Step 3: Revelations

I think the SG was a left over. The methods required to get it are beyond Bungie's ability to predict outside of the box as much as they promote the thinking.

At the very least, they never intended it to be found once they put in the anti-vehicle barriers.

Ironically enough, when asked about the Scarab Gun just last year, Frank O'Connor (who was at the time employed by Bungie as Webmaster) claimed that the Scarab gun was indeed included as a gift for players that managed to discover it. My only guess is that the trick they most likely intended to be used was boarding the pelican. Unlike Halo 1 where a carry-over glitch might be feasible, there are no points in Halo 2 where "Press X to board Pelican" was ever needed, so the inclusion of it in itself seems like a hidden easter egg more so than a glitch. The fact that players originally lured a pelican into the tunnel and used it to discover the gun instead probably just amazed the developers because of the ingenuity of it's community.

I'm honestly disappointed that there haven't been more challenges like the Scarab Gun in the series. Reach's Pelican trick and 4 banshees trick are probably the next closest, but nothing has really made us think so far out of the box like the Scarab Gun did (especially since we had an hints to begin with.)

Scarab Gun
Jackal Shield
Fist of Rukt
Sentinel Enforcer Cannon
Plasma Grenade Launcher
Honor Guard Pike
... and one more I can no longer remember.

The Heavy Needler (which, ironically, was not a needler), I believe, if only because it's the only other weapon in the code.

I did enjoy the old hunts. It's odd that secret weapons in shooters aren't used anymore. They're great secrets, especially if they're implemented creatively.

I remember looking for almost everything off that list of hidden weapons. there is someting i remember faintly seeing in one of the levels. One of the last I believe. It looked like a stone prophet's chair over the water and there was something else close to it. I can't remember much, but there WAS someting there. It was either the delta halo level with the gondolas (I know for a fact there's a hidden switch there too, or the last level. I also know for a fact there's a switch on the high charity level too. I wish halo 2 hadn't died out so fast, there's a lot no one ever knew about. Like the golden warthog, the demon caves on coagulation or the caves below zanzibar or the weapons stash on headlong. The warthog= likely, the other 3 maybe less so but just as intriguing.
If you know/hear anything about the prophet chair i'd be interested greatly.

Also on a side note, has anyone ever figured out the significance of the seemingly random letters on the back of the halo game boxes? I know all of them havent been solved but i'd like to hear any thoughts on it

I don't seem to remember anything like a Prophet Chair in Halo 2. I've been playing Halo 2 the last few days in hopes of discovering anything new, so when I get a chance I'll take a look. Any information on where exactly it is I should start looking?

The golden Warthog was definitely confirmed as non-existent. No such thing existed beyond the billboard on Headlong.

I remember the floating switch on Regret. It gave the prompt for activation, but nothing was ever discovered regarding what it did. Our best theory is that it belonged to a pre-existing Gondola on the level that was missed upon it's removal. To be honest though, that's one answer we were never given.

Demon Caves on Coag is something I'm not too familiar with. I've heard of it before, but I'd pretty much just dismissed it as tall tales. The Zanzibar caves, however, do exist if I remember correctly. On the Xbox it's impossible to enter very far. There's a drop a short ways in with a death zone before you touch the bottom. I assume it's possible to enter them on the PC version (assuming the caves still exist on PC) so I would assume that somebody has information on that with a google search.

As for a weapon stash on Headlong, I'm pretty sure that one's bunk. I've covered that level from Head to Toe and never found anything out of the ordinary, so I'd say that one was just a rumor (I think it was rumored that the Scarab Gun was hidden on that level.)

The Acronym... that is one that I fear we will never know. It's not the first time Bungie has done it and it definitely won't be the last.


I'm certain, considering the trending history, all of the Halo Game Cases and soundtracks have unique Acronyms hidden on them as well.

The Acronyms are popular phrases used around Bungie's Office at the time of the games release. Very few of them have actually been accurately deciphered and, as of this moment, the Halo series have not.

Devil is most definitely the man for Halo2 secrets. He may even be able to find the un-usable switch on High Charity.
I still remember how to get to nearly every skull and hidden weapons cache. Stupid hidden weapon caches... In Halo2, I loved their frequency, I hated their locations due to not being useful most times, even with prior knowledge. There are a few notable exceptions to my complaint though.

Reminds me of good ol' Outskirts. The single most glitch and secret-laden level in any modern FPS ever. I don't know where to even start.

Blind Skull (along with the mysterious setup of grenades, binoculars, and the skull

IWHBYD skull that spawned only after triggering a set number of checkpoints, which would than teleport you to the ground and proceed to thoroughly maul you with 7 relentless waves of Spec-Ops Elites.

Hidden weapon caches with Plasma Swords, Sniper Rifles, Battle Rifles, and all of the ammo you could ever need

Rooftops and Balconies galore that literally made the first half of the level a miniature-sandbox world (inspiration for Halo 3: ODST perhaps? Definitely proof that the ODST concept would work given the right presentation.)

An indestructible Warthog that was extremely useful for grenade launching

Grenade Launching out of the level and, with a few minutes of driving through the white nothing, eventually discovering a small poorly-rendered handful of buildings and dropships that actually unload troops in that location amazingly.

And last but not least, as far I remember, the highly compelx and deceptive method of obtaining a Scarab gun on this level (as opposed to the original Scarab Gun that was discovered on Metropolis. If I remember there might've even been a way to get two Scarab guns on Outskirts as well as Metro.

The demon caves were a silly rumor from people who played too much Doom 3. Nothing more.

The caves of Zanzibar were fun to romp through, though. I remember spending hours on those because a friend claimed that there was a Mongoose hidden in them. Sadly, I've seen the inside of the caves, it's just darkness. The Mongoose was taken out of Halo 2's code entirely. It only exists in beta versions (which some people still probably have, hell of it is).

As for acronyms, a few are confirmed:

DMUKYA- Don't Make Us Kick Your Ass
MBIBTYB- My Bob Is Bigger Than Your Bob
TBWSAF- Trick Bitch Whore Slut Ass Fuck
WACCSMD- Warcraft and Command & Conquer, Suck My Dick
MRTEFCFY- ???
TATRTSTS- Total Annihilation True Real Time Strategy Totally Sucks
WUBNMH- What's Up, Bitch? Not Much, Holmes
SPMLOAS- ???
YYMMDBATC- Yummy, Yummy, Munchy, Munchy, Dwarven Bones Are Tasty Crunchy
ABTFIPASO5- ???
SABABWL- ???
ILWNL- ???
JNAMSFTFY- ???
EGATFIBGBCSIMAW- Envy, Grunt (Birthday Party), Assassins, Thunderstorm, Famine, I (Would Have Been Your Daddy), Blind, Ghost, Black, Catch, Sputnik, Iron, Mythic, Anger, Whuppopotamus. The skulls of Halo 2, basically
MNNGSBTFS- ???
IOHBOY- I'm Only Here Because Of You
SIOHBOY- ???
TOFTMTWCLMB- ???
DTARAGS- ???
ITIFGDM360- ??? (I think I know what the last 4 mean, though)
SLMCWMYOW- So Long, Master Chief Will Miss Your Owning Ways
BBBSLTPHSTBGF- ???

And yes, there was a way to get the Scarab gun on Outskirts, but it wasn't an intentional secret. For some reason, Bungie couldn't get the Scarab to actually fire until the last level so, when it was scripted to fire, it just spawned a Scarab gun and then despawned it. You can actually grab it if you're lucky enough.

Incidentally, this also allows you to grab a third Scarab gun from the Scarab when it destroys the Scorpion tank.

I had no idea there were any Halo Acronyms solved. I'll have to add those to my archive and see if I can continue working on the rest.

And yeah. I knew the story behind the Scarab gun. It's a shame they fixed it by the last level. It would've been so easy to grab it when Sarge is piloting it. Would've been good fun against Tartarus. lol

As if Tartarus doesn't have enough problems between Miranda Keyes, 4 Sergeant Johnsons, a Specter, and Half-jaw. It may take 2 hours to set that up, but it's worth it to see him go down in 25 seconds on Heroic.

On Legendary, I hear it's the quickest way Got to trim that beard of his.

It actually makes me feel sorry for him. He doesn't even get the chance to kill any of the Elites because the Beam Rifles keep him immobilized. Even the Brute reinforcements are no match for the Elites (assuming he lives long enough to call for them).

It beats the hell out of the usual 10 minute battle that you get when you don't use a vehicle.

Now if only Regret was so easily exploitable.

The Sentinel-Boss of Halo3 would have been the closest to a boss battle that I would have liked. That and tank platforms like the top-down Raiden. Scarabs are mini-bosses IMO. Even 2 of them means there are 2 mini-bosses.

I really think Halo 2 would've been better without bosses, but the only one that really bothers me is Regret. My jaw still drops at how stupid of an idea this was. I'm glad the Sentinel boss was cut (Hell, from what I've heard about it, I'm glad the whole Guardian level was cut. Halo 3 had enough useless padding) and I'm glad the Field Marshall in Reach is no tougher than his Zealot companions.

Regret exploitable? Why? If you rushed into the room and boarded him quick enough he would die with the first round of punches anyway. Easiest boss fight I've ever been in (And for that matter, I honestly never found Tartarus to be that difficult. Even on my LASO run I didn't find it to be that challenging.)

That said, I wish boss fights would've never been implemented in Halo 2. The rest of the games had it right, but Halo 2 just had to be different (well, and Halo 3 I guess, but 343GS doesn't count as a real boss fight anyway.)

And if they really insisted on having any form of Boss Fight, it would've been done better as a series of trials rather than a powerful enemy. Gravemind I could imagin being somewhat like the giant worm in GoW 2. Fighting off regular baddies, than taking out tentacles and sensory organs piece by piece (which when you think about it, in a sense that would technically mean the Pillar of Autumn was a boss fight at the end of Halo 1 since we were tasked with destroying it by attacking it's weak points.

DarkReign2021 wrote:Regret exploitable? Why? If you rushed into the room and boarded him quick enough he would die with the first round of punches anyway. Easiest boss fight I've ever been in (And for that matter, I honestly never found Tartarus to be that difficult. Even on my LASO run I didn't find it to be that challenging.)

On Normal and Heroic, perhaps, but on Legendary Regret takes roughly 25 punches. I have never seen him killed in less than three boardings on Legendary, no matter how fast you go.

Plus, it's a painfully methodical, illogical from a story standpoint, and rendered pointless by the fact that Truth pulls the Phantoms back and burns the temple, anyway.

I like thinking of the Engine Room in CE as a "boss" in Halo.

The Engine Room is structured like a puzzle boss, plus made marginal sense from a story standpoint (Plus, it comes right before the awesome but completely illogical PoA Maintanence racetrack. It also had invisible Flood, which was kind of cool.

I think the story is what really burns me on Halo 2's boss fights. Had the Engine Room been alive, I would've been pissed off.

Yeah. I love the random obstacle course aboard a ship that was probably only half the length of the level itself. The whoel ship could be crossed on foot in probably 15-20 minutes. I doubt they'd have that much space dedicated to a damn warthog circuit. Still awesome though.

And yeah, that was my problem with Halo 2. Nothing done was really logical. Why would Regret not have better intel on a planet he's attacking (especially considering the Forerunner Glyph device we learned about in Contact Harvest.) Why would you send a single ship after Regret's Carrier and not even wait for backup. Why attack Regret when it's obvious Truth is getting ready to put him down anyway. Why go to Earth if you're getting ready to activate a Halo installation close enough to reach Earth anyway (Either it doesn't activate the rest, in which case you would want to avoid activating it until the rest are in position or it does activate all of them, which means you would want all of your soldiers focused on the control room you already possess.)

Halo 2's storyline was highly illogical and was more like a series of bad ideas that ended up being good luck in the end (Starting to sound like Gears 2 actually.)

I think that comparing Halo 2 to Gears 2 is rather unfair, given that Halo 2 suffered from budget and circumstance where Gears 2 is pretty much exactly as Epic intended. They both have their flaws, but they're different flaws.

Halo 2's problem, long before its content began to get cut, is that it tries to do entirely too much. Let's look at what happens in Halo 2:

Covenant at Earth
Thel becomes Arbiter
Regret finds another Halo, UNSC follows
Chief kills Regret
Covenant capture Index
Chief and Arbiter meet Gravemind
Covenant Civil War
Flood capture High Charity
Chief follows Truth to Earth
Arbiter kills Tartarus, begins Human-Elite alliance

That's a hell of a lot of stuff going on. It's not that they were half-baked, it's that they are simply too big for the game. You could probably take 2-3 of these events at a time and make an entire game out of them, but Halo 2 condenses all of this into 15 (technically 9) levels. Naturally, getting these events to flow logically takes a back seat to getting these events to actually happen.

And Halo 2 originally was intended to have more and still not be any better at focusing on any of these ideas. All documentation I can find on early Halo 2 points to Halo 2's anticipated invasion of Earth only being 3 or 4 levels at most. It's hard to tell what was lost in the transition.

To be fair, Halo 1 had a lot of stuff cut from it, too. However, Halo 1 had a lot less story to tell. It was probably a lot easier to trim the fat from Halo 1's final story by adding some extra cutscenes:

UNSC and Covenant find Halo and land on it
Chief regroups with Marines and rescues Keyes
Keyes tells Chief about Halo
Chief finds maproom and then control room
Cortana sends Chief after Keyes in swamp and finds Flood
Chief meets 343 Guilty Spark, who helps him get the Index
Cortana tells Chief Halo's true purpose, refuses to activate Halo
Cortana and Chief try to rescue Keyes
Cortana and Chief destroy Halo

Compare to Gears 2, which is also relatively simple, but doesn't flow as well:

COG begins a poorly planned assault on Locust territory
Delta Squad takes out their giant Worm
Detour to New Hope
Leviathon
Dom finds his wife
Assault on the Nexus
Lambent/Locust War
Delta kills Skorge
COG sink Jacinto

Out of these events, only a few of them are really weighted, and none of them could carry their own game like some of Halo 2's events. Gears 2 did not have any plot details cut before release. There was some cut content (some of which was DLC'd back in), but most of it was utterly inconsequential. While I do not feel they were not half-baked by any stretch of the imagination (as Gears 3 could easily vindicate any problems with them), they are simply events that don't require much exploring except for the obvious sequel hooks.

In fact, I have another example of events that are simply not deep enough to explore further:

Noble Team investigates down relay
Noble Team finds Covenant
Noble Team repels Covenant attack on base, meets Halsey
UNSC strikes against Covenant forces
Bigger Covenant fleet arrives
Noble Six assists in evacuation effort
Noble Team returns to Base and finds Halsey
Halsey gives them Cortana and tells them to go to the Autumn
Noble Six gets Cortana to the Autumn before being overrun

The events that transpire are fairly straightforward and require no more explanation than the game gave. The few details that would need more explanation are the ones that lead into Halo 1.