A Halo 2 enthusiast with a lot of time on his hands has meticulously recreated the game’s original ending in a series of storyboards, right down to the voice lines, music, and sound effects. When it was released in 2004 for the original Xbox, Halo 2 expertly expanded upon the foundation laid by the almost 20-year-old Halo: Combat Evolved and continued the narrative of Master Chief as he fought the Covenant and the nightmare-inducing Flood.
Many gamers still consider Halo 2 one of the best games ever made since it not only improved upon the groundbreaking first-person shooter gameplay of the original Halo but also brought new characters like the Arbiter into the Halo canon.
Halo 2’s cliffhanger ending, in which Master Chief tells Admiral Hood that he intends to complete the conflict while pursuing the Prophet of Truth aboard a Forerunner spacecraft destined for Earth, remains immensely divisive to this day. The story wasn’t supposed to conclude with this now-iconic line, but Halo 2 just cut to black after it.
A few years back, Halo 2’s composer disclosed that the game’s conclusion was initially planned to have the Chief and the Arbiter working together to kill the Prophet of Truth inside the Ark of the Covenant. The finale was scrapped in favor of the cliffhanger gamers are better familiar with, but the cast recorded their lines. All that’s left aesthetically is a collection of storyboards.
Some time ago, a YouTube user going by the name C3 Sabertooth put together these storyboards into an animatic of Halo 2’s alternate conclusion. The storyboards for this roughly 30-minute-long animatic were created by former Bungie developer Lee Wilson and depict the Master Chief and the Arbiter facing off against the Prophet of Truth inside the Ark of the Covenant on Earth.
In addition, comic book-style panels were given more life with dynamic transitions and chopped audio from other popular Halo games like Halo 3. At the same time, additional context from the more excellent Halo history helped to flesh out the plot.
