The planned Doc Ock fight was WAY better.
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00:00Video game development is all about could-have-beens and what-ifs, with developers often having
00:04grand plans and then running out of time, unable to see their original vision through.
00:09This includes boss battles as well, which are often changed or chopped entirely right
00:14at the last minute.
00:15So, with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Scrapped Video Game Boss
00:19Battles That Would Have Been Incredible.
00:21Number 10.
00:22The Hydra Half-Life 2
00:23To start things off, we have one of gaming's most infamous disappearing acts, Half-Life
00:282's Hydra.
00:29The Hydra made a memorable appearance during Half-Life 2's showcase at E3 2002, impaling
00:35a hapless goon and then dragging him to the watery depths before the player's very eyes.
00:40Evoking memories of the original Half-Life's legendary Blast Pit Tentacle, now there's
00:44a bad name if I ever heard one, gamers everywhere were anticipating a similarly tense encounter
00:50against this aqueous adversary.
00:52Unfortunately, it wasn't to be.
00:55Valve soon realised that while the Hydra was great to look at, it was a monumental
01:00pain in the rear end to actually fight.
01:02As detailed in Half-Life 2 Raising The Bar, the Hydra was a massive letdown once the player
01:08actually got around to fighting it.
01:10The book described the boss as an unsatisfying blob monster whose tentacles killed players
01:15before they even realised what the hell was happening, and so the decision was made to
01:18cut it from the game.
01:19A Hydra that was as satisfying to fight as it was incredible to look at would have been
01:24amazing, but I mean Half-Life 2 turned out pretty well anyway, didn't it?
01:289.
01:29The Undead King Jaheel – Dark Souls Dark Souls is the game that spawned an entire
01:34genre and ensured that any title with even the slightest level of difficulty would be
01:38labelled the Dark Souls of platformers, shooters, horticulture maintenance simulators, pretty
01:44much everything.
01:45The game earned its notoriety though through its meticulously malevolent dungeons looking
01:49at Yu-Sans Fortress and some bastard hard boss fights.
01:53The likes of Manus, Sif and Ornstein and Smough have battered many a gamer in the decades
01:58since Dark Souls' release, but if all had gone to plan there would have been one more
02:01roadblock to bar players' progress, that being the Undead King Jaheel.
02:06Given Dark Souls' infamously opaque nature, it's fitting that Jaheel himself is shrouded
02:11in mystery.
02:12There's enough of his code left in the game files to mod him back into the title, but
02:16beyond that it's anyone's guess how he would have fit into Dark Souls, both in story
02:20and practical terms.
02:22One thing is for sure though, given how difficult kings tend to be in Soulsborne games, I mean
02:27look at Old King Alan, the Nameless King and the absolutely infuriating Burnt Ivory King,
02:32there is every chance that Jaheel would have been another royal pain in the rear end had
02:37he survived the editing process.
02:398.
02:40Great One Beast – Bloodborne From one Soulsborne game to another we have
02:44Bloodborne, a razor sharp nightmare of a game that lurches from hammer horror thrills to
02:49lovecraftian menace at the drop of a tentacle.
02:52No other enemy type illustrated Bloodborne's all-encompassing approach to horror better
02:56than its beasts though, you know the werewolf-esque enemies that had gone through enough body
03:01horror to make even David Cronenberg blush.
03:04From the permanently aflame Watchdog to the skin demutilated blood-stabbed beast, each
03:08was as tragic as it was monstrous, and putting them down felt more like an act of mercy than
03:14vengeance.
03:15Although it was hard to not feel vengeful sometimes when you were being repeatedly slaughtered
03:19by them, especially that spider-freak Rom, hate that dude.
03:23Each beast battle felt like a highlight in a game already full of highlights, but we
03:27could have had one more had the Great One Beast made the cut.
03:31Given that Bloodborne already has more than a dozen beasts to slay, you can see why the
03:35developers might have felt that one more would be overkill, then again you can never have
03:39too much of a good thing, and we'd have much rather faced down the Great One Beast
03:43than banged our heads against the spell-spamming Micolash.
03:467.
03:47Centaur and King Xemnas – Kingdom Hearts 2
03:50Kingdom Hearts 2's climactic battle against Xemnas was already epic in its own right,
03:55but according to the official concept art it could have been even more jaw-dropping.
03:58Apparently at one stage the plan was for Xemnas to transform into what was essentially a living
04:03castle, adorned with a multi-storey crown on its head, and then metamorph into a ludicrously
04:09large mecha-centaur.
04:11That's right, it's a mecha-centaur.
04:14As well-known as the actual fight against Xemnas was, these concepts are so staggeringly
04:18ambitious that I can't help but wish Square Enix could have at least tried to pull them
04:22off in some form.
04:23From the very first battle against Darkseid in the opening minutes of Kingdom Hearts,
04:26the franchise has had its fair share of colossal bosses.
04:29Hell, the recent Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer centred around Sora taking on yet another
04:34skyscraper-sized monster.
04:36But if Square Enix had managed to bring a centaur and King Xemnas to digital life, it's
04:40fair to say they would have dwarfed the competition.
04:436.
04:44The Harpy Boss God of War
04:46The very first God of War was a milestone in the PS2's life cycle.
04:50A ferocious, hyper-violent action-adventure game that breathed new life into the console
04:54and started another flagship franchise for the PlayStation.
04:58But it wasn't perfect.
04:59One of the game's most common criticisms was that, after kicking off with a spectacular
05:03battle against a Hydra, not the Half-Life 2 one, there was almost a complete lack of
05:07boss fights until the final clash against Ares.
05:10Had things gone to plan though, there would have been at least one more boss fight in
05:13the game.
05:14And it sounds like it would have been a doozy.
05:16Speaking in a behind-the-scenes video on Delete Your Levels, God of War creator David Jaffe
05:20mentioned the game's abandoned Harpy boss fight.
05:23This would have been a puzzle boss fight that would have involved Kratos using the Harpy-slaughtered
05:27young as bait, and the fight would have taken place over a large arena and provided more
05:32evidence that you were not playing as the hero in this story.
05:36Given how well God of War's trifecta of boss fights, the Hydra, Minotaur and Ares
05:40were executed though, it's safe to say that the Harpy would have provided one more memory
05:44for PS2 gamers to savour.
05:46Not that they're really lacking in that regard.
05:485.
05:49MetaCraid – Metroid Prime
05:51As great as Metroid Dread was, one of the best things about it was seeing Craid finally
05:55return to the Metroid franchise after a 27-year absence, and no, appearing in the background
06:01of a Smash Bros. stage does not count.
06:03However, if things had gone to plan during Metroid Prime's development, we could have
06:07fought everyone's favourite hungry reptile all the way back in 2003.
06:11Originally planned as a boss fight for the GameCube classic, Craid was cut due to time
06:15constraints.
06:16Jack Matthews, Metroid Prime's tech leader, would later reveal that Craid made it into
06:20a prototype stage, but the planned fight was unfeasibly large for the time limit the developers
06:25were working under.
06:26The battle would have involved multiple stages, moving platforms and, of course, finding a
06:30weak spot for massive damage.
06:33Given that Craid's partner in crime, MetaRidley, got not one, but two epic boss fights in the
06:37Metroid Prime series, it's a shame that it took so long for Nintendo to bring the
06:41fan-favourite dino-beast back to our screens.
06:44But as anyone who's played Metroid Dread will tell you, Scott Tilford included, it
06:48was definitely worth the wait.
06:504.
06:51Gojira – Fallout New Vegas
06:53There are three things you need to know about the name Gojira.
06:561.
06:57That it's the name of a French heavy metal band.
06:592.
07:00That it's the Japanese pronunciation of the original 1954 Godzilla movie.
07:03And 3.
07:04That Gojira was an absurdly overpowered mutant gecko from Fallout New Vegas who never made
07:09it into the final game.
07:10As was unearthed by fans in the game's code, Gojira is somewhat unique from the other entrants
07:15in this list, in that it was never actually intended to be in the game at all.
07:19Instead, it was created by animator Seth McCarthy for his own amusement, who enjoyed watching
07:23his creation lay waste to New Vegas' hapless NPCs.
07:26Still, it's a shame that no one on the development team ran with the concept.
07:31A kitschy Godzilla-spoofing questline would've fit right in with Fallout's 50s sci-fi
07:36gonna mock theme, and would've provided a great endgame challenge for completionists.
07:41Especially when you already have a dinosaur building in the game, you wanna see another
07:45giant destroy it.
07:46Come on!
07:47That's an open goal, surely.
07:493.
07:50Mecha – Alice Madness Returns
07:51Normally, when a developer removes content from a game, you can't really tell anything
07:55is missing.
07:56I mean, you could play all of Half-Life 2 and never realise that the Hydra was meant
08:00to be a significant part of the game, and Kingdom Hearts 2's Xemnas still felt like
08:04a complete boss even without transforming into a giant horse.
08:08That's not the case here though.
08:11Here, the editing department's trimming scissors actually left some embarrassingly ragged edges
08:15on display.
08:17Alice Madness Returns' Mecha was so obviously meant to be a proper boss.
08:21It arrives at the climax of the first world, is piloted by two of the game's primary
08:26antagonists, and is standing in the middle of an arena, ready and raring to go.
08:31But then, suddenly, a giant teapot falls from the sky and kills it dead.
08:36Game designer American McGee would later admit that the perennial game development bugbear
08:40of time constraints prevented Mecha from being a proper boss battle.
08:44This is particularly infuriating as Madness Returns was torn apart by reviewers at the
08:48time for its excessive length and repetitive level design.
08:52It was a classic case of the developer putting effort in all the wrong places, and it was
08:56boss fight lovers who suffered for the game's lack of direction here.
09:002.
09:01Doctor Octopus Marvel's Spider-Man
09:03Now I know, you might be thinking, Josh, I definitely fought Doctor Octopus at the end
09:07of Spider-Man, what the hell are you talking about, you scruffy haired mess?
09:11Hang on, the sequence you played wasn't actually the one that was originally planned.
09:17In 2021, Ted Price, Insomniac's CEO, said that the fight against Doctor Octopus was
09:21initially meant to be a cinematically spectacular knockdown brawl that would have covered all
09:27of New York.
09:28And while that certainly sounds bigger than what we ended up getting, which was a weirdly
09:31tame final brawl essentially in one building, Insomniac did have a very good reason for
09:37restraining their ambitions here, and that was to avoid crunch.
09:40Ted Price stated that if the fight had gone ahead as planned, Insomniac would have to
09:45force their developers to endure a hellish crunch session to make sure it was completed.
09:54So they definitely made the right call here in choosing the alternate boss fight over
09:58their employees' wellbeing.
10:001.
10:01The Elusive Man Mass Effect 3
10:03Mass Effect 3's ending has long gone down in history as one of the most frustratingly
10:07anticlimactic things in all of gaming, and one common complaint is the lack of a final
10:12boss battle.
10:13Indeed, the final enemy you face is the legendary Marauder Shields, a joke name referring to
10:18the bog-standard marauder with a shield gauge that you fight at the end.
10:23What's frustrating is that they were so close to a fan-pleasing battle, but no one
10:28on the development team actually realised it.
10:30So a little background here.
10:31Mass Effect 2 had a terrific villain in Harbinger, a baritone-voiced reaper who could take over
10:37his minions at will by uttering the instantly memed line, I am assuming direct control.
10:43So when concept art of the Elusive Man, Mass Effect's shadowy human villain, being controlled
10:48by a reaper appeared, we were all left wondering, why did nobody think to have Harbinger assume
10:54direct control over the Elusive Man?
10:57Instead of a boss fight with the dude though, the Elusive Man is taken down in a battle
11:00of words, putting a gun to his own head when the protagonist makes him realise the futility
11:05of his actions.
11:06And why do we end up with this?
11:08Well, apparently a final boss was deemed too video gamey, so instead we got nothing.
11:13So that's our list, I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
11:16What do you think about these alternate boss fights, or scrapped boss fights that we didn't
11:20see at all?
11:21While you let us know, could you also please give us a like, share, subscribe, and head
11:23over to wotculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
11:27Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see
11:30you soon.