Dummied Out / First-Person Shooter

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BioShock

The BioShock franchise has had a large amount of unused or removed content:

• BioShock had many examples, some of which are referenced in the "Museum of Orphaned Concepts" level in the Ultimate Rapture edition of the game:
  • There were originally plans to include an atmospheric pressure system in the game, which would change things like the ambient lighting, enemy animations and spoken dialogue due to either low or high air pressure. It was eventually scrapped on the basis that no one would notice the effects, although it was repurposed for one instance (the tree-killing scene in Arcadia).
  • There was an unused Big Daddy variant, the Slo-Pro-Fum (short for "slow-projectile/fucked-up melee"), who got far enough in the design process to have AI routines coded for him but was eventually scrapped. The concept was later reused in BioShock 2 as the Rumbler enemy. There were also other unused concepts for the Big Daddy, including the original "Gatherer" concept (construction workers repurposed to defend the Adam Gatherers), the "Bouncer" (who had a flat-headed drill on each arm) and a version that had a giant slug attached to its head.
  • Several levels were also changed to make Rapture look like less of a warzone (there were originally more bodies in front of the Kashmir Restaurant and the Medical Pavilion had more barricades and barbed wire in front of it, among others).
  • There were two Gene Tonics removed prior to release - Organic Pockets (which allows the user to double their First Aid/EVE hypo slots) and Shutdown Expert (which increases the amount of time that cameras and turrets stay hacked). Both can be reactivated using mods, but the latter doesn't show any effects in-game. Several Plasmids were also removed (Aggressor Irritant, Parasitic Healing, Sanctuary [a shield spell], Speed Booster, an upgraded version of Telekinesis and Teleportation), although the latter three appeared in the sequel.
• BioShock 2 had large swaths of the plot change during development, including the main antagonists, character models/motivations and locations:
  • The opening level was supposed to be entirely different, and was intended to be a Perspective Flip showing partygoers attending the 1958 New Year's Eve party at the Kashmir Restaurant just before it gets bombed. Various files on-disc still make reference to it - the opening level of the shipped game is referred to as "Prelude-2", the original introductory video can be found through digging in the files and there were are several unused loading screen images, radio messages and unused "bloodied" partygoer models. Additionally, unused audio files reveal that Sofia Lamb was supposed to be your Mission Control throughout the game, up until you find her and she betrays you.
  • Eleanor was meant to be a Big Sister who was hunting Subject Delta throughout the game. In scrapped audio diaries that are still on-disc, she is also listed as Delta's biological daughter (due to Sofia stealing genetic material from Delta while the latter was a test subject and using it to create her).
  • As shown in deleted text files, Tenenbaum was intended to have a larger role in the game (like giving Delta gifts for rescuing Little Sisters), but the dev team scrapped it ostensibly for not being important work for the character. She was brought back in the Minerva's Den DLC.
  • All of the multiplayer characters had their models changed late in development, with files referencing their earlier iterations found on-disc.
  • The mutated splicer that appears in the opening cutscene and demos was originally a representative of a group of "Survivors" who roamed Rapture in special breathing devices and jury-rigged protective gear. The Survivor concept was cut before the final version.
  • A large chunk of audio diaries and radio messages were also cut from the final product, though they still remain on-disc.
• BioShock Infinite went through a Troubled Production, and the effects show greatly in the amount of unused or scrapped material shown prior to release:
  • The entire design aesthetic of Columbia changed radically through development. It was originally intended to be an Art Nouveau-influenced landscape, but was mostly scrapped as the scope of the project changed. Some of the Nouveau-influenced elements still appear in the game, however, such as the Church of Comstock and several signs and frames in Emporia.
  • Various unused models on-disc show that the "Sea of Doors" finale was intended to be much more expansive, with Booker and Elizabeth finding several lighthouses from different climates (including arctic and desert variants, and even Citadel Station from System Shock).
  • The Gear Stores/Tailor Machines (which are all seen trashed in the final game and cannot be used) were intended to be accessible at one point. Cut audio files reveal that the machines would be used similar to the Gene Banks from the first two games. There were also plans for a device similar to the Vita-Chamber (the Resurrecto), and its in-game model can be accessed through the game files.
  • There's a mechanical crab model that is not used anywhere in the game hidden in the first level.

GoldenEye 007

• GoldenEye (1997) may be one of the single largest cases of this trope in action, as it had a boatload of content rendered inaccessible before the game came out:
  • The Byelomorye Dam mission had roughly half of its original objectives scrapped during development, as the designers believed it would have been too difficult for a first level. The most notable of these objectives was "Tower 1", a remote island with a mounted wall-gun from the later levels that you can still see a far distance away from the dam overpass. Originally, Bond would have had to take a boat out to the island, blow up a machine and possibly retrieve bungee jumping equipment needed to leap off the dam (it's also speculated that it may have been in the building with the commandant). The player would have had to get explosives to destroy the gun from the ultimately rather useless checkpoint with the satellite dish, halfway through the level. Bond also would have had to destroy the truck halfway through the dam mission; when it stops at a depot, you were supposed to plant explosives on it.
  • The pointless platforms with ladders in the Surface levels were originally supposed to be used by snipers. This was never implemented because the GoldenEye AI can't fire over railings, so they could only attack if the player actually climbed the ladder.
  • The game was originally intended (in the first few months of its development) to be an on-rails shooter, in the style of Virtua Cop, but this was changed. The Silo level also would have been an on-rails shooter where you would take out enemies from different platforms; Frigate seems to have been designed with this in mind too.
  • Bond would have fought Xenia Onatopp in the "Frigate" stage, but she was deleted from the final game. Instead, you fight her in the "Jungle" stage. Presumably, she was the "helicopter pilot" model who only appears in multplayer, as Xenia is still mentioned in the "Frigate" mission briefing, and the area where you plant the tracker on the helicopter is placed suspiciously next to a large, open area that could have doubled as a boss room, which has an unused spawn location for the helicopter pilot character.
  • You could also access a ton of new weapons and items using a Gameshark or Action Replay. Evidently, these items were part of expanded subplots that were deleted, but the items themselves remained in the game data. These included the gas keyring from The Living Daylights, a watch communicator (to talk to Q?), micro cameras and much more. Several weapons were also found to be embedded in the data.
  • Other weapons were intended to appear but have no level assigned to them; the (non-automatic) Shotgun originally appeared in Archives but is only accessible via the All Weapons cheat, the Magnum was available without killing Natalya on Jungle, and the Taser appeared several times.
  • The infamous "Citadel" multiplayer test level, which Rare denied existed for years. Hackers cracked the game's code and found an incomplete stage, then built the necessary setup files for the level to work normally.
  • The "All Bonds" cheat, which would have unlocked all the classic James Bond actors for multiplayer (accompanied by the Egypt and Aztec bonus levels originally meant to have you play as a previous Bond, presumably Roger Moore's since Aztec is based on one of his films and Egypt mixes elements from several more), was removed when it became impossible to secure all the necessary licensing rights. The character models themselves were removed, though the textures remain in the ROM, including character-select images for the earlier Bonds played by Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton (George Lazenby's Bond was either cut completely or not included in the first place, between him only playing the character one time and the fact that there could only be four players maximum); hackers have managed to create a partially-functional "All Bonds" mode by applying them to other models.
  • The "Line Mode" cheat is present and fully functional, but there's no way to properly unlock it; there's a button-press cheat, but that doesn't permanently add it to the list. This would seem to indicate an entire missing level.
  • Tying in with the "missing level", it's long been rumored that there was an entire Casino level cut from the game (and replaced by the "Silo" flashback level). The evidence pointing to this includes the aforementioned missing cheat mode and the existence of several unused items in the game code, including a gold bar, casino chips and a camera. Fans have speculated that the level would have consisted of Bond planting cameras at the casino and meet with Xenia.
  • Dam, Cradle and Statue were also originally set up as 2-3 player multiplayer levels (complete with player starts and weapon spawn locations), but they can't be accessed without a cheat device. This is why Cradle has three walkways, while the real antenna only has one. The beta version also included a multiplayer version of Frigate called "destroyer," which helps to explain why the La Fayette in game appears to be an American Kidd-class destroyer. Cradle eventually became a playable multiplayer level in GoldenEye Source, a mod for Half-Life 2.
  • Ten old ZX Spectrum games from back when Rare was Ultimate Play the Game could be played in an emulator. This was apparently never intended to be on the actual release, but it was merely rendered inaccessible. This emulator, however, did eventually end up seeing the light of day, when Rare used it include Jetpac and the original Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong 64.

• The Call of Duty series had many examples of this:
  • Call of Duty 2's HUD still includes an icon, specifically when the player uses the PPS-42, that indicates the ability to change fire mode from the first game was going to return for the second game, but which ultimately didn't happen until Black Ops II as an attachment option and then the 2019 Modern Warfare as an inherent mechanic.
  • There are files found in World at War that hint at both a campaign related to British forces and requisite British weapons, but these are nowhere to be seen in the final product. There were also plans to include another airplane level, flying an F4U Corsair. The level was intended to end in the player character's death when shot down, and the (booby-trapped) plane actually remains in the finished game.
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had several levels that were scrapped late in production, but can still be viewed by accessing the PC version's mod tools to view the remnants. Most of the scrapped content centered around the American campaign, with at least three more missions focusing on different protagonists fighting in Riyad'h (including a Cobra helicopter pilot and a Marine sniper). The most notable dummied content, though, was a segment of the opening training mission that involved Soap running through an obstacle course and further practicing his weapon proficiency with explosives, all while being verbally berated by two drill instructors. There's even a mod that allows you to play the cut content! These segments were also made playable in Modern Warfare Remastered.
  Sgt. Newcastle: (before Soap blows up a broken-down car with C4) It seems my ex-wife was kind enough to donate her car to further your education, Soap.
  Mac: (while running the obstacle course) You crawl like old people screw! I've seen Sandhurst commandos move faster than you lot!
  • Also cut out was a series of very strange lines from Captain MacMillan, presumably meant to be spoken during the Pripyat missions. They're hilarious, but it's hard to imagine under what circumstances he would have said them.
  • Cut audio clips (which are still in the game files) for "Mile High Club" indicate that the VIP the team rescues, Kriegler, is the same man who was shipping the nukes on the cargo ship in "Crew Expendable". The mission was also intended to be the second or third level of the game; it was moved to a post-credits extra because Infinity Ward couldn't fit it into the main story and because it's far too difficult to be played that early on.
  • Dummied out mission objectives for "Aftermath" indicate that the player was originally supposed to locate their commanding officer and find "secure overhead cover". This was changed for the final version of the level, where Pvt. Jackson wanders around for a minute and then dies.
  • Several weapons were cut but still have at least parts of them still in the files. Several are only hinted at in localization strings, such as unique versions of the grenade launcher attachments for the G3 and G36 (in the finished game they use the M203 like everything else other than the AK-47) and a MAC-10; some others are leftovers from Call of Duty 2, such as HUD icons for sticky grenades and thermite or the MG42 pickup icon (the latter of which is used on mountable machine guns which the player isn't supposed to be able to reach); and others still are so complete that the only reason you can't use them without cheating is that the game simply never gives you them, like the AT4 (which made it into Modern Warfare 2). The weirdest, however, are probably the "Brick Blaster", a USP which throws bricks at whatever you shoot with it, and "Select a location", an AK-47 with a very strange view-model. Both weapons also have animations of your character bashing people with the guns for Quick Melee rather than using a knife as was essentially standardized by this game, as well as the latter's name suggesting it was meant to be an early form of the Tactical Insertion introduced in MW2. Relatedly, there are several unused sniper-scope reticles in the files: in addition to leftover overlays for the Lee-Enfield, Kar98k, Mosin-Nagant and Springfield from Call of Duty 2, there are also unique scope overlays for every sniper rifle intended to be used in the game (including two for the M21, a normal one and one with larger red lines indicating a thermal overlay) and one for the ACOG attachment. In the finished game, all but the M40A3's scope overlay go unused; while the CoD2 overlays obviously weren't intended to be used, and the ACOG instead works similarly to the red dot sight (simply aiming down the actual model rather than removing the weapon model and placing a scope overlay on the screen when aiming), all the remaining scopes use the M40A3 overlay due to a programming error.
  • Multiplayer had several levels that were cut, too, perhaps most notably Invasion and Favela, both of which were intended to be added to the game with the Variety Map Pack and which were later repurposed for Modern Warfare 2.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 also had several levels and parts of levels cut. One of these involved you following Capt. Price into the sub at the end of "Contingency", and was presumably cut to make the part where Price launches the nuke at the US' eastern seaboard more surprising; this was presumably cut pretty late in development, as if you noclip into the sub, you can see that Price still goes through all of the animations of using the consoles and the like. There was also a mission where you rode a motorcycle (which would probably be similar to the snowmobile part), and one where you fought Russians on the ISS (which IW cut for being too out-there, making it just a cutscene where the ISS is destroyed by Price's nuke). Also, a handful of weapons were retained from Call of Duty 4 but not used; in addition to the 1911, which is only usable in the Museum and is otherwise just a unique pistol for Soap and Captain Price to use, the Remington 700, M40A3, G36C (missing its sights) and M60E4 are all present in the files, able to be spawned through the console if it's enabled. An early trailer also had a brief reuse of the G3 model, which presumably had its role overtaken by the FAL later in development.
    • It's worth noting that Call of Duty: Black Ops included a motorcycle section at the end of the mission "Vorkuta" that plays similarly to the snowmobile section in Modern Warfare 2, suggesting that they reused the data.
    • Likewise, in Modern Warfare 3, the second mission of the game has the player board a Russian sub to disable it, using the exact same level layout as the submarine Price boards in 2, indicating the level section was reused.
    • Call of Duty: Ghosts opens with a space station being attacked by an enemy force and a pair of astronauts forced to defend the station. It's believed that this utilized the scrapped content from Modern Warfare 2's original ISS level, helped by the fact that the non-space portions of that level reuse animations from the cutscene at the end of MW2.
  • Modern Warfare 3 includes a veritable cascade of Create-a-Class icons for guns that didn't make the cut, mostly leftovers from the previous two games left in the files, but there were also a pair of new icons, one for the AK-74u (which in-game is exclusive to one campaign mission and a few Special Ops levels) and one for a Mk 12 SPR (which was, presumably, replaced by the RSASS). Several other icons for cut perks and maps also still exist in the files; one map in particular, "Meteora", was eventually finished and rereleased in one of the content packs under the name "Sanctuary".
• The Dark Forces Saga:
  • Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast's multiplayer option allows for a player to use RGB colour customization on a small array of player skins in the Player Customize menu where one can change their name, lightsaber, etc. However, this RGB option can be applied to some player skins that aren't in the Customize menu, which can quite easily be done by opening the Command Window.
  • Outcast features a few unused action tracks for levels without enemy encounters, like "Yavin Trial", and the Death Course portion of "Yavin Final".
  • Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy also completely missed some player models from the Player Customize menu, although the models themselves are completely playable. The models include the RGB-compatible non-customizable skins, as well as the Jawa model, which, because of the problematic AI, has developed a cult following where a Jawa will bop up and down into and out of a crouch. This has been called the "Jawa Dance."
  • One of the multiplayer levels on Taspir has towers with elevators that constantly go up and down. One of these towers has an elevator that doesn't go to the final floor, as it was never finished for some reason.
  • It is almost impossible to replicate official screenshots of Jedi Academy without cheating, as almost every one shows the player using two lightsabers or a double-bladed one (which was a major selling point of the game), but in levels before you get that option (what wasn't advertised is that isn't until two-thirds of the way through). This may be a result of double dummying-out; code exists in the game (and can be activated through the console) for Jaden to pick up the lightsabers of defeated Reborn, which means you could have potentially been able to dual wield as early as your first Reborn kill in the tutorial level. However, lightsabers picked up from enemies are invariably given red blades and a distinctive black hilt that isn't available in character creation, whereas the aforementioned official screenshots had the regular variety of blade colors and hilt designs. Double-bladed sabers are also not available significantly earlier than normal with just that console command, as no enemies use them until the level before when you can get one normally.
  • Coding exists for "realistic sabers" in both Outcast and Academy, wherein any humanoid enemy (and you yourself) will lose body parts and die just from slight contact with the blade of someone else's lightsaber (in the unmodified game, dismemberment is limited to very rarely chopping off of an enemy's weapon hand with a killing blow); amusingly, it appears to have been cut early enough that the death animations do not change to account for this, so you can witness things like a stormtrooper clutching his new hand-stump in agony despite also missing his head, which will spin around in its place on the ground to conform to the original animation. The setting can be reactivated through the console, but in Academy it was made harder to activate after a patch set it so the game treats it as a cheat code, requiring it to be re-set every time you run the game.
• Descent II has an unused Evil Counterpart of the Guide Bot.
• Doom
  • Miswritten code caused this with a pair of mechanics regarding health. The "ouch face" is still possible to show up in the normal game, but it's all but guaranteed to only do so if the player goes out of their way to trigger it - intended to show up whenever the player takes 20 or more damage at once, the code is written instead so that it only appears if the player takes damage on the same tic where they gain at least 20 health. There's also a "picked up a medikit that you REALLY need!" message for picking up a medkit with less than 25 health remaining, which simply never appears in the normal game because the code applies the change to your health and then checks what your health is for determining which message to print, meaning as far as that code is concerned it's not possible for the player to have below 26 health points. Both of these have been fixed in various source ports and the 2019 Unity suite of ports.
  • "Spawning Vats", the penultimate level of Episode 2, was originally designed to be the first level of the game, when it was still intended to be an open-ended quasi-RPG. After Tom Hall left id Software over creative differences with John Carmack, who wanted a more linear level-to-level shooter in the style of Wolfenstein 3-D, the map was modified to remove the RPG elements like NPCs and the exits to other levels in favor of the typical monster and weapon placement, leaving the level as an oddity both in the game and the episode it appears in, as a sprawling maze filled with dead ends and empty rooms that resemble maps from the first episode.
  • In Doom II, the source code contains commented-out code that would have allowed for the doors in the two secret levels, which are modeled after the first and last levels of Wolfenstein 3D's first episode, to function the way they did in that game (i.e. sliding off to the side, rather than moving upwards into the ceiling). An expanded version of this later made its way into the engine with Hexen, which introduced polyobjects to allow for scenery to move in directions other than up and down.
  • The Sega 32X port of the first game has the BFG programmed in, but is impossible to get during normal gameplay as all maps containing the BFG (virtually the entirety of Episode 3) were removed. It's still accessible via cheat codes, however.
  • Doom³ was supposed to feature a quadrupedal Imp, and it is in fact a fully coded and animated entity that can be spawned from the console. It's so blindingly fast and aggressive that it may have been dummied out for game balance; Resurrection of Evil re-used its properties in a different model and watered-down stats like movement speed and fireball damage to make the new Vulgar enemy.
• Duke Nukem 3D has dozens of textures and sprites in the data files which are not used anywhere in the main game. User-made levels, however, are more than happy to make use of them.
• Half-Life:
  • There were a number of enemies that were modeled, textured and coded before being cut in both Half-Life and Half-Life 2. One such monster, Mr. Friendly, was cut from the original Half-Life because his attacks would include pounding the ground to knock the player's weapon out of his hand, knocking his glasses off, and raping the player to death.
  • Another monster cut from Half-Life 2 was the Hydra, which was cut because although it looked cool, it was no fun to fight since as the developer put it "You'd just see this blue blob doing something vague, then you're dead". There were also some coding issues, since it would impale whoever it attacked. A few of the areas it was meant to be fought in were reused for the beginning of the uprising in the retail game.
  • No screenshot on either of the original Half-Life or Half-Life 2 boxes actually exists in the games.
  • In c3a1 of Half-Life, noclipping at the elevator displays a fully functional elevator, but trying to use it crashes the game as there's no map pointer for it.
  • The multiplayer map Crossfire, when accessed while playing story mode, has a security guard that can be interacted with. The reason for his placing remains unknown. The same map has a hidden room that is inaccessible via normal means, even in multiplayer.
  • The first game has a number of announcements played over the public address system throughout the game. Most of the messages in the data files aren't actually played in the game, however, including several taunts towards Gordon Freeman from the military.
  • Half-Life: Alyx includes an unused tripmine weapon that Alyx can place on surfaces, as well as a mostly-functional Fast Headcrab with a new model which was cut for being too "shocking" in VR. The Combine SMG was also intended to have a fourth upgrade giving it an energy ball launcher, in the same vein as the AR2's Secondary Fire mode in Half-Life 2, though this was cut and only present in the released game as an unusable part of the model for the extended magazine upgrade.
• Halo has multiple examples:
  • Halo: Combat Evolved:
    • The Covenant Engineer was cut so late that the files were left on the discs. However, the canonical novels which make up the expanded universe included them right from the very first book, and they finally made it into the FPS games in Halo 3: ODST. The only reason they were originally cut was that the developers felt the tech couldn't convey them well enough for an emotional impact.
    • The flamethrower that was a "new feature" in the PC/Mac port was already almost finished in the Xbox version, and is usable on the levels "The Library" and "Keyes" with the use of a trainer with the "spawn all weapons in game" key. The weapon model is essentially the same as the one of the PC/Mac port (it just has a different ammo counter), doesn't do any damage (except melee attacks), and there are no biped movement animations while holding it other then standing straight as if at attention, with the weapon at your side pointed at the ground.
    • "Two Betrayals" has a locked fourth phase pulse generator room. The objective was probably cut down to three generators for pacing reasons.
  • Halo 2:
    • The Flood Juggernaut. The files are still on the disc, so with some modding you can put them in the game and fight them.
    • There was a planned monster called the Drinol that didn't make it past the concept stage. It was supposed to be a Shout-Out to the Hulks from Marathon. The Flood Tank form in 3 is similar, though.
    • Previews showed black Spec-Ops Elites (supposedly a higher rank) like in the first game, but in the final release, they all have indigo/violet armor.
    • The level "Metropolis" was originally going to feature an enormous tiered city referred to as "Earth City". The city was changed to its final version in order to make it more realistic.
  • Halo 3 had the deleted "Guardian Forest" level, part of which was made into the MP map "Guardian", and another part of which was merged with "The Covenant".
• Thanks to being rushed out the door to meet its release date, Jurassic Park: Trespasser had a host of dummied out features. A beta version of the game showed what was deleted from the final version:
  • For starters, the developers originally created a wide range of possible emotions for the dinosaurs in the game, so that they could react accordingly with what was going on in the world. In practice, though, this caused the dinosaurs to stay paralyzed in place because they couldn't decide between moods, so almost every dinosaur in the game was permanently set to maximum hostility as a quick fix.
  • The game was originally supposed to run at a much higher framerate than what it eventually ended up being. The sheer number of textures in the game (as well as conflicts with the game engine) forced the designers to severely scale back the framerate between the beta and final version.
  • Early on in development, it was proposed that the game would have a third-person perspective instead of a first-person one, and it's still possible to enable the third person view with cheats. In practice, however, this not only makes it even more difficult to aim your weapon and grab items, but it also reveals that the player character's model is just a floating pair of breasts and one arm — which is all you'd see in first-person anyway.
  • The physics system in the game caused a bug with the game's melee weapons. Simply walking around while having a melee weapon stowed would cause said weapon to clip into the player and deal damage (because it Sticks to the Back). The developers worked around this by removing mass from all the melee weapons, which also made them useless in combat — except for one, which is Nedry's mace (it's holstered on the belt like keys and handguns, thus the part that damages things doesn't clip into your character model).
  • The "Pine Valley" level, which was used as the demo level but deleted from the final game. Pine Valley was supposed to take place between the worker town and docks levels (explaining why the terrain of the two levels is so different and the starting point of the latter looks nothing like the ending point of the former). It was going to feature Site B's geothermal powerplant, but the dinosaur AI didn't work properly in interior spaces (they kept getting stuck in walls) and the physics engine couldn't handle the mechanical puzzles the level was supposed to contain, so the level was unceremoniously cut.
  • See also this postmortem and code review for more gory details of what goes into making a grand dream into a famous bomb.
• Left 4 Dead apparently was going to have zombie dogs in the game, but was cut. Proof of this is in the sound files in the PC version; there are sound effects for the dog still left in the game.
  • The beta version of the game was going to have Zoey show some romantic interest towards Francis, but it was cut out due to playtesters deeming it as too distracting. The files for the conversation are still present (example: Zoey tells Francis she knows how to cut hair; Francis in the beta version of the game had long hair). However, one beta dialogue still plays out in the game, but it makes no sense in context - if Louis is shot by Francis, Louis may yell "Go on! Do it again, fat man!" The beta version of Francis showed him with a beer belly, while his final version does not have it.
    • Similarly in the sequel, there are unused lines by the survivors and some NPCs that indicate the maps the lines came from were slightly larger or had something else that would happen in them. One example is Whitaker having lines that suggest he was going to give the survivors covering fire as they got him some cola. However, he doesn't give any cover whatsoever.
    • A more well known example came from the chopper pilot in the No Mercy campaign. After saving the survivors, he would complain about feeling cold and then he would become sick and turn into a zombie. This was during a time in development when all the campaigns in Left 4 Dead were going to be connected, but since play testers felt frustrated that their rescues were consistently ending in failure, Valve cut the lines, but they can still be heard in the game's files. However, the Crash Course DLC seems to have reimplemented the idea; it begins with the helicopter crashing because Zoey killed the infected pilot, and ends with them escaping in an armoured van before the 'next' campaign, Death Toll, starts on a road blocked with abandoned cars. L4D2, meanwhile, goes back to having the campaigns explicitly linked to one another, while also making a Mythology Gag towards this by having its "Swamp Fever" campaign start off because the pilot of the chopper that rescued the group from "Dark Carnival" turns and tries to kill them mid-flight, causing the chopper to crash in a swamp. The later tie-in comic for "The Sacrifice" later re-established that the campaigns of the first game were linked, as well - the owners of the boat from "Death Toll" stole their guns and left them, the plane from "Dead Air" crashed for unknown reasons, and the military picking them up at the end of "Blood Harvest" is where the comic starts.
  • The demo version of Left 4 Dead 2 also had every weapon and item that wasn't supposed to be in the demo dummied out, but able to be spawned via console commands. The Grenade Launcher is a more obvious example since it lacked textures and there was no official model for the fired grenade (which showed ERROR instead). A patch disabled the ability to spawn these items until the retail version of the game was released.
    • There were also a few maps cut out of the final game, such as Survival versions of a few crescendo events. Various mods re-add these maps.
  • The sequel also made it possible to splash other survivor players with Bile Bombs (summons a horde of zombies on the target or area) and there are actually unused lines of the survivors getting angry that the thrower smeared them in bile. However, this ability was cut out due to the feature making using bile bombs too frustrating and/or too easy for griefing. A console command in the PC version can be used to enable this feature if cheats are turned on.
  • Laser Sights were going to be used in the first game, but were oddly cut out in the final version (some modded servers re-enable this feature, but solely as a cosmetic addition). The sequel made the laser sights a complete feature, letting teammates see where you're aiming and reducing the spread from moving and/or firing.
  • Early on in the development for Left 4 Dead 2, survivors were able to find ammo packs, which they could deploy and the whole team could get ammo from. This was cut out due to most people finding the idea useless, since it replaces the health kit and, due to how the game tends to spawn such items, was most likely to be found next to a regular ammo pile, and the idea only technically survives in the finished game by way of packs of explosive or incendiary bullets. The console command to give the ammo pack still exists, but it does nothing. The texture for the ammo pack is also still present in the game's files, which was just a reskin of the health kit.
  • In The Parish campaign, the first two maps were going to be a large single map until Valve decided to split the area into two joined maps. The beta version of the single large map can be played by loading it from a console command. Aside from no sky textures and some model errors, the CEDA trailer by the bus station had a different design and would spray something on the survivors when they entered it. There was also a heavy machine gun near the switch to shut the alarm off, which is not present in the final version of this area.
  • The Sacrifice DLC contains unused audio for Bill which appears to be his final words as he slowly dies. The context of these lines appear to be for when the player has Bill sacrifice himself at the finale of the campaign and it goes quite well when it's compared to what happens to Bill in the comic version. It could have been possible for Bill to say these lines if he dies in the end, but they are never used and he just uses his standard pain screams in the ending.
• The three Marathon games have a few pieces of old data in them, including:
  • Old level names (or at least parts of old level names)
  • In Infinity a level had a double dummy, with a missing terminal and a hint that the text left in the resources was not the intended text for the terminal (a couple members of the dev team later gave us the real text)
  • The first game had a text string in a mission end terminal that, in the resources, was pure gibberish that included a character string (it was %r if you were wondering), that if the string is copied into another terminal, would display the same line (it's believed that this is a remnant of an attempt to make the first game have multiple endings or paths).
  • The level "Fatum Iustum Stultorum" has an inaccessible dummy room in the upper left corner, only visible in a map editor. This may have intended to be the player's starting point, rather than them being dropped into an arbitrary room at the start.
  • A planned Wave-Motion Gun and shotgun for the first game.
  • The Hound, a planned companion to the Hunter, which was featured in the manual and some screenshots, and the Armageddon Beast (a Nigh-Invulnerable Juggernaut type monster, not to be confused with the actual game Juggernaut), which was pictured in the Marathon Scrapbook.
  • The level "Come and Take Your Medicine" has an extra destroyable circuit that does nothing, a door that can only be opened by enemies, and a large meaningless outdoor area, indicating that more stuff was planned for this level.
• The original Medal of Honor had several missions/levels scrapped due to time and/or processing constraints, including a radar train (possibly during or after the Railgun Greta mission), a jet aircraft facility (although the game still shows the jet fighter film clips), and Colditz Castle. The last one was resurrected as the Panzerknacker Unleashed bonus mission in Underground, and its music was used in Allied Assault.
  • Allied Assault also has an unused level that can be accessed through the console; it may have been intentionally left in as a Secret Level.
• PAYDAY: The Heist has several unused audio and text files showing that there would have been other heists that took place on a boat or other areas. Word of God says they had tinkered with several heist ideas during development before they settled on the final version of the game.
  • The sequel has a safehouse that acts as a tutorial level. There's several walls in the basement that look suspicious due to the wall being brick instead of cement. People have discovered through no clip that there's actual rooms behind the walls; most of the rooms are empty but one of them has a few cameras inside and a camera icon sprayed onto the floor, which may suggest that the player would have been able to practice skills related to cameras.
  • PAYDAY 2 also has some attachments that are in the game files but not actually usable. In particular are different magazines for some weapons - the AMCAR family gets a drum mag, while the RPK gets a non-drum. There's also a "Giraffe Bipod", according to the end of this video, for the machine guns. The bipod later made its way into the game as the Lion's Bipod, added during Crimefest 2015; the different mags are still AWOL because their noticeably-different size and shape would require them to have different animations depending on whether they have those mags attached or not, and the engine is apparently incapable of handling attachments that do much more than add onto (the bipod) or speed up (the later Speed Pull Magazine) existing animations; see also, for example, that underbarrel Grenade Launchers remain as integrated attachments specific to a small handful of weapons like the "Little Friend 7.62mm", because a grenade launcher would require different animations to account for its presence if it could be attached to other weapons that weren't built into the game with it in mind.
• Perfect Dark has several:
  • You'll find a slice of Swiss cheese in every level. Collecting every piece would have gotten you something.
  • There's also "Perfect Head" mode, which would've allowed you to put your own face on a custom head for single player guards or multiplayer using the Game Boy Camera. Although the developers insisted for years it was taken out for technological reasons, they later admitted that the reason it was removed was because the ability to put faces of people you know onto virtual characters and then shoot them to death wouldn't have been cool with a lot of people so soon after mass shootings like Columbine (the game's initial North American release was only a year and a month after that).
  • References to other missing game modes and items litter the code, including multiplayer options to have destroyable doors and even walls (it's unclear how this was supposed to work), a missing mode called "Touch The Crate," and an extra singleplayer mission called "Retaking The Institute."
  • GameShark codes and early screenshots reveal that Perfect Dark was originally supposed to have hats as an attachment to a character's head as in GoldenEye. These were ultimately dummied out because the hats often didn't fit properly on Perfect Dark's much more varied head models. The headgear that some enemies wear in the final version is actually permanently modelled onto their head, not a separate piece.
• Quake
  • Quake is an interesting example: the very first release was the Beta version, QTest, which was a three-map multiplayer-only version of the game with slightly different game mechanics from the finished product. Not long after QTest was released on the Internet, however, enterprising hackers discovered a way to access/spawn enemies from the game code inside the levels, giving players a sneak peak towards what would be available in the then upcoming single player shareware release. These early dummied out versions of the enemies include an ogre which uses a nailgun instead of a grenade launcher, and a massive version of the fiend. The latter was in fact so big that it actually caused the QTest to crash when it attacked you, which is presumably the reason why the ones in the finished Quake are so much (comparatively) smaller. It also lacked any sort of regular melee attack — it could only damage you if it leaped at you (and didn't crash the game in the process), so staying close made it harmless.
  • Quake II has a fully-working Power Screen, which worked the same as the Power Shield, but only in one direction. It wasn't included in any official level, though it is used by an enemy.
  • Quake III: Arena has a Grappling Hook, similar to that of the past CTF incarnations, almost fully working. The Expansion Pack Team Arena even had a portal device. Had it been completed and polished, (the item was modelled, but the portals weren't visible in-game) it would have predated Narbacular Drop and Portal.
  • There are unused sound files for announcing a win by a character named X-Ray.
• Strife had a number of unused resources buried in the .wad files, such as graphics for a gas grenade and some bits of voice acting.
• Team Fortress 2 has many lines and content features that end up unused. There is a list here of unused content found in the data files.
  • How much of that content was planned to be used and how much of it was there as a Red Herring for people who look specifically through files for dummied out content, will only be known to the TF2 developers. However, the "medic follow" lines were put into use since the Engineer Update (July 8, 2010).
  • One feature was the "Melee Dare" lines where if you took out your melee weapon with another player nearby, they'd say a line daring you to a melee duel. This was cut for an unknown reason, but some servers enable it as a mod. The lines were later scripted in (among other lines) when a player aims at an enemy with a melee weapon and chooses the "Battle Cry" speech.
    • This was later implemented back in with some classes through the duel minigame; upon challenging another player, one of several responses (a few of which are melee dare sounds) will play.
  • Source Filmmaker was on the original Team Fortress 2 demo — since its discovery, amateur filmmakers everywhere have used it to make videos. A version of Source Filmmaker was officially put into beta with the Pyromania Update in June 2012.
  • When the community found out how to read the file names to indicate what would come next before any official announcements, Valve started to place strings which seemed to change the entire course of the game (namely, strings for Raidbosses and RPG elements). Initially thought to be Valve's way of covering up their subsequent updates by placing false herrings, it turns out that these were in fact unused features. The Raidboss strings would be used when the Horseless Headless Horsemann was introduced (and every other subsequent boss thereafter) and finally, the RPG elements would be used in the gamechanging Mann Vs Machine Update (where players can purchase upgrades to level up their weapons). The latter ended up spanning a good few years, with (in hindsight) sporadic hints dropped left and right.
• The manual for Turok 2 describes a monster called a Hunter, but you don't see it anywhere in the game. It might have been a prototype of the Leaper enemy seen in Level 4.
• Unreal:
  • The original Unreal features a number of creatures that were never used in the game or are incomplete, a non-functioning weapon's file (the Quadshot, later restored in the OldUnreal v227* community patches) and a level named "Gateway" representing a huge empty space station with no items, no monsters and non-functioning stargate-like teleporters made of water. It has a number of cool features and can be accessed through the level editor.
  • Possibly as a consequence of it having been an Expansion Pack turned into a full game, Unreal Tournament includes, save for maps and music, all of its predecessor's data - several working items (such as a silencer and the Nali fruits and seeds to restore health, on top of all of the weapons), models, textures, codes and sounds which weren't used in the final game nor in the console ports or the official free bonus packs. Being a moddable game, there are several maps which incorporate all of those assets, and even mods that allow you to combine the two games (thanks to Unreal later getting a rerelease on UT's version of the engine). Outside of this, the game itself also has the Minigun Arena and Impact Arena mutators, and the Tournament Darkmatch gamemode (which contains no maps), as well as a sixth member for the Raw Steel team called "Patchy".
  • Unreal II: The Awakening has a simple Deathmatch mode playable with bots which can only be accessed with special modifications to the game's own menu and a bunch of mutators.
  • Unreal Championship has screenshots for maps that didn't made it into the game such as BR-Skyline, BR-SlaughterHouse, CTF-December, BR/CTF-TwinTombs, DM-Phobos2, DM-TokaraForest, DOM-Core and DOM-OutRigger.
  • Unreal Tournament 2003 has a vehicle, called Bulldog, fully operational, but doesn't work like those in either Unreal II XMP, UT2004 or UT3.
  • Unreal Tournament 2004 has the "Vehicle CTF" mode, which is, obviously, Capture the Flag with vehicles. There are no official maps of this gametype, however, so it isn't playable in the actual Tournament mode and requires a downloaded custom map to be listed in the Instant Action menu. In addition, the game has also a playable version of the Phoenix Bomber (which in the final game only appears in open maps featuring the Target Painter), an "use" class of objectives for the Assault mode and a "Move onto the next objective" announcement, 2003 ladder system and Unreal Championship's voicepacks.
  • Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict has a levelshot for a level called CTF-MetalStorm.
  • Unreal Tournament III has references for levels called DM-Hardcore and DM-Revenant, as well as campaign references for the maps WAR-ColdHarbor and CTF-SearchLight, which were released in Bonus Packs but never used in the campaign proper.

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