9 Unreleased Video Game Endings Fans DEMAND To See

Halo 2’s cliffhanger ending is the stuff of legend, while some enjoyed the way it left the door wide open for Halo 3 to romp on through and introduce the next instalment, a lot of fans were left feeling like it all ended quite abruptly.

If you’re in that second group, developer Bungie agrees with you as it turns out there was a properly fleshed out ending planned but due to the enormous development crunch they were under, it just wasn’t possible to include it.

It wasn’t just Halo 2’s ending that suffered from the tight deadlines, either, entire sections of the game were scrapped or otherwise heavily edited down in order to get the game on shelves in time for launch. Returning to its divisive finale, clever fans spotted whiteboard drawings featured in the documentary, “Behind The Scenes - The Making of Halo 2”. They depicted an intended level labelled Earth_Ark_09 under which was written Chief/Dervish, which fans deduced means Master Chief and the Arbiter. Another clue to another Earth-based level was found in the game’s art book which showed a Forerunner on Earth.

If that means nothing to you, Forerunners aren’t ever on Earth in Halo 2.

Eventually it was confirmed you were supposed to go to Earth, find the Ark, and along with the Arbiter, pursue the Prophet of Truth inside the Ark, discover its secrets, smoosh a bunch of Scarabs, and reach your final destination where you’d finish off the big bad in style. There is also an extraordinarily detailed series of storyboards dropped by artist Lee Wilson that tell a similar yet alternate version of events. 

It seems Halo 2 went through a lot of narrative concepts and changes but if you weren’t stoked with the ending it shipped with you’d probably love to see one of these others.