“Even that whole environment, the Earth city, was way too big for the engine at the time,” adds Carney. So we literally scrapped the entire graphics engine and started from scratch.” “Through putting ourselves through hell, we were able to do a five-minute demo of it, but after we came back from E3 we had to admit that this graphics engine was never going to work – it was never going to support the kind of environments that are really important for a Halo game. “The graphics engine that we showed at E3 2003, driving around the Earth city… That entire graphics engine had to be thrown away, because you could never ship a game on the Xbox with it,” Butcher sighs. įrom an article at EuroGamer we can read more info on the development of Halo 2: Ī Jackal Carrier? Whatever it is, it was obviously cut from the game.
I have come to this conclusion because there are no other beta pictures that prove otherwise. Since the other Covenant have human nicknames such as Elite for the Sangheili I believe that the Sharqoui and the Drinol are in fact the same enemy. It is based on an enemy from Bungie’s previous series, Marathon. This vehicle’s advantage was its speed and was good at getting to places in a short time but did not have any weapons. This beta vehicle was called the Mongoose and although it didn’t make it to Halo 2 it has been officionally announced that it will come out in Halo 3. Personally, I think its a Flood version of an enemy that was also cut called the Sharquoi. Some people think its a Hunter Flood form but the Hunter can not be turned into a Flood because it is made up a bunch of worms and have no central brain system. Thanks to FullMetalMC, Randy 355 & Earthwormjim for the contributions!Ī beta enemy cut from the game called the Flood Juggernaut! Although it is still in the disc it does not have any spawn points and no dying animation. The cliffhanger ending of the game was not originally intended, and resulted from the frenzy to ship on time. With only a year to go until release, Bungie went into the “mother of all crunches” in order to finish the game. Bungie informed the public on development with weekly Halo 2 development updates which started on Januand ended Jthe weekly updates became standard on the Bungie website even after the release of Halo 2. A real-time gameplay beta video was shown at E3 2003, which was the first actual gameplay seen by the public it showcased new features such as dual-wielding and improved graphics. The trailer was subsequently packaged with later Halo: Combat Evolved DVDs. Halo 2 was officially announced in September 2002 with a cinematic trailer.