Marty O’Donnell Talks About Original Halo 2 Ending

Marty O’Donnell has been talking to IGN about his time at Bungie for over ten years before he was given the let go in 2014. However, before he was officially let go, Marty O’Donnell was a composer and had a hand in the production of Bungie’s most well-known series, Halo. Recently, in an interview with IGN, Marty O’Donnell spoke about how the second installment to the Halo franchise, Halo 2, had a different ending in mind.

It’s no secret now that Bungie had other ideas for the ending of Halo 2. There have been other members of the Bungie development team that have spoken about how they originally wanted to do something that ended Halo 2 without the cliffhanger, a hot topic that was discussed by a number of different gamers and critics alike when the game originally launched.

According to Marty O’Donnel, the original ending of Halo 2 had Master Chief finding the Ark of the Covenant on Earth then fighting alongside the Arbiter to destroy the Prophet of Truth. So what was the problem?

Turns out the development team miscalculated the amount of time they needed to create the video game. Originally, the developers at Bungie had plenty of time at the end of the original Halo Combat Evolved video game to polish the title.

When it came to the development of Halo 2, Bungie simply ran out of time. While the voice actors all voiced their lines for the ending scenes, Bungie had to toss out the work and end the game on a cliffhanger. Interestingly enough, Marty states that he still has that work in archives of his.