Alpine (cut Halo 3 level)

Alpine, known internally as, was a planned level during the development of Halo 3 - though was ultimately scrapped for final release. The level was intended to follow on from Guardian Forest and by succeeded by Forerunner City - though ultimately elements from all three levels were combined to form the final game's level The Covenant. In The Covenant, the majority of the first half of the level follows the ideas first established for Alpine, with the latter half taking more inspiration from Forerunner City.

The scrapping of these levels was done fairly early on in development. However, the level is present in a first draft of the game's script written by campaign design lead Rob Stokes. This script provides the majority of known narrative information about Alpine, alongside a handful of planning and design documents posted by Stokes on his personal website.

Overview
The presence of  in Halo 3 remained a mystery within the Halo community for some time prior to the work posted by Rob Stokes. In the base Halo 3 file structure, levels are sorted into folders based on their map file name, with a notable gap between  (The Ark) and   (The Covenant) observed by modders. The later discovery of a texture file in an  (Guardian Forest) folder narrowed down the missing levels to just the mystery   - something which would remain a mystery until the release of the Halo 3 Mod Tools in 2022. Later testimony from level designer Dan Miller would confirm the existence of, with more extensive details provided in the documents uploaded by Rob Stokes.

Developers known to have worked on Forerunner City include:
 * Rob Stokes (mission design and script)
 * Dan Miller (level designer)
 * Isaac Hannaford (concept art paintovers)
 * Lee Wilson (storyboards)