Hello guys,
seeing the new strat to get the early Banhsee on AOTCR reminded me of a trick I found in Halo (the level) about a year ago.

At the very begining of the level I managed to get one of the two banhees which appear when you go across the bridge above the water falling of the map near the start.

This happened by running directly up the hill where you meet the first group of enemys. At the moment when the two Banhees lost sight of me and started flying away above the mountains (I guess they always fly in a straight line to some point out of sight), one of the Banshees crashed into to the wall above me and the pilot was ejected, too. Than, the Banshee feel down and I could crab it.

I'm not sure if there is any consistent way to make this happen (I couldn't do it again). But, however, it should save some time.

Unfortunately, I don't usually record my playing. Therefore, I can't show how it happened exactly. But, maybe, the idea of this being possible will help others.

Greetings
Joan

Re-read your post and saw you mention you could grab it, can you confirm that you were able to enter and fly it? I'm fairly sure that the banshees on Halo are specifically made to not by flyable by players.
Good idea though!

Thanks you for your reply... I should have written that clearer, sorry... I didn't get to try to enter the Banhsee because I died trying to get there.

However, the Banshee certainly wasn't damaged (I definitly saw the pilot fall out and the Banshee fall down undamaged). And the Banhsee landed in an accesseble spot. I don't know what would have happened, if I would have tried to fly it.

But if Banshees aren't flyable in this level, that's it.... :( Would be cool though!

As savu said, even without pilots, banshees on the second level are not flyable.

Yeah, I've shot the Elite out of a banshee on the second level before and I can confirm it wasn't flyable

@blahpy I'd be surprised if you shot a pilot out, because I don't think it's possible. In situations where I've had a Banshee stuck, I've been able to take careful shots at all visible part of the pilot, but none of them have ever got through to him.

@JoandeLux I had one case many years ago where one of those pilots fell out, though I didn't see it. It was a big novelty to have an empty Banshee, but sadly there was no boarding prompt. Since then I've had lots of empty Banshees in the second half (many ejection incidents are shown in my movies), but those don't give a boarding prompt either. So it looks like we're out of luck!

How unfortunate... I really hoped it would work. Would have been cool!

@Rockslider Sorry for the late reply, I have. I believe someone (Mono?) said it's only possible on Normal difficulty or something really odd like that, though. Obviously I can't make you believe me but I know for sure it's possible because I've done it lol (I've never been able to reproduce it, though).

Excuse the almighty thread bump, but I thought I'd mention my latest movie BCM203. The pilot of one of the early Banshees falls out, but it's unboardable as expected. This was actually on April 25th, the day after I was last in the thread, so I'm pretty sure it was the thread which made me go messing around. Here's the YouTube link, or here's the HBO link where you can watch in better quality.

@blahpy Only on Normal or something? Ok I'll bear it in mind, though it would help to have a more definite declaration.

Using the medusa cheat in custom edition kills the pilots, but not the banshee(I tested on the obviously pilotable one on aotcr). The banshees on Halo are unpilotable, as are all banshees that are enemy driven on tb(this was fun to test as it was actually before I knew about the cheating, was a good waste of an hour).

Medusa cheat eh? Handy. Hadn't heard of it, but I looked it up.

@blahpy I may've solved the mystery about shooting a pilot out. Bottom line is, the game could've misled you. Check out my latest movie BCM204 (pilot shooting is mentioned around 4:37), and also the end of my related article Departure death anomaly.

@JoandeLux What you saw was very likely a 'departure death' (assuming the pilot died). In the movie just mentioned, you'll see events which I expect are very similar to what you saw before.

I'm really late to the party but that is probably it! Thank you for solving this mystery.