The Halo series has seen its fair share of creative weapons for players to enjoy over its 20-year lifespan. Bungie and 343 Industries were never shy about leaning into the sci-fi setting, offering weapons like railguns and the Covenant's infamous melee weapons, like the energy sword or gravity hammer. However, series co-creator Marcus Lehto has now shared weapon concepts from the early days of Halo: Combat Evolved's development that did not make the final cut.

Lehto shared footage of the original Halo's early development on his Twitter, showcasing four weapons Bungie was testing to see if they would fit with the game's armory. The four weapons Lehto highlighted were a concussion gun, a weapon called the excavator, the particle beam rifle, and a microwave gun. Given the game files are from 2000, the weapon designs are fairly simple, though they do sport unique enough profiles for Bungie to build on if they had made it into the final version of the game.

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The early game footage Lehto shared features a testing range to help design the weapons and determine each one's damage in gameplay. The concussion gun and excavator appear to lean into area-of-effect designs, with the excavator favoring explosive damage. The particle beam rifle fires bolts of energy similar to the plasma pistol and plasma rifle, and the microwave gun appears to charge, but it is not clear what type of damage it would have done or what its effective range would be.

While two of those weapons were left by the wayside, the particle beam rifle would be introduced in Halo 2 while the concussion rifle made its debut in Halo Reach. In its finished form, the beam rifle became the staple sniper rifle for the Covenant, serving as the alien counterpart to the UNSC's high-powered sniper rifle, while the concussion rifle served as a grenade launcher-esque weapon.

Footage of early game development is always interesting to see, as it gives players a glimpse of how much or little things can change during development. Halo's early development is especially interesting to see considering it was originally pitched as a strategy game before transforming into a third-person shooter and finally a first-person shooter.

However, Bungie's creativity when it comes to its games' weapons is on full display in Lehto's developer files. It is a creativity that continues to this day in Destiny 2, which features an arsenal of exotic weapons that, in some cases, take cues from Bungie's days on Halo. One such example is Destiny 2's exotic shotgun Tractor Cannon, which appears to have followed in those early design steps of the concussion gun.

Halo Infinite is currently set to release Holiday 2021 on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.

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