20 years ago Halo thrilled with a level that you could never play – that should change now

343 Industries, the creators of Halo Infinite, want to make unfinished levels from Halo history playable for the first time. They get help from modders. Among them is a level from Halo 2, which was shown in the trailer 20 years ago but never appeared in the game itself.

Since Bungie stopped working on the Halo franchise and is instead responsible for Destiny, 343 Industries has been the developer of Microsoft’s shooter titans.

And although Halo Infinite has been struggling with a content drought since its release, the developers have now been able to score with the fans. Because they want to revive the iconic “Halo 2” demo from E3 2003 as part of a larger modding project – as well as other cut content that players were never allowed to play.

This trailer shows you how Halo Infinite has tried to counteract the content slump so far:

Developers and modders make unfinished content playable

The developers intend to: in one long blog post 343 Industries presented their so-called “Digsite” project. This is behind it:

• The developers are collecting content from Halo history that was never officially playable and was never completed.
• They also want to fix half-finished assets so they can make those finds playable in the Halo: Master Chief Collection as well.
• Together with well-known modders from the scene, 343 Industries has divided “Digsite” into two teams: Digsite Alpha restores content before the release of Halo: Combat Evolved, Digsite Delta is responsible for development leftovers from Halo 2.

For the first Halo game, Combat Evolved, one of the things they want to do is restore a version of the game that was originally a real-time strategy game.

However, the “Digsite” project for Halo 2 gets a lot of attention in the community. When the game’s first gameplay trailer was shown at E3 2003, which is still legendary today and has generated an enormous amount of hype around Halo 2.

It shows diverse battles in a sci-fi city, called “Earth City”, which made the fans’ mouths water. Although Earth City was the basis for levels 2 and 3 in the game, it was never playable in this form. 343 Industries wants to change that now, after almost 20 years.

You can see this ancient trailer here:

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“Fan service can be good and this is an example of that.”

What are the fans saying? The otherwise critical Halo fans are over the moon after these announcements. on reddit the users write something like:

• “Fan service can be good and this is an example.” – john7071
• “That’s pretty much all I ever wanted.” – Metatermin8r
• “Are you telling me that after 20 years I can finally experience Earth City in person? I destroyed a DVD player back then watching the demo over and over again.” – TemptedTemplar
• “I’m so happy. I can’t believe this is actually happening.” – dj88masterchief

What do you think of these announcements? Do you remember the trailer from E3 2003? Or would you rather have more content for the latest Halo, rather than fixed content from the oldest games in the franchise? Tell us in the comments.

By the way: After several years of the doldrums, an E3 should finally take place on site again in 2023.