Cut Halo 2 vehicles

This page discusses elements of deleted material and cut content. Some information on the page is sourced from game files and may not be verifiable through external sources. Where possible, such information should be clearly-marked and replaced with a proper external source as soon as one is available.

This article is part of a series on
Halo 2 cut content

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Cut content

Early script
Cut dialogue
Cut enemies and ambient life
Cut equipment
Cut gamemodes
Cut levels
Cut vehicles
Cut weapons

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Development

Halo 2 development
Concept art
Design documentation
Storyboards
Title updates
E3 campaign demo
E3 multiplayer demo

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To check out cut content for other Halo games, see here!

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During the development of Halo 2, a number of vehicles were cut from the final game release.

UNSC vehicles

Falcon

While discussing the "strike fighter" (see below), the developers at Bungie also mentioned the need for a "Black Hawk-type vehicle", which was later cut from the game. This seems to correspond with the prototype Falcon aircraft seen in very early beta builds of Halo 2, which had been prototyped in 3D shortly after the release of Halo: Combat Evolved. The vehicle in these builds is untextured and un-animated, simply appearing as a low-poly blockout model. The vehicle has a single pilot with a nose-mounted machine gun at the front of the aircraft and two side-mounted seats for passengers. The Falcon is additionally included in a rough state in map files for the Halo 2 build seen in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and can be spawned in via modding.

Notably, a vehicle of the same name was concepted for, and cut from, the real-time strategy game Halo Wars, though in that game was to appear more akin to a UNSC jet fighter and appears to have little resemblance to the Halo 2 vehicle. The Halo 2 Falcon was intended by Marcus Lehto to be a smaller cousin to the Pelican dropship, for small-unit deployment. Following the cutting of the Halo 2 Falcon, Marcus Lehto continued to work on the idea, producing sketches between the production of Halo 2 and Halo 3 that later became Halo 3's aerial craft the Hornet. However, Lehto wasn't satisfied with the Hornet and eventually the Falcon would finally be realised in 2010's Halo: Reach as the UH-144 Falcon, a tiltrotor helicopter bearing little visual resemblance to the original Halo 2 design but filling the same "Black Hawk" gameplay role.

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  Halo 2 concept art for the Falcon.

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  Back view of the Falcon in The Master Chief Collection.

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  Front view of the Falcon in The Master Chief Collection.

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  Side view of the Falcon in The Master Chief Collection.

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  Flying the Falcon in The Master Chief Collection.

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  The Falcon with four passengers.

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  A passenger firing the cut M247 general purpose machine gun weapon.

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  An external view of the driver in the cockpit (note the cut suppressed SMG.

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  Marcus Lehto's Falcon concept sketch produced between Halo 2 and Halo 3.

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  The Falcon as it appears in Halo: Reach.

Mongoose

Main article: Mongoose

The Mongoose was originally intended to be a vehicle useable in Halo 2. The vehicle was fully built and animated, with gameplay of the ATV shown by Bungie in the Halo 2 Limited Collector's Edition documentary. In the build shown, the Mongoose uses the same driving sounds as the Warthog and has the aiming reticule of the Magnum. During development, the Mongoose was difficult to integrate into gameplay, with the designers trying out front-mounted guns and no weapons. Ultimately, the vehicle was cut as it interfered too much with the Warthog and Ghost.

Notably, the Mongoose was brought back almost wholly unchanged in Halo 3 and has since remained a series staple; in Halo 3 and subsequent titles, the Mongoose is a two-person vehicle with no armaments. A second player can mount the back of the vehicle and fire their handheld weapons in third-person or carry objectives (such as a flag). The idea of the Mongoose with weapons was later revisited in Halo 2: Anniversary, with the game's multiplayer introducing the Gungoose - exactly the same as the regular Mongoose but with two front-mounted and driver-fired M67 LMGs.

As part of a Digsite tie-in with Canon Fodder, the cut Halo 2 Mongoose was also given grounding in the Halo universe, and canonized as the M270 Mongoose, a precursor to the M274 Mongoose.

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  A Mongoose on Coagulation.

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  Front render of the Halo 2 Mongoose.

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  Rear render of the Halo 2 Mongoose.

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  Concept art for the map Burial Mounds depicting the Mongoose.

Scorpion variants

An anti-air equipped variant of the Scorpion tank was included in the early Halo 2 design documentation. This variant was later canonised as the M808B2 Sun Devil vehicle included in the Halo Encyclopedia.

The Sun Devil was modelled to some extent by the Halo 2 development team using the Combat Evolved iteration of the Scorpion tank as a base, though no known in-game implementation was ever done. The vehicle has been restored to functionality by the Digsite project, though with totally original tags and statistics. Due to its use of the Combat Evolved Scorpion model as a base, the vehicle has been restored into that game rather than Halo 2 for consistency reasons.

Another model recovered by the Digsite project depicts the M808B3 Tarantula Scorpion variant equipped with missile launchers. The Tarantula was first canonised in the 2009 Halo Encyclopedia alongside the Sun Devil. In-lore, the Tarantula is equipped with twin Scimitar rocket pods.

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  The original Halo 2 Sun Devil model, restored into Halo: Combat Evolved by the Digsite project.

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  The original Halo 2 Tarantula model, restored into Halo: Combat Evolved by the Digsite project.

Shield ship

Main article: UNSC Antaeus

The "shield ship" was a large, non-drivable vehicle implemented into Halo 2 in the Milestone 1 Defensive mission - one of several testbed missions in early production to test out new gameplay features. In the mission, the player is tasked with clearing a landing site so the vessel can land, before then defending it against waves of enemy attack.

The ship was eventually canonised and given ground in a 2024 issue of Canon Fodder and given ground in the Halo universe, as the UNSC Antaeus, a refit heavy-lift dropfreighter with four salvaged Covenant energy shield generators.

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  Concept art for the ship by Eddie Smith.

Strike fighter

Marcus Lehto: "I think it was the Strike Fighter, right? It was like a defensive fighter for the... the... uh..."

Robert McLees: "Earth Space."

Marcus Lehto: "Well, it just didn't fit into our game play, either. We didn't have any kind of purpose for this thing"

Shi Kai Wang: "Unless it's cinematics."

Robert McLees: "Yeah it'd be a cinematic-only thing, and there wasn't enough time to add it in."

— Staff at Bungie discussing the strike fighter.

The strike fighter was intended as a defensive space fighter for use by the UNSC during the Battle for Earth. The vehicle would have little place in actual gameplay, and instead be a cinematic-only vehicle, similar to the Longsword seen in the final game. For gameplay, the designers needed more of a "Black Hawk-type vehicle", likely referring to the cut Falcon UNSC aircraft detailed above. Early storyboards for the levels Cairo Station and the cut level covenantship show some more usage of the strike fighter; in the cut sections of Halo 2's early story, the strike fighters would have filled the role shown by the Longsword in the final game - performing an attack run on a Covenant carrier.

The strike fighter notably bears a strong resemblance space fighters designed by Bungie in their later titles; specifically the FSS-1000 Sabre in Halo: Reach and the jumpships of the later Destiny.

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  Concept art for the Strike Fighter.

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  Concept art for the Strike Fighter.

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  Concept art for the Strike Fighter.

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  Storyboard for The Armory, showcasing a strike fighter in the foreground.

Orca

The Orca is a vehicle mentioned in Halo 2 design documentation. It was intended to be a troop-carrying watercraft. The documentation additionally details a variant known as the Mortar Orca, appropriately equipped with mortars as weapons.

Piglet

Found in the files for Halo 2, the Piglet is seemingly a static prop object intended to populate the level and visually resembles a scaled-down version of the Warthog. The model has no collision, animations and other info markers required to be useable as a vehicle in-game. The Piglet was notably featured in a breakdown by Kenneth Peters in an MCC Flighting Update on the Halo Waypoint forums, where he made the vehicle driveable in Halo 2 via modding.

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  The Piglet's model, as viewed in 3DS Max.

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  Setting up the Piglet to be driveable, via modding.

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  The Arbiter driving a modded Piglet.

Warthog variants

These Warthogs were created by artist Marcus Lehto shortly after the release of Halo: Combat Evolved. An image of them was later released on Bungie.net as part of their Halo 2 project page. A model was also created for a unique rocket launcher-equipped Warthog turret. This model was later released by the Digsite project via their github tag releases, and is set up to be fully-playable once spawned in. When used, the rocket launcher fires two rockets in quick succession with every trigger pull, with a lengthy cooldown time inbetween.

In later media such as Bungie.net news, the Halo Encyclopedia and the Halo Waypoint universe section, several vehicles have been described with very similar traits to these cut vehicles, namely being the (from left to right, as per the image and not including the standard Warthog) M868 Tropic Warthog, M862 Arctic Warthog and M914 Recovery Vehicle. This was later confirmed by Jeff Easterling, with the note that it can change later if 343 Industries needed. While the Rocket Warthog was not canonised directly, a similar vehicle was later introduced in Halo: Reach as the M12R Rocket Warthog.

Halo 2 design documentation also references a number of other Warthog variants including a desert camo Warthog and a "night mission" camo Warthog.

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  The cut Warthog variants.

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  A view of the Rocket Warthog modded onto Forerunner Sample, a cut map.

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  A Spartan mounting the Rocket Warthog's turret.

Covenant vehicles

Anti-air Wraith

An anti-air equipped variant of the Wraith tank was also developed for Halo 2, similarly to the Scorpion variant above. The AA Wraith bears an almost identical design to the Ogab'd-pattern anti-aircraft Wraith later introduced properly in Halo 3, albeit with minor aesthetic changes resulting from it using the Combat Evolved Wraith model as a base. As with the Sun Devil Scorpion, this vehicle has been restored into Combat Evolved's engine by Digsite.

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  The Halo 2 model for the AA Wraith restored into Halo: Combat Evolved by Digsite.

Brute Chopper

Referred to in documentation as the "Brute cycle", early Halo 2 intended to feature the vehicle introduced in subsequent games as the Chopper for the Brutes. The vehicle was concepted by Eddie Smith, and ultimately later fairly faithfully realised in Halo 3 as the Barukaza Workshop Chopper.

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  Halo 2 Chopper concept art by Eddie Smith.

Brute mounts

Early Halo 2 design documentation references the desire to have Brutes able to ride animal mounts into battle.

Covenant artillery

Main article: Zo'op-pattern Weevil

In the Halo 2 E3 demo, the city of New Mombasa is depicted as under siege by a massive Covenant artillery cannon. During the demo, a flight of Longswords is called in to bomb the gun. While this massive artillery piece does not appear in the final game, a smaller version of it known as the Type-48 Weevil does appear in the beach section of the level Outskirts - though inactive. Through modding, the guns are found to have turning and firing animations, indicating they may have been intended to be seen firing on the city of New Mombasa in-game.

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  The artillery in the E3 demo.

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  The Type-48 Weevil seen in the final Halo 2 build.

Covenant fuel truck

Early Halo 2 design documentation references a vehicle called the "Covenant fuel truck". No further details are known. A similar vehicle exists in Halo canon, though is likely unrelated to this concept.

Command shuttle

The command shuttle was a vehicle designed and modelled for inclusion in the Milestone 1 Assault test level, with a redesign later concepted for inclusion in the final game. The initial design was based on the visual design for the Spirit from Combat Evolved, serving as a larger cousin. The model for this early command shuttle recovered by the Digsite project is designed to fly with the cockpit facing forward unlike the Spirit, and reuses the Combat Evolved Spirit texture. The Spirit-derived command shuttle design was later canonised in a 2022 Canon Fodder article as the R'ea'kuk-pattern command shuttle.

In M1 Alpha, the landed command shuttle is situated at the base of a Forerunner tower, and is the central objective of the mission. The player would be tasked with assaulting the shuttle and destroying it through a number of means including a marine assault, airstrikes, or using a Wraith. The level of damage the ship has sustained would help to determine the alert level for Covenant forces in the region.

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  The command shuttle model.

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  The command shuttle model.

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  The command shuttle model.

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  The command shuttle model.

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  The command shuttle model.

The redesigned command shuttle is more resemblant of the Phantom dropshop, and was re-concepted by Eddie Smith. This design is seen only in early storyboards for the level The Arbiter, in which the command shuttle appears to be a large Covenant dropship similar in scale to the Lich. The vehicle would have been used to transport the Elite strike team to the Threshold gas mine, before being replaced by three Phantoms in the final game. The command shuttle reappears in storyboards for the game's epilogue cutscene, having been taken over by the Flood. The redesigned command shuttle is fitted with Covenant drop pod launchers on its sides and a few weapons, and was given a very early model blockout for Halo 2.

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  Eddie Smith's revised concept design for the command shuttle.

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  Storyboards of a command shuttle inserting the Arbiter's team into the gas mine.

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  Storyboards of a command shuttle inserting the Arbiter's team into the gas mine.

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  Storyboards of a command shuttle inserting the Arbiter's team into the gas mine.

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  Storyboards of a command shuttle inserting the Arbiter's team into the gas mine.

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  A command shuttle can be seen in storyboards for the game's original ending.

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  A primitive model blockout for the shuttle.

Ghost variants

Early Halo 2 design documentation references a vehicle called an "Excavation Ghost", alongside "VTOL" and "Special Forces" Ghost variants. No further details are known.

It is likely that the "Exacavation" variant would be intended for use by the heretics on the Alphamoon level, while the "Special Forces" Ghost would be for use by the SpecOps troops who deploy alongside the Arbiter in that level.

Lightbridge ship

The "lightbridge ship", "bridge ship", or "airbus", is a vehicle concepted by Shi Kai Wang for use in the Milestone 1 Assault level. Visually resembling the Shadow, the ship is intended for use for allowing Covenant ground forces to cross chasms in the earth. The vehicle is capable of flying and hovering in place, and sits in the middle of a chasm, projecting a light bridge from both sides. The lightbridge spans the chasm in its entirety, and to cross it requires walking through the lightbridge ship.

In M1 Assault, the player would be tasked with assaulting a Covenant-occupied Forerunner structure with a command shuttle docked at its base. To access the site, the player would need to cross a chasm, with the bridge ship as the only method of crossing. While exploring the terrain, Covenant troops may spot the player and retreat to the bridge ship to use it as a defensive chokepoint. A section of M1 Assault's design document reads:

“

Installation: Bridge Ship White: The Bridge Ship is a small Covenant ship floating above the Chasm with two long energy bridges extending from each side, forming a bridge. This ship has minimal defenses, but is guarded by several Covenant troops. After the Player wipes out the Covenant forces they can either use the bridge, enter the ship and depower the light bridges, or blow the ship up, denying it to Covenant reinforcements. Initially the Covenant guards are not paying much attention, allowing the Player to sneak past on the Natural Bridge. If they do see the Player they will use the communication gear in the Bridge Ship to raise the Covenant to Green Alert. Blue: The Covenant guards are much more observant, making it difficult for the Player to approach undetected. Green: If the Bridge Ship is attacked it automatically raises the Covenant to Green Alert and calls for reinforcements.

”

In Halo canon, a similar combat bridging vehicle is depicted in the novel Halo: Oblivion.

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  Concept art for the lightbridge ship.

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  Concept art of the lightbridge ship once deployed. The sides of the vehicle unfold to project the lightbridge laterally.

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  A primitive blockout for the lightbridge ship in the files for M1 Assault.

Shadow variants

Main article: Ruwaa-pattern Shadow

The Shadow troop carrier is an infantry-carrying variant of the Shadow. In-game, the vehicle is only featured in the level Outskirts, driving along the Mombasa highways. These vehicles carry Ghosts in their underbelly compartments; however, a troop carrier variant exists in the files unused, and is shown in the Halo 2 Manual. This vehicle is found in the shared map content in the Halo 2 component of The Master Chief Collection, and despite being unused the troop transport variant was even retextured for the visually updated campaign of Halo 2: Anniversary.

Early Halo 2 design documentation also references another vehicle called an "Excavation Shadow" - presumably a variant of the existing Shadow vehicle. No further details are known. As with the Ghosts mentioned above, it is likely that the "Excavation" Shadow was intended for use by the heretics on Alphamoon.

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  Concept art for the troop transport Shadow.

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  A Grunt and a Jackal in the troop bay.

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  A render of the troop transport Shadow.

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  A render of the standard Shadow featured in Halo 2, for reference.

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  A visually updated troop transport Shadow in Halo 2: Anniversary.

Phantom door gunner variant

Finalised storyboards for the level The Arbiter showcase a Kez'katu-pattern Phantom with door-mounted gunners. This Phantom design ultimately was discarded for the final game, instead preferring to use three larger plasma cannons. This design for the Phantom was later employed for Halo 3 and subsequent Halo games.

The model for this variant of the Phantom can be seen in the Halo 2 E3 demo, and was restored into Halo 2 by the Digsite project. It features landing gear and Shepsu-pattern plasma cannon door gunners.

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  A storyboard featuring the original Phantom.

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  The "E3 Phantom" restored into Halo 2 by Digsite.