Halo Reach lead mission designer reveals details of second space combat section cut from final mission

Halo Reach's legendary space combat mission was directly inspired by a curious Halo 3 beta player who flew a banshee out of one of the maps...and Bungie had originally planned to release two space combat segments in the game.

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New details about Halo Reach's development have surfaced thanks to an interesting interview between original Halo Reach's lead mission designer, Niles Sankey, and MintBlitz. The hour-long interview goes over many topics, including the design of Reach's famous Long Night of Solace campaign level where players blast off and take controls of a high-powered UNSC starship.

According to Sankey, the space mission itself was inspired by a Halo 3 beta player who flew a banshee up into orbit. The devs were surprised that this worked so seamlessly and decided to make it a set piece for Reach. Sankey also reveals that Bungie had originally planned to have two space combat sections in Reach's dramatic campaign, but one of them--a part that would have taken place during an explosive final level--was scrapped due to time and budget.

Sankey explains:

"We originally had two space fighter missions planned. Each one was slightly different, but they cut the second one. It was kind of painful, because it was really a sweet one-two punch of the final missions in the game.

"We were always going to have this last mission where the Pillar of Autumn is taking off, and you're defending that. But the original pitch was that you're going to fly up into space one more time.

"So you're going to launch into space and then up there, there is three MAC cannon guns that were either disabled, or the Covenant is on them. And then you land on each one, sort of like you do in Halo, this was kind of similar to the Falcon mission in New Alexandria, but instead of flying to rooftops, you were flying a Saber to these MAC cannons.

"You fly, you land, you kill the Covenant, hop back into your ship--you do that three times. You fly back down, and then when you're back on the ground, you have to defend the Pillar of Autumn.

"You've linked your target locator to those MAC cannons, and you have this army of scarabs coming it, and it takes a while for those things to recharge but you're going to use those MAC cannons to take out an enemy of Covenant and scarabs."

The classic Halo developer also goes on to recount the inspiration of Reach's Long Night of Solace mission. Longtime fans probably know about this story, but it's still surprising how much that game developers may not really know about their own game until players show them.

"I did the initial prototypes [for space combat]. The initial pitch and prototypes...the very original idea was, there's a very old YouTube video from 2008 or 09 or something that is the Halo 3 beta, and it's a player who found a way to get the Halo 3 banshee out of the soft ceiling.

"I think it's in Valhalla, and get just flies the banshee straight up and you see the atmosphere sort of thin out, and all of a sudden he's in space.

"A few of us were watching the video in the Bungie offices and I remember watching it and being like, 'wait, that's how our engine works? It's like a real sky with a real atmosphere, and if you just go up, it's just space?'

"I knew we had to do something around this if our engine allows it. "