I made the original pitch/prototype for Halo:Reach's space combat mission "The Long Night of Solace".
Might surprise people that we had to fight tooth and nail to keep space combat in Reach. Higherups at Bungie wanted to cut space combat (which wasn't unreasonable, since the feature/content requests were significant). In fact, there was originally TWO space combat mission planned in Reach. The second was to happen right before the last mission. Players would fly a Sabre into space, land on three disabled orbital cannons, and repair them. Once brought back online, players would return to the planet surface and then use the cannons to repel the covenant army closing in on the PoA. Destroying scarabs, covenant cruisers, etc using a 'large scale target locator' orbital cannons.
But then the mission was cut in an effort to ultimately cut space combat. It was a bitter pill for me, but budgets and resource constraints are no joke, so I (mostly) understood. Plan B: We added the boardable mac cannon at the end of the PoA mission and called it a day.
.. and then they let us keep the first space mission and ultimately we made it our E3 gameplay reveal 🥳
EDIT: The Halo mod community make such incredible content 🔥 I wish MS was able to create official Halo content that was half this cool.
Both times I've posted Halo Space Combat it's pulled over One Million Views.
Halo fans yearn for more than just a FPS game.