To The Vengeful ‘Vadam and anyone else who takes the time to read this

2003, that’s when I watched my dad play through Halo: CE and got introduced to the Halo Universe. The only thing I really remember from that was of course when he first encountered the Flood. When all those doors kept bursting open one after another, I just said, “have fun” and ran away (I was only 7 at the time). Then in 2006, he got Halo 2.

I know, that’s not when it launched, we were poor and couldn’t afford full priced games back then. Anyway, I remember Halo 2 much more vividly because that was the first Halo game I ever played and the first FPS I ever played. But wouldn’t you know it, the first thing I did in a Halo game and a first-person shooter was drive a car, the Warthog specifically. My dad was on Outskirts, he stopped for a smoke break and he didn’t pause the game. I had been watching him play it like I had with Halo: CE and Doom 3 and he just left the warthog, fully equipped with Marines, sitting right at the start of the tunnels at the end of the level. I was like, well, I don’t think I can aim straight with a gun, but maybe I can steer this car well enough to have the Marines kill stuff, so I did. When he came back and saw I had finally tried something other than fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee and Godzilla: Save the Earth, he just said, “well, what do ya think?” I don’t remember what my response was, but I do know I loved it, because I went on to get good enough at First Person Shooters and the Halo games in particular to do them all solo on Legendary (LASO can suck it though).

The point of this massive introduction was to illustrate how much Halo 2 means to me. So, when I first found out about this mod around December of 2022, I was all over it. I had seen the E3 2003 Demo and the screenshots of the cut Juggernaut on High Charity and the fact that this mod was aiming to restore those things along with so much more, well, it was for me, like it is for so many others, a dream becoming reality.

Now, on to the point of this post, let me start by saying, playing this mod was the most fun I’ve had playing a Halo game since Halo 3: ODST. I love the Director’s Cut style Cinematics, the cut dialogue, the encounters and the additions you made to fill in the gaps. That said, I, like many others I’ve seen on here and on YouTube, greatly prefer the original launch versions of the weapons. To make this easier to read, I’ve split this section up by weapon and critique.

1. I don’t really like the 2-shot burst Carbine. It drains ammo very quickly and it either needs to go back to being a single shot or it needs an increased magazine size and ammo pool to compensate for the doubled rate of fire. I found myself running out of ammo for it constantly.

2. Like many others, including HiddenXperia, I also dislike the single shot BR. It seems harder to use, easier to miss, and if you’re trying to introduce continuity with the “Another Day at the Beach” cinematic (which I know you are since you changed the Marines to ODST’s and added the dead Jackal Sniper in Outskirts) the BR should really be a 3-shot burst fire weapon because when Sgt. Stacker kills the elite at the end of that cinematic, he fires a 3-shot burst from the BR. If you have to have a single shot BR, have it shoot a 3-shot burst when fired from the hip and a single shot when zoomed in. Kinda like you currently have with the Carbine.

3. On one hand, it’s neat seeing that E3 2004 HUD, on the other hand, Bungie changed it because it doesn’t make sense. In Halo: CE, there was a health bar and a shield bar so it made sense to have a different symbol next to each bar to represent what each was. In Halo 2, there’s no health bar, so the shield icon doesn’t need to be next to the bar anymore. That’s why they made it just a simple bar in the final launch version of the game. I also miss being able to see what secondary weapon you have equipped. Basically, I’m saying I prefer the original launch HUD. On a personal note, I like the smaller shield bar being above the motion tracker because it gives you more information in one spot, and, to me at least, it represents the smaller weaker shields in Halo 2. I don’t care what that Gunnery Sergeant says at the start of the Armory. MC’s shields are weaker in Halo 2.

4. Another pet peeve I have with the HUDs in Halo 2: Uncut is the extremely busy zoom HUD the Arbiter has now. No offense to the designer of it, but it’s too busy and seems weird when MC’s zoom HUD is still just a basic outline in the shape of his visor.

5. On High Charity, the entire line of dialogue where Cortana says what side each member of the Covenant is choosing, needs to be cut again. It doesn’t match up with continuity. She says the Hunters have allied themselves with the Elites which spoils the Hunter team-up in The Great Journey and doesn’t make sense when the Hunters become enemies again in Halo 3. She also says that besides Truth, the prophets aren't saying a word. This again, makes no sense because she knows MC killed Regret and he just killed Mercy by ripping the infection form off him at the start of this mission. Unless both MC and Cortana have Dory level memory spans, this whole line of dialogue makes no sense and needs to be removed again.

6. The last thing I personally just miss is the image of MC zooming towards the Dreadnought in the cinematic at the end of High Charity in that Green energy beam. I don’t know if it’s possible or not, but it would be cool if a transition could be made to have the Warthog run end with MC getting out of the Warthog in one of those beams as its closing and have the Warthog falling out of the beam in the cinematic like in the final game. That way, the length of the cinematics in Halo 2 would remain unaltered.

If there’s anything anyone else can think of that doesn’t make sense or annoys them that wasn’t an issue in the original 2004 launch build of Halo 2, please say so in the comments because if The Vengeful ‘Vadam releases the mod tags for Halo 2: Uncuts last 2 levels like he did for the rest of the Campaign on Nexus Mods in 2022, and gives me the OK, I’m going to try to learn the mod tools for MCC and try to create what I think could be seen as the definitive version of Halo 2. That is, if The Vengeful ‘Vadam, doesn’t have the time or interest to mess with any of these things himself. As it will easily take me over a year or more to learn how to do this myself considering I’m already working 7 days a week between 2 full time jobs and have very little time on my hands. Anyway, in closing, this is easily one of the best mods I’ve ever played. In fact, if just a few of the changes listed above are implemented in some way, shape, or form, I can honestly say that this, over both the original launch version of Halo 2 and Halo 2: Anniversary, would be the Definitive Edition of Halo 2, for me at least.