Just so nobody accuses me of being that guy, I’m gonna point out that minor spoilers for Halo 2 obviously follow. So if you haven’t had a chance to check out the 12 year old game yet, back the fuck up.
Anyway, as fans probably remember, Halo 2 ends on a bit of a shitty cliffhanger. It pissed a lot of players off at the time to learn that completing the game rewarded them with the revelation that they’d have to wait a few years and then go buy another game before they could see the resolution.
Recently composer Marty O’Donnell, (formerly of Bungie before he was fired in 2014) has spoken to IGN to discuss the way the story was originally meant to end.
Apparently the game would have had a ‘grand and glorious’ conclusion that involved Master Chief finding the Ark of the Covenant on Earth. He would then have fought alongside the Arbiter to vanquish the Prophet of Truth.
O’Donnell claims that Bungie even recorded all the dialogue for the ending before they decided to throw it all out in favour of a new direction.
So why the sudden change? O’Donnell says it was a simple necessity to get the game out on time, but not many people were pleased about it.
He said:
It was so painful for me and for everybody at Bungie to throw that all out. We just couldn’t finish the plan, it was just impossible So, everything got re-jiggered, and we had the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers.
So, for anyone who was pissed off at Halo 2’s original ending, just remember: Not even the developer wanted it – It really was that shit.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.