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<