Reach could have had space ship multiplayer

This brief article from The Escapist talks about the goal that Bungie had to get space ship battles as part pof the Halo Reach multiplayer experience but that it was ultimately dropped. Marcus Lehto lets us in on the plans:

Remember that sequence in Reach when you have a dogfight in space against the Covenant? It kind of plays like those parts of the old Nintendo 64 space combat sim StarFox 64 where Fox McCloud would whisk around a relatively small area trying to take down a specific enemy. 

The space fight mission in Halo: Reach is definitely a far cry from the more open space battles of, say, Tie Fighter, but it was a nice departure from the run and gun gameplay of the rest of the campaign. Bungie's Creative Director on Reach, Marcus Lehto, said that the space combat was a darling of the studio and almost made it into multiplayer before the team ultimately decided that it was probably better saved for a different game.

"We joked about it from time to time and even had a rough version of it working very early on in development," said Lehto. "But the mechanics of it were pretty silly and we very quickly realized that the resulting gameplay experience wouldn't hit the bar we were aiming for, nor justify the amount of work required.

"With so many features and so much content already committed, Reach was an incredibly ambitious project on an already aggressive schedule," Lehto said.

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So maybe something will come of Bungie's Aerospace Teasing soon....