Halo 3 Legendary extras. (Even without Marty, they can still show the script and concept art, or at least talk about it.)
I’m wondering if Frank and 343 could persuade Marty to hand them over as special features for another game since 343 now has all the rights to Halo.
Also, for Marty’s (or perhaps other people’s) idea that it shouldn’t be revealed because it’s not how the story eventually went, I’m thinking of this as any other deleted concept art, cut level, etc. that’s interesting to talk about. Seeing how it was going to end up is a satisfaction of curiosity, not some disappointment at how the trilogy actually ended.
I’d love to know what they had planned. Just because I spent three years drooling over every teeny tiny detail of Halo 2 before its release, poring over every detail of Frankie’s updates, and the ending was… let’s just say it wasn’t what I expected.
At one point it was just going to keep rolling into Halo 3, how far into Halo 3 I’m not sure, but that creates the question of how did Halo 3 change between then and when it released?
I saw a concept sketch of the Ark in the Halo 2 making of. It was the structure that created the portal, but not the portal itself, and labeled ‘Earth Ark’ (maybe the Ark was going to be simply that structure, and not Installataion 00). So my guess is about half way-through Halo 3, as the Ark opens at that point. Cortana’s cutscene at the end of Halo 2 though with the gravemind was always going to play at the end.
There was also supposed to be a boss fight where you played as the cheif, and that would end the game.
So:
Out of the 3 levels that were said to come after what we played in Halo 2, the first one would be the cheif fighting through the Forerunner ship (Marty aluded to it being a planned level), which went on to be in the graphic novel, Halo: Uprising.
Then, the last two levels would cover at least the first half of what we know to be Halo 3 with the Ark portal being opened. Cortana would be revealed as she was, to be with the Gravemind, and the game would end. The bossfight couldn’t have been against the Gravemind, then, so I have no idea who it would have been against. They did say that the Arbiter would team up with Cheif (which is what happened in Halo 3). Perhaps It ended with Arby and Cheif killing Truth after Johnson and Miranda died? It could have been all on Earth, as Bungie said things had changed a lot between that H2 draft, and Halo 3.
Halo 3 would have been planned as being what we know as the second half of Halo 3, but longer, and more stuff inbetween. (Perhaps the second half of the actual Halo 3 is a condensed version of what they had originally thought of doing.) Maybe Mendicant Bias would have had a more prominent role. But that’s just speculation.
I think Halo Legends Origins revealed what might have happpened in some parts if Halo 2 was finished in time. But it wasn’t and now we’re given corrupted stuff from cortana. Which I still think is cool.
But the real question is, where was Halo 3 going to end if Halo 2 was finished.
I’m guessing that they originally planned Halo 2 to end just before or just after entering the portal to the Ark, especially given that before Halo 2’s release, they kept playing up the fact that the battle was coming to Earth.
Now I’m not saying that the levels and cutscenes would be the exact same, with just the break between the games in a different place. That really wouldn’t make sense.
Somewhere earlier in Halo 2’s development, they decided that they weren’t going to be able to follow their original plan because of time or because the game would be too long or whatever, and they adjusted the plan for Halo 2 and 3 accordingly. Still, the “ending” for Halo 2 was a crappy experience.
This is correct. The ending was a level called forrunnership i think in which MC fights through the dreadnought in an attempt to kill truth, but fails and has to bail out, which segues into the beginning of halo 3.
> The original ending was told in Halo Uprising. The Chief would escape from the Dreadnought and crash land on earth.
> Halo 3 would have been planned as being what we know as the second half of Halo 3, but longer, and more stuff inbetween. (Perhaps the second half of the actual Halo 3 is a condensed version of what they had originally thought of doing.) Maybe Mendicant Bias would have had a more prominent role. But that’s just speculation.
Man that would have been awesome. Those two levels on the Ark were better than all the other levels in Halo 2/3/ODST/Reach combined.
> This is correct. The ending was a level called forrunnership i think in which MC fights through the dreadnought in an attempt to kill truth, but fails and has to bail out, which segues into the beginning of halo 3.
>
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> > The original ending was told in Halo Uprising. The Chief would escape from the Dreadnought and crash land on earth.
I don’t think so. Joe Staten said in a making of video that there was supposed to be a triumphant return with a heroic final showdown on Earth at the end of Halo 2. Seems like the fight in the dreadnought would have at least had one or two levels after that.
I think the original narrative to the conclusion of the trilogy is much different then what eventually came to be. My proof is The Halo comic uprising was continually pushed back time and again one of the artists of that cited that a major change in the plot was made (according to Halopedia and many other articles I’ve seen).
It seems obvious enough that the major change was the function of " The Key of Osanalan" . I believe it went from being something major to the story to just a made up part of the two Ackerson brothers childhood.
In the end I think Halo 3 was early on a very different story and had more to do with the portal instead of the actual Ark.
> > This is correct. The ending was a level called forrunnership i think in which MC fights through the dreadnought in an attempt to kill truth, but fails and has to bail out, which segues into the beginning of halo 3.
> >
> >
> > > The original ending was told in Halo Uprising. The Chief would escape from the Dreadnought and crash land on earth.
>
> I don’t think so. Joe Staten said in a making of video that there was supposed to be a triumphant return with a heroic final showdown on Earth at the end of Halo 2. Seems like the fight in the dreadnought would have at least had one or two levels after that.
That was one possible ending. Originally, the artifact on Earth was going to be the Ark, and there was not going to be a Halo 3. When Halo 2 concluded the way it did, the story needed to be changed and expanded.