Make of this what you will, but maybe I said something a little too close to the truth and someone nervous. My original post on the bungie forums got 42 replies within 50 minutes and then the topic was locked. Shortly after that I was blacklisted (banned) from the forums. Keep in mind the bungie forums are automatically censored, so curse words appear as "-blam-", so I know I wasn't banned for language. I'll try to restate this word for word as best as possible, but I can't reference my original post because it has since been removed.
The game of Halo 2 as it exists now is not what bungie initially intended for it to be, nor is this close to the final product they worked three years on to complete. Lets start with the Halo 2 cinematic trailer (released in september of 2002). MC is on a ship and you can hear random chatter over his comm as he walks down a corridor: notice you'll hear things like "that's not enough to stop an assault carrier" and "its like the god damn apocolypse". They have called for reinforcements and the reinforcements are MC alone -- one man, exciting enough that it still gives me goosebumps. So then master chief ejects from the ships air lock and makes his dive towards earth. What do you see? A whole continent saturated with fire and nuclear explosions. That does seem pretty apocolyptic.
Now lets move on to the E3 demo (released in may 200
. MC flies into New Mombasa on a pelican with the sarge and a few ODSTs. When he exits the pelican, yes, it would appear to be a full-scale invasion of earth. Wounded soldiers all around, huge covenant artillery blasting buildings, etc... exciting! He makes his run through the city and then mans the gun on the back of the gauss hog. He rolls through New Mombasa with a couple marines, you see a few other hogs rolling around, streets intersecting in and out of one another, passages that lead to other areas... its a battle on a pretty large scale. A convenant invasion of earth.
Compare these situations to the actual game of Halo 2. Where is the "god damn apocolypse"? Earth isnt even being invaded. A few small covenant platoons go to earth for one reason or another and thats it. There isnt even a hint of earth being invaded in halo 2 until the very end, then the game ends. You can see earth from space station cairo and its untouched. When it comes to all this missing storyline, what went wrong? What changed? Who intervened?
The -single- level that does take place on earth is -OBVIOUSLY- a last minute change. Notice some similarities between this earth level and the new mombasa level from the E3 demo. MC still flies in on a pelican with the sarge and some marines, not ODSTs this time. If you really pay attention you can see the marines in the pelican doing the exact same movements as the ODSTs in the E3 demo -EXACTLY-. one marine shoves a clip into his rifle while another puts on his helmet, the same as the ODSTs in the E3 demo. Sarge even says the same stuff except this time he has a little monologue about 'regret'. Also notice at the start of this level, there is no text on screen telling you where you are headed. No mention of the city name, date or location. How odd is that? When the game starts and you see the opening cinematic, you get a date and you are told exactly what you are seeing; the covenant high charity. Even in the new mombasa level on the E3 demo, you are given the same information. Strangely enough this information is missing in the actual game. Minor inconsistencies like this can only mean a handful of things. This level was added at the last minute to replace the new mombasa level because the direction of the game had taken a serious change in direction because of something or someone. Load up the outskirts level and point your view to the rooftops and tell me what you see. You might not be looking for them but you'll see power lines. You have got to be kidding me. Its the year 2552... Power lines?! Things like this, the inconsistencies and missing -important- cinematic information just do not happen when you spend three years developing a game. It simply does not happen. You do not "hype" a game up to be an awesome showdown on earth between the humans and covenant and then make the -single- earth level in the game complete garbage. My god is that level ever so linear and boring. From point A to point B. Its not the "god damn apocolypse" its a god damn conspiracy.
Simply put, Microsoft is greedy. Microsoft made bungie change the direction of the game and gave it that awful cliffhanger ending. They ran out of time because they had to take out a lot of the content that was already in the game and replace it with whatever they could. Propbably why you end up playing as the arbiter so much. Its all filler for the missing content. Watch the limited edition DVD and check out the segment on the mongoose (the human atv). They say it was buggy and didnt handle properly, watch the video and decide for yourself, it was perfectly fine. There are a few misleading statements from bungie employees in this dvd. Its not their fault, they are just covering for microsoft. Like when they say that the new mombasa E3 level was the first thing they worked on. That is utter BS. All the vehicles had their physics and mass properties already. The character models and animations were finished. There were cinematics and scripted dialogue from all the real voice actors. There was an entire level designed. Don't tell me they spent the next year and a half to design the 6 other awful levels we got. Even with all the bug testing and all that, is not reasonable. 60+ people were working on the campaign mode while 4 people worked on the multiplayer. Too many things just dont add up. Nothing about it makes any sense at all. If there is truth in the fact that the E3 new mombasa level was the first thing they worked on... which already had so many features already implemented, what in the **** did they do with all that time in between may 2003 and november 9th?
Read any publication online or in real life dealing with halo 2 before its release. Whenever someone from bungie spoke about the game, the focus was earth. The cinematic trailer, focus: earth. The E3 demo, focus: earth. It was all supposed to be about earth. Would bungie intentionally mislead us to think that is was going to be all about earth and then smack us in the face with an awful game like this? I dont think so. You cant say that what i expected halo 2 to be was just what i had in my head. It is what we were -lead- to believe and what we were told it would be. This isnt me being disappointed because I believed too much hype -- this is me being disappointed because for one reason or another, "we" didnt the the game of halo 2 that was "promised" to us.
Think about it... the E3 gameplay demo was released in may of 2003, almost a full year a half before the release of the game. The new mombasa level was brilliant. They didnt have to keep the scripting for the level, just the level itself. Why take it out? Why not put as much as you can into halo 2 including that level, because it definitely had a place in the game. Oh, im sorry. It had a place in the game as it was originally conceived, but not the greedy stripped down micro$oft half-assed version that we got.
In conclusion... what do you think went wrong? You're a fool if you think they just couldnt fit one more level into the game, they could have put the game on two discs and added 20 (we wish) more levels very easily, and microsoft has the money for that. Don't tell me it was because of hardware issues, because its only a map. And dont tell me that you cant include a rocket hog or a personnel transport hog in the game because of hardware issues either, if you can support one vehicle, you can support another. You're being mislead in a number of ways to hide the fact that you've been shafted out of $55 for a game that is shorter than the original and far less enjoyable (aside form the multiplayer which is spectacular). Bungie wanted to give us everything we had hoped for, its just a shame we'll never get to see the godliness of what they had in store for us.
Go to
www.bungie.net and look at the title for the halo 2 forums. They are called new mombasa. A level that doesnt even exist in the game (now). What kind of reasoning is there for that? Should that be reserved for halo 3 *cough* when you -might- actually get a chance to catch a glimpse of the city. Rubbish. Bungie said many times halo 2 would bringe closure and there would be no halo 3. Bungie also said they would "never specify a release date for halo 2 until we are certain we could release a finished product." That statement was on their main website the day that the release date was accounced. So why would they set a date for themselves where they knew they wouldnt finish in time and be forced to take out all kinds of content? They wouldn't.
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