Shielded Flood carrier form

Shielded Flood Carriers are a variant of Flood Carrier Forms with what seem to be Jackal Point Defense Gauntlets.

Background
These were tested by Bungie and their unfinished forms have been found buried in the Halo 2 disc, but they have not been included in any actual game. The behavior of the Shielded Carrier Form is identical to the unshielded variant; the sole difference being that it is harder to shoot them and kill them. In addition, Shielded Flood Carriers were probably meant to be infected Jackals.

Deleted Material
Shielded Flood Carriers are part of the Deleted Material cut from the Halo game. When developing Halo 2, Bungie faced numerous delays for various technical reasons. The actual launch date of the game was almost a year after its original date (Just the E3 2003 Demo supposedly took 7 months to complete).

As such many aspects of the story such as vehicles, game play/design and story elements did not make it into the final version of Halo 2. Many of the elements have been confirmed by videos and commentary on the Limited Edition special DVD for Halo 2.

Carriers would require shields to get deeper into enemy lines before exploding, as Carriers are used as suicidal deliverers of Infection Forms. It is impossible that the shields were simply assimilated into the Carrier Form from the fallen victims hand. Seeing as the shield gauntlets are attached securely to a Jackals arm and the shield is located in the center of the repurposed corpse, not the arm, the assimilation of a Jackal Shield is probably intentional as the flood form would have to "consciously" transfer the gauntlet from the arm to the body.

Trivia

 * Possibly because they are just an unfinished test, these Carrier Form's "hands" pass through their shields freely.
 * With an overcharged Plasma Pistol, you can overload the Carrier's shields and they cannot regenerate it, much like what happens with a Brute.

Related articles

 * Flood
 * Carrier Form
 * Jackal
 * Kig-Yar Point Defense Gaunlet