Documentation of all cut content from X-Men Legends II

[Enigma]

I update this whenever I find new things. Please let me know if I forgot anything or if you find anything to add to the list.
Check the post edit date see when I last updated this list.

Cut Playable Characters:
-The game's staff voted on who they wanted to be playable and that's who the went with.
-Polaris
-Cable was originally supposed to be playable in all versions. He was taking a lot of time to make and so was given to Vicarious Visions to make when the PSP version was started. There's still a skeleton for him in the PC version, featuring an idle animation and Colossus's Massive Strike animation, which is similar to his PSP Bionic Arm animation. He has unfinished unused icons in the PC version that are different from his PSP icons. One of his PC icons looks like his Psimitar. He has an unused Channel Rage callout and his other callout Psychic Slam, is different from what his only PSP Xtreme is named, Psychokinetic Slam.
-Dazzler was discussed, but no one seemed interested enough to make the push to making her playable. She still has a partial voiceset in the game. Her skeleton is still in the game. It contains 7 unique power animations and reuses Magma's XML1 character select menu animations. She was used as an NPC in the online missions, however.
-Blob has a partial playable voiceset including multiple respaffirms. He also has a character select portrait.
-Mystique has a partial playable voiceset including 1 respaffirm. She also has a character select portrait.
-The following characters have placeholder character select portraits, hinting that they might've been considered for making playable at one point: Avalanche, Blink, Banshee, Destiny, Forge, Magik, Moira MacTaggart, Shadowcat
-Gladiator - there's a set of icons for a character called "Gladiator" as well as coding in the exe for in-game banter with this character. The icons seem to suggest he would've used a staff that shot red energy beams. Whether this is the MUA1 Gladiator, or an XML1 Gladiator, or someone else entirely, is unknown.
-Most of the characters considered for being playable made it into at least 1 version of the game.
-The developers felt Magma and Emma would be issues (the director of the game said this but didn't explain why) They also didn't know what else to do with Emma's powers after XML1 and the developers weren't excited about making her.


Development Information:
-The game was made in 11 months, as that's all the time Activision gave them.
-Activision didn't like Age of Apocalypse as the focus for the game.
-Raven also considered Days of Future Past for the game.
-The subtitle "Dawn of Apocalypse" was considered.
-Quicksilver was picked for being captured by Apocalypse to give Magneto motivation to team up with the X-Men to fight him.
-Enchlore says: "They wanted to adapt Age of Apocalypse's alternate timeline but Marvel vetoed that. They could use elements of it, but only if they were integrated into the game's standard timeline. That's why Beast is turned evil instead of having an alternate Dark Beast, and the Horsemen are based on their AoA versions but integrated."

Cut NPC Stuff:
-Aurora was supposed to appear as an NPC but was cut.
-Avalanche was originally an NPC in Act 1. He was cut and replaced by Pyro. Avalanche would've filled the same role that Pyro does in the final game: you free him, he fights alongside you, then he goes to the hub.
-BaconWizard says: "The scene with Selene is so strange. The character that was originally supposed to be there is referred to by either Scarlett or Scarlet. Most of the references still point to this character. Scarlet could be Scarlet Witch, and Scarlett could possibly refer to Scarlett McKenzie, a character with a minor role in the 616 universe and a slightly more prominent role in the Age of Apocalypse (acting as a spy for the human council). The spelling is used very interchangeably, so it's hard to tell for sure."
-The Ultimate SHIELD agent costumes were planned to be used but were replaced with the classic 616 universe costumes instead. There is a cut unfinished conversation hud for this in the XML2 PC Demo.
-The Stepford Cuckoos have an unused 3d head that is a different design from their in-game skin.
-The Stepford Cuckoos reused Magik's conversation hud from XML1 but with glowing eyes added.
-Angel's conversation hud is based upon his unused XML1 loading screen.
-The following skins are in the game but were cut: some of Angel's cut XML1 skins, Beast's XML1 skins, Juggernaut's cut Gladiator costume, Toad's cut Gladiator costume, Multiple Man's cut Act 4 skin, and Forge's cut Act 4 skin.
-The following characters have unused character select portraits: Avalanche, Banshee, Blink, Blob, Destiny, Shadowcat, Moira, Forge, Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, Magik,
-Magneto, Mr. Sinister, Apocalypse, Emma Frost, and Polaris have different costumes in their cutscene models then they do for their in-game skins.
-The developers wanted a cameo by a real person. Either Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, or Jim Lee. Stan Lee was cut already cut from XML1 and didn't make it into this either (but he finally appeared in MUA2). The director of the game didn't elaborate, but most likely, Jack Kirby was dead and it seems very unlikely his estate would've okayed this. Jim Lee was working for DC at the time, so this was also would've been a no.
-Emma's cutscene model features a comic-accurate costume, but her in-game skin is completely different in almost every way.
-Polaris's cutscene model is very different from her in-game skin.
-There are unused 3d huds and conversation huds from pretty much every character and enemy, meaning there were once many more Danger Room skrimish playable characters planned.
-The Prelate enemy originally had a different design.
-The Sentry Droid was originally called Assassin Droid and had a much different design.
-The Jungle Behemoth enemy was originally called Behemoth and didn't metal armor.
-There would've been cut NPCs of Cyclops and Bishop at the Sanctuary hub.
-There were cut voiced lines in the Madri Temple and Abyss boss battle.
-There are statues feautring Egyptian skins for the 4 Horsemen. Considering the 4 Horsemen that are in the final battle with Apocalypse have different character numbers, perhaps they originally used those skins.
-Xavier has a different costume in the opening cutscene that he does in-game.
-Xavier was supposed to have a unique costume in the final cutscene, but this was replaced with a version of his in-game skin
-There's an unused unique conversation between Beast and Storm in the Sanctuary. The audio files aren't in XML2 but are included in the MUA1 audio files.
-The npcstat entries for the online only Nightclub Thugs enemy say they have unique powerstyle and sound files but those files don't actually exist.
-The following characters have empty or placeholder powerstyles: Emma Frost, Shadowcat,
-Optic Crawler has an unused mutated skin.
-Infinite Advanced Captains _b and _c have unused skins.
-Optic Crawler C and Infinite Advanced Captain C aren't used at all.
-3 enemies have Brood in the name: War Brood, Creeping Brood, and Brood Spawn. One of them is on a concept art page, also called Brood. The game only mentions the a new species called the Cerci, and treats the Brood enemies as just like Cerci, suggesting maybe the Brood were the original plan here.
-BaconWizard says "Looking at the files in the "work" folder for conversations and scripts done by "mpinkston", it seems that Angel was originally supposed to be who you did tasks for in New York rather than Shaw. I have no clue if that was just done as a placeholder though or if that was the original intention."
-Beast was originally his Astonishing design, as evident by his unused 3D head, unused loading screen, and the briefing hologram that still uses the full model.
-4 PSP loading screens for the 4 exclusive playable characters are leftover unused in the PC version's files.
-The Stepfords have an alternate unused design, which is used for their 3d Head. The design features a different costume and hairstyle.
-There are npcstat entries for the following unused Mikhail transformations: Cerci/Brood, Hellhound, Energy Demon, Marauder
-The Core Guard was originally supposed to use both the hammer and the axe.
-Omega Red would've had animated tentacle boltons at came in and out of his arms. They don't work very well in-game and clip through his model, which is probably why they were cut. This seems to me like a good idea that didn't really work in practice.

Other Cut Content and Oddities:
-There was a cut 2nd menu background with a statue of Apocalypse on a metal platform with metal arms around it, inside a metal cage, and with a cylinder with carvings of Apocalypse around that.
-In the ui\models folder is a file called "back_temp" and a file can be extracted from it called "backdrop test." This file is unused concept art of Apocalypse and some sort of ruin of a ship or building.
-There is an alternate version of Cyclops's lines in the intro when he tells Nightcrawler to get Xavier.
-There's a cut line of Cyclops saying in the prologue mission that they should split up. Enchlore says "I think Cyclops telling them to split up might have been cut once they added the option to choose your own starting team in hard mode."
-There was a codex menu like in XML1 that was cut.
-Originally, Deadpool would've been unlocked by Xavier after doing all of Shaw's quests
-Bishop's 1803 3D head was originally planned to be used in XML1, when he was going to be a playable character in that game before being cut.
-The XML2 trivia has a question about what Quicksilver's real name is. One of the wrong answers is "Charles Lehnsherr" which was the XML1 cut Act 4 son of Magneto and Emperor of Olympus.
-The following Danger Room maps are unused: Military Bunker, Egyptian Tomb, Genosha Lab Arena, Madri Library Arena, Dazzler's Nightclub Arena, Japanese Temple Arena, Savage Cave Arena
-The Danger Room Bastion missions use the single player map and the Danger Room Bastion Battle arena is unused.
-The following Danger Room maps are only used for online Danger Room missions: Genosha Lab Facility, Madri Temple Underground, Japanese Temple Cemetery, Savage Lands Caves,
-The following Danger Room map files were removed from the game entirely: dr_apoc1, dr_perimeter1,
-The following maps have zone_XXXX.igb files but the maps files themselves are missing and these maps aren't in the game: perimeter1, perimeter2, dr_mag03,
-Iron Man has 8 unused effects that do nothing.
-Xavier has 5 unused effects that appear to be placeholders that are just from other characters.
-Cannonball's has an unused Charge Xtreme callout.
-The N-Gage version has a unique Juggernaut conversation portrait that's his XML1/XML2 one recolored to match the color of his skin.
-Scarlet Witch was supposed to be in the Sanctuary hub but was moved to the Egypt hub.
-Iron Man's Concussive Overload Xreme was supposed to have unique effects for each of the 4 bolts that are shot out.
-Psylocke has a new set of psychic blade boltons in the game's files, despite her not being in the game.
-The game supports banter lines for the following characters, but they don't actually have them: Cable, Deadpool, Gladiator, Nightcrawler, Professor Xavier
-The following fightstyles aren't used: baton, gun_hip, gun_rifle and villain
-Every default character has unused effects files. Some of them have a lot of unused ones.
-The Game Informer article that showed off the game to the public for the first time, from issue #145 in May 2005, consistently says there are 16 playable characters, whereas in the final console versions, there are 15 and 3 bonus unlockable characters.

-That article also mentions online-only Danger Room stuff but only lists the game as coming out for PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and PSP, and only mentions online for PS2 and Xbox so it appears the online-online Danger Room stuff was originally for those 2 platforms and that the PC version was decided on after the PSP version was. The article also makes no mention of PSP exclusive content and even says they aren't doing comic flashback missions.
-The article also says the online only Danger Room had "exclusive items" but that's not the case. Except for the exclusive concept art, it just has reused items from the campaign.

-Cyclops's powers and passives are listed an article in the Game Informer #145 issue from May 2005 but there are some differences:
Auto Artillery was called Pylon Deploy (the model used for this power is called "cyclops_pylon")
Fusion Beam was called Radiation Beam.
Internal names for those powers still match the unused original names.
Flawless Tactics Xtreme is the only things not listed or mentioned, so it might have been added later.
The Visor Upgrade passive also isn't listed but is mentioned in the paragraph describing the list of powers.

-The Astonishing costumes were originally going to be the default costumes for the playable characters and Beast.
-Sabretooth would've used his Classic costumes. This was reused as an alternate costume for him in the PC version.
-The following characters had unused Astonishing cutscene models: Beast, Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine.
-Sabretooth has an unused Classic cutscene model.
-The Astonishing Cyclops cutscene model most likely reused for MUA1 cutscene where Dr. Doom defeats the heroes.

-There are 2 cut unique conversations at the Act 1 Sanctuary Hub: Storm and Beast (the audio isn't in XML2 but is leftover in MUA1), and Rogue and Magneto (no audio)

[Enigma]

Here is all we know about the XML3, which was in planning stages, but was scrapped and they made MUA1 instead:

*The story would have involved Mr. Sinister and Onslaught.
*Mr. Sinister's goal was to get Quicksilver's DNA, which, because he's Magento's son, would mean he'd have Magneto's DNA and he could use that to make Onslaught. That's what he wanted, so he didn't care about Apocalypse winning.
*The cut idea of XML1 of creating your own character would have come back and you would have different possible secret backstory that would have been revealed late in the game. One would have been you were created by Weapon-X. Another would have been Onslaught wins and Bishop brings you back in time to stop him. There maybe would have been a choice to be good or evil, which was repurposed into the side quests/epilogues in MUA1.
*This is as much as they had planned before they moved onto MUA1.
*They had already had Iron Man in XML2 and since Onslaught was a crossover in the comics with the Avengers and such, the developers talked about bringing more Avengers in.

[BaconWizard17]

There are several other bits of cut content scattered throughout the final build of XML2. Many are being re-implemented through the X2UP