Halo 2 Developer Commentary

The Halo 2 Developer Commentary included with special editions of Halo 3 features Bungie employees Jason Jones, Joseph Staten, and Martin “Marty” O’Donnell providing commentary to the in-game cutscenes and a selection of gameplay from Halo 2.

The following is a selection of quotes of particular interest and/or insight organized by their corresponding time-codes.

10:31

 * STATEN: "The original space station, right, it was supposed to be a zero G training facility, where there was a big, open environment with Warthogs and all that sort of stuff, right?"

10:51

 * STATEN: "The reason why we have the bomb… [is] because the original plan was to have a level after this one called “Covenant Ship,” and the Master Chief, much like he did in that announcement trailer for Halo 2 … would just man-up, pop the airlock... Bam! Land on the Covenant ship and tear it apart from the inside."

COVENANT SHIP
On the cut "Covenant Ship" level:

11:24

 * STATEN: “Well, I figure if you’re going to cut a level, this is the way to cut it.”


 * JONES:“...By creating just as much work.”


 * STATEN:“Yeah.”

47:34

 * STATEN: "…the original plan was to have… the Master Chief … land on the Covenant ship and tear it apart from the inside."

20:30
On the outro cutscene to Metropolis:


 * STATEN: “It was a really … ambitious cinematic that was probably a little bit more ambitious than we could pull off.”

23:28
On the original Covenant heretics:


 * STATEN:“Yeah, there was a time in Halo 2 where the plan was … the Heretic Leader would be a Hunter and most of the Heretics you fought in the next level... were all Hunters.”


 * STATEN:“And, don’t forget that early on in Halo 2 days, where you went to go attack the Heretics was actually the moon near the first Halo ring. The old, infamous “Alpha Moon” environment.”


 * STATEN:“I think some of that geometry actually got used again … for the Sentinel Wall level, right?”

FORERUNNER TANK
On the cut "Forerunner Tank" level:

41:58
On the cut "Forerunner Tank" level:
 * STATEN: "The greatest thing about Forerunner Tank is that Jones, for a year… Whoever would ask him and say, ‘Jones, so what is a Forerunner Tank? …And what does it do?’ And Jones, do you even know what it was supposed to do?"


 * JONES: "Be awesome. Blow things up. Glow a lot from little windows. Move real fast."


 * STATEN: “The Chief was supposed to go on this, I mean, another piece of moving sort-of-BSP-geometry, right? And then…?”


 * JONES: “Awesomeness would ensue.”


 * STATEN: “Yes. And you would really be introduced to the Gravemind, because his big tentacles would come crashing down upon you, and you would basically sort of be going through … the caverns of the Gravemind.”

49:57

 * STATEN: “The Gravemind was actually a much bigger presence in the original imagining of this game, where… his tentacles were sort of seeping out everywhere and you would see them much earlier on.”


 * JONES: “His tentacles were kind of racing like freight trains behind half-open doors. Things like that.”


 * STATEN: “Exactly. You’re right. Forerunner Tank would’ve been awesome.”

1:02:30

 * STATEN: “The cinematic which we didn’t do, because we cut Forerunner Tank … was you would actually witness the Brutes lining up and executing some Elite councilors. The same Elite councilors that you saw in the very first cinematic in the game.”

34:03

 * STATEN:“Would you like to tell the children what Miranda was going to do?”


 * JONES: “Yeah … I think the phrase, ‘arc-welding a thermo-nuclear bomb to his armor’ comes to mind.”


 * STATEN:“That’s right… Miranda was going to strap a bomb to the Chief’s back… And why was she going to do that? … [Because the Chief] punched her dad in the face.”

47:00
On the "Quarantine Zone" level:
 * STATEN: “And this was the original … Alpha Moon sort of geometry.”


 * JONES: “Oh, yeah, yeah. ...The first “Dervish” level... Whoops!"


 * STATEN: “First Arbiter level.”

55:57
On the original ending of Halo 2:


 * JONES: “Remember how this game originally ended? … Do you remember the medallion that the Prophet had?”


 * STATEN: “Oh, that’s right!”


 * JONES: “That was the best. That was the best ever.”


 * STATEN: “Tell the story!”


 * JONES: “It’s pretty complicated… and really not the ‘best ever.’ But it was pretty funny.”

57:35
On the cut "Forerunner Ship" level:
 * O'DONNELL: “Forerunner Ship” sounds like the name of a level we should have had… Hmmm...”

59:16

 * STATEN: “Do you remember, back in the day, when Johnson and Miranda had a thing?”


 * JONES: “What?!”


 * STATEN: “Well, I mean, I don’t think it got past a conversation that’s very similar to the one we’re having now.”

1:03:20

 * O'DONNELL: “At this point, we decided to cut some levels at the end … and you flipped around some half-levels…”


 * STATEN: “That’s right. We did do the dividing-up of the levels and flipping them around.”

1:05:50
On an early outro to "High Charity:"


 * STATEN: “Originally … you were supposed to be in a Warthog and you were going to launch yourself on the Warthog into the compartment of the ship.”

1:08:19
On an early version of "The Great Journey:"
 * STATEN: “There used to be a cinematic, there ... the soldiers were there on their knees and the Brutes were going to lop off their heads … and this was, unfortunately, right about that time when real-world events made that a little bit too real.”