Cut content of Unreal II

Almost one fourth of the game was cut from Unreal 2. This page lists most of the cut content, although it is likely that there were more things cut from the game.

Races
Three races (N, Striders, Shian) that include nine or more enemies were cut from the game. Different versions of Izarians were not included as well.

The N
"The N are trans-dimensional aliens that can occupy many simultaneous places in space and time. In reality, there are only three N – but because they can somehow be in more than one place at once, there appear to be hundreds of thousands of them. N weapons are all ranged and psi-based – and each of the three N has a different weapon. You can't really 'kill' an N – when you shoot one, the weapon simply depletes the energy used to fold space and time at that particular node of the N."

- FGN Online

There were three different N that could clone itself. None of the content was included, although some of the OGG tracks might have been used for their levels. See the N|main article for more information.

The Striders
"The Striders grow their own armor, weapons, and even spaceships. One Strider Pod alone is not intimidating at all – a conical blob of goo on four squat legs that is dumb as a post and is armed with little more than serrated teeth. Unfortunately, the Pods will combine with each other to form the much harder Strider Villains. And multiple Strider Villains can clump to create a towering and lethal Strider Nemesis with dramatically increased intelligence and firepower. The larger Strider monsters can navigate around obstacles and through small openings by disassembling themselves long enough to get past or through."

- FGN Online

Striders had three forms - Strider pod, Strider Villain and Strider Nemesis. None of the content was included in the game, but some OGG tracks might have been made for their levels. They are also oficcialy mentioned in the Unreal Tournament timeline and in the game itself. See the main article for more information.

The Shian
"The Shian are an underwater community (and the underwater regions look extremely cool). They appear to have lobster shells and tentacles, and communicate with you telepathically, in that your mind simply "hears what they're saying." Where this really comes into play is that they, just like fairy tale mermaids, are able to summon all the sea creatures in the area to serve in the battle. You'll spend a lot of time not fighting them directly, but instead fighting all the creatures that they're summoning from different parts of the ocean."

- Cleaned BeyondUnreal

The Shian could summon at least 8 different sea creatures (see the main article). The Shian were one of the most important races, together with the Drakk and the Skaarj in Unreal 2. Some of the content is left in the game - the pawns ShianWorker and ShianWarrior, the music - Mission_07Ambient, Mission_07Battle and Mission_07Underwater, which makes it possible to imagine them, and the meshes of the sea creatures. See the main article for more information.

Armored Izarians
The Izarians in Unreal 2 are seen only without armor, but it was planned that there would be different versions of Izarians, including armored Izarians and bald Izarians. The armor of Izarians included only a set of spiky vambraces though. These versions are never seen in the game, but are viewable in UnrealEd. Unfortunately, their meshes are aligned wrongly.

Weapons
Six weapons (Tractor Beam, Stun Baton, Mind Claw, Razik, Shock Rifle, Flak Cannon) were cut from Unreal 2. Some weapons have been changed, cutting some of their functions.

Tractor Beam
"The last and hardest thing to really put into words was one of the multiplayer levels that we got a glimpse at that was set in an asteroid belt. It was really, really cool. Really. The basic premise is that you are floating along amongst these pieces of space rock shooting at your opponents. But to move around, you have to pull yourself towards asteroids with a special tractor beam type of grappling hook."

- IGN PC

Nothing more is known about the Tractor Beam. It was not included in the game, but there is a test item called a Grapple in UnrealEd.

Stun Baton
The Stun Baton obviously was a melee weapon and could stun enemies. It was included in the Alpha version of Unreal 2 though. From that code, it seems that the Stun Baton was very similar to the Control Baton of Red Faction. It could be charged and then used stab attack, or could be double swinged. If you wish to see the full code, see it in the pastebin.

Mind Claw
""A fearsome psi-weapon", "a crystal-based psionic weapon that channels health from your enemies to you""

- Cleaned BeyondUnreal

As the N had psi powers, it might be true that the Mind Claw belonged to them, but was stolen by John Dalton. The mesh of the Mind Claw is still in the UnrealEd of Unreal 2, and the code was in the Alpha version of Unreal 2. It reveals that the primary fire could inflict damage and then absorb some of it (usually 0.2 for 1 HP) to the attacker's health; the secondary fire, not finished in the Alpha, was a some kind of Anti-Magic Aura effect around the player. See the pastebin for the full code.

Razik


The Razik, codenamed SkaarjGlove, was originally thought to be a weapon dropped by the Skaarj. It could fire all of the projectiles of the different Skaarj classes, and could be used as a melee weapon. It was never finished, but the sounds and the mesh is included in the game, even though it was never used. The code was included in the Alpha version of Unreal 2, you can see it in the pastebin.

Singularity Cannon
The Singularity Cannon, though included in the game, was originally planned to have a secondary fire. It was codenamed Quantum Wave, and had a projectile that could explode and deal damage to others around. The sounds are still in the Unreal 2, but the code was only seen in the Alpha version; see it in the pastebin. The Singularity Cannon had ammo as well, codenamed Quantum Core, which is in the full game and is complete, but lacks the mesh and was never used in the game.

Leech Gun
The Leech Gun, that was later replaced by the Spider Gun, was quite different. The primary fire was a leech that chased enemies around and could even jump over gaps. The secondary fire was a leech that sticked to the walls and waited for enemies to come. In the full Unreal 2, the gun was totally replaced by the Spider Gun, and the Leech Gun code was only seen in the Alpha version of Unreal 2. You can see it in the pastebin.

Grenade Launcher
The Grenade Launcher was planned to be a little different from what it is now. The primary fire was for releasing a bouncing grenade, while the alternative fire was for releasing an instant exploding grenade. The Grenade Launcher had six grenades - five of them is in the finished game, but the Concussion grenade was originally planned to be a Stasis grenade that adjusted the enemy's speed, much like the Stasis Field of Unreal Tournament 3. See the pastebin for the alpha code.

Maps
"The number of levels is starting to lose its meaning these days... think of Half Life and its collection of many, many smaller levels. Our level count is already well over 30, but some are larger than others. I think we'll have a good solid single player game with 20-25 hours of game play."

- Mike Verdu on Unreality

Around seven maps were cut from the game, some of them were very interesting and unique.

"I managed to sneak into the Unreal 2 XMP credits (Additional Artwork) because of some previously unreleased work that I had done for the original game. But I didn't actually work on XMP and didn't create this map, Scott Dalton took a lot of the elements I had created earlier and turned them into a fun and unique level. The meshes were originally made for an abandoned Unreal 2 mission in which you fought hordes of Araknids on a desert planet riddled with canyons."

- XMP-Sirocco description on Matthias Worch's website

Matthias Worch's description tells of a mission reminiscent of the film Starship Troopers.

"After you clear the ramp and run a safe distance, the dropship claws skyward on a plume of blinding white fire. You take a moment to look around the surface of Charon. The landscape is made up of twisted spires of rock and ice. Volcanic vents spew fire, smoke, and steam into the twilight sky, which is dominated by the sight of the gas giant planet Janus."

- FGN Online

This map was obviously on Charon, moon of Janus. The game contains a map of Janus itself instead, but it is not a gas giant.

The Tractor Beam quote mentioned a map with asteroids, which apparently was cut out. The XMP addon, however, contains the map XMP-FreeFall that is on an asteroid belt, so it might be true that that map was ported to XMP.

The three cut races obviously had their own missions and maps, and probably a few of them. The Shian had an amazing underwater map, nothing about other two races is known.

Technologies
Various graphics, gameplay and sound technologies were cut from the game.

MP3 technology
"We will be playing MP3s in-game for single player music - but they come with their own set of performance problems."

- Mike Verdu on Unreality

MP3 technology was changed into the DirectMusic technology for easier integration: "MP3's usually have a much bigger file size compared to the UMX, although they have a better compression. UMXs are a sequenced collection of samples, instead of one sound file. That's why you can't convert mp3s to umx format, without 50mb+ filesizes."

- Infogrames forum

UnrealEd 3.0 of Unreal II still has a field "MP3Filename" in the Level properties, under LevelInfo.

Texture usage
"We're using our own proprietary animation system, not Epics. The U2 animation system doesn't use .utx packages anymore, it simply references bitmap files (.bmp, .pcx, .tga or .dds) from a directory. Changing skins is as easy as dropping the new skin in the appropiate directory - boom, it's ready to use."

- Matthias Worch on Infogrames forum

The system in Unreal 2 uses UTX packages, they are even importabe to other Unreal versions.

Co-op mode support
Co-op mode support was not added because of the maps being hard to configure for co-op play. This quote from the Infogrames forum explains their decision: "We've said it several times before, and I'll say it again: there will be no coop in U2. Sorry, live with it. We're making a very story-driven SP game here, with dialog, tons of scripted sequences and quite a bit of non-linear gameplay. No, all that will not take away from the action (Unreal was an action FPS game and U2 will be the same), but it's simply impossible to include a coop mode that works well and is bug-free (do you have any idea how easily scripted sequences break when there's more than one player? ;)) without adding a few more months to the schedule. We realize that a lot of the hard-core fans love coop, but we have to make tradeoffs here. HL is still the biggest FPS game out there, and it doesn't have coop (nor do I hear many people *****ing about it). If you want coop you should wait until a 3rd party team creates a mod for it - until then you can play straight action-shooters like Serious Sam :)"

- Matthias Worch on Infogrames' U2 forum

Technically, as Mattchias Worch explained, it would have been possible to create co-op mode. If Legend had made co-op support, Unreal 2 would be a lot more played nowadays. This decision was one of their biggest mistakes.

Multiplayer support
"We'd rather not make the rest of the game suffer greatly to support a feature that very few people actually play. Maybe if we dropped multiplayer (DM, CTF, XMP, etc.) out of the game we would have the time and resources to support a great co-op mode. I don't think most people want that however."

- Scott Dalton on Infogrames forum

Strangely, multiplayer support was never finished either, even though it is in the game. It is possible to play deathmatch and Capture the Flag and there is even a mod for launching maps, but bot support was never completed and their skins are not changed depending on the team they are in.

This quote explains the reasons multiplayer was not finished: "Until January 2002 it was planed that U2 would have multiplayer. Many were concerned that U2 and UT2002, which were both to be released in 2002 with multiplayer, would split the community and hurt eachother’s sales. Thus Epic, Infogrames, Legend and DE sat together and re-arranged the whole release schedule and features of the two games. It was decided that UT2003 would be strictly multiplayer and released in mid 2002, while U2 would be strictly a story-based singleplayer game, to be released end of 2002."

- Cleaned BeyondUnreal

Dynamic conversation system
Dynamic conversation system was never done. Even though it was promised, it wasn't entirely completed. This quote describes how the creators didn't want it to be and how it actually ended up being in the game: "With character development, we are trying to move the genre ahead a bit. We want the player to have conversations in realtime, not the stilted, horrible 'choose-a-dialogue-statement-off-a-menu-while-the-NPC-does-an-awkward-idle-animation' conversations that are common to the current crop of games."

- PC PowerPlay

This quote describe how the system was intended to be: "You can even interrupt conversations and be interrupted in turn. On the Atlantis, the crew will remember where you left off conversations and how you interacted with them - if you continually leave while someone is talking or you are rude to them, they will begin to react negatively to you. You may see tense or unhappy expressions on their faces and you'll get clipped, strained speech instead of warmth or banter. Positive interactions lead to positive reactions. You can change your relationship with someone on your crew - and the nature of the conversations you will have - by changing the way you interact with them."

- Mike Verdu on Action Vault

Armor changing and skin selection
Armor changing is included in the game, yet it was never used and the different armor types have no model. The types are: Light, 100 shield points, Medium, 300 shield points, and Heavy, 500 shield points.

A selection of skins was also cut from the game. The skins still remain in the game, yet most of them were not used. The different races were:
 * Liandri Angel - Heavy
 * Liandri Angel - Medium
 * Liandri Angel - Light
 * Izanagi Ghost Warrior - Heavy
 * Izanagi Ghost Warrior - Medium
 * Izanagi Ghost Warrior - Light
 * Marine - Heavy
 * Marine - Medium (default skin in Unreal 2)
 * Marine - Light
 * Skaarj - Heavy
 * Skaarj - Medium
 * Skaarj - Light

All of the different characters had the four team colors that are present in Unreal Tournament - Red, Blue, Green and Gold. There was a wide selection of different faces for each of the races except the Skaarj. The Light Liandri Angel reference pose might have been the inspiration of the Unreal Tournament 2004 loading screen showing Cathode in the same pose holding a rocket launcher.