Announced on the show last year Halo: Waypoint Website 343 Industries worked with a coalition of community modders to dive into the “darkest depths of the ancient folders”, salvaging everything possible from the cutting room floor of 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved, and turning those scraps into master chief collectioncame to PC in 2019.
They have released a three-part blog series. “Cutting Room Floor”, “Cutting Room Corps” and “Cutting Room Lore”, then went dark until last week, tinkering with what community writer Alex Wakeford called “The Secret Tenth Circle of Hell (the cutroom floor of game development).” Luckily, they survived his Cortana’s inferno and got some real gems.
This blog post opens with a few maps from a far more ambitious never-before-seen multiplayer experience that wasn’t included in the Halo PC production release. “Some of these were cut before they had more evocative names than gbx_map#. Nonetheless, the two are interesting enough to playtest and cross the finish line within MCC. The maps found were Indoor and Dusk, which have been reworked into Underground and Abyss by the team’s modders.
The rest of the blog is a treasure trove of cut content. But some of the more fascinating relics point to Halo’s earlier concept as both a third-person shooter and an RTS.
Over the shoulder, weapons galore: “I would like to point out that the salvaged weapons shown below are from the 3rd person era of Halo development.” […] All pre-release Halo: CE weapons, including first-person models, included in these Digsite releases have been lovingly created from scratch by our team. ”
The arsenal includes an assault rifle/grenade launcher and an SMG with side mags, which the team had to create custom animations and models for in first person view. They also built in the opposite direction and sorted out the revived third person mode. “The CE engine can now support third-person weapons, allowing us to recreate the original look.”
But my favorite part of the whole post is the callback to Halo’s weird conceptual phase as an RTS. A small set of tiny vehicles that the team plans to offer for modders. “After internal testing and discussion, we have finally decided to release these as data-only assets due to the lack of documentation on weapons and performance. […] I look forward to seeing what the community does with them. ”
Look at these dwarves. I want low poly stuffed animals for everyone. Halo finally lived up to its original RTS ambitions with Halo Wars and Halo Wars: 2, but I don’t think either title has anything that grabs my attention the way these stocky lads do. yeah.
It’s too much to cover here, so I highly recommend reading the blog post for yourself. It includes whimsical animals, junk cars and enemies, and details that bring the developing crunchy sound effects up to modern standards. There may also be some new music tracks coming. “Of course, we’re far from the pinnacle of his Halo audio journey.”
I’m not a big Halo fan myself, but I’m interested in saving the game and can’t wait to see what the team digs up next. I don’t have to wait long either. The team released his second blog on July 14, revealing “some of the additional things the staff has been working on, from his E3 2003 demo of Halo 2 to Guardians Cut.” I plan to More weapons, maps, vehicles, characters and more general awesomeness from Halo 3. ”
