While it is almost universally considered by fans to be one of the best Halo games of all time, Halo 2, like everything in life, was not perfect. In fact, beneath the game’s immaculate facade lies several screw-ups that will change the way you play Halo 2 forever.
It is common knowledge that Halo‘s protagonist is none other than the Master Chief. Thus, you can imagine how deep the dev team wanted to bury themselves in a hole when they accidentally coded for the player to play as an Elite in the campaign, and a shiny one no less! This error was further exacerbated by the fact that Shiny Sangheili Chief over here got both Covenant allies and enemies on some levels. Really makes you wonder – what would you have your developer do?
3. 343 2401 Guilty Penitent Spark Tangent?
Okay, so let me get this straight. First they bring back the floating ball that clearly got annihilated in Combat Evolved, then they somehow get his iconic blue eye color wrong, and the icing on the turd is that they get his name wrong?! How do you spell something so wrongly that you get “2401 Penitent Tangent”? Embarrassing!
Halo is well-known for its diverse and fascinating locations, from its eponymous ringworld, to… you get the point. Anyway, of all the places in the galaxy, a part of Halo 2 is somehow set on Earth? The same Earth we are on right now? The same Earth you can explore if you would just step outside instead of reading this article? The same Earth that isn’t being invaded by the Covenant right now? The message just repeats: Mistake, mistake, mistake.
Of all animation blunders in existence, this one probably takes the cake. Not only does the Brute Chieftain Tartarus betray Arbiter Thel ‘Vadamee by blasting him with his hammer, effectively making it a teamkill, but he also makes all his Brutes start attacking Elites during gameplay for no reason. Definitely a big error in the animation department.
To be fair, Halo has its fair share of quirky and interesting alien species. But there’s a point where it’s clear any strange things are not due to intentional writing, but accidental mishaps in development. This is one of them. Seriously, why is a giant Venus flytrap talking? They clearly meant to put the voice on someone else, and somehow placed it on a plant that was meant to be the background. Well, too bad all we ended up with was a monument to all of Halo 2‘s embarrassing mistakes.
Don’t believe them when they say “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”.