Bungie toyed with Reach space combat MP
Decided game was ambitious enough.
Bungie has revealed that it mocked up a multiplayer version of the Sabre orbital attack ship level used in Halo: Reach during the game's development.
One of Reach's most memorable chapters, Long Night of Solace, saw players take off from Reach in a Sabre and engage the Covenant in space.
And according to creative director Marcus Lehto, at one stage there were plans afoot to make it a competitive multiplayer level.
"We joked about it from time to time and even had a rough version of it working very early on in development," Lehto told Game Informer (thanks CVG).
"But the mechanics of it were pretty silly and we very quickly realised that the resulting gameplay experience wouldn't hit the bar we were aiming for, nor justify the amount of work required."
In the end, Lehto and his team decided that Reach had enough stuff going on in it anyway. Consider the ostriches.
"With so many features and so much content already committed, Reach was an incredibly ambitious project on an already aggressive schedule," he noted.
We thought so too, as you will know if you read our Halo: Reach review, where we gave it 9/10.