Actually I'm almost always playing AOTCR on foot. But of course, you can have a fine old time with a Warthog here, doing splattering and letting the gunner do his stuff.

: There's a surprising number of
: kind of dead zones in the area (as a kid I always wanted to get up to
: where the wraiths are before heading inside with the tank.) I wonder if it
: relates to how they were reworking the mission through development and its
: connection to Two Betrayals (one of the YouTubers datamining the game
: found there was originally going to be aerial options throughout and some
: exploration of the pulse generator rooms.)

I was at least aware that at some point they had a Banshee in the entry chamber (i.e. the start of the level). In my early Halo days I used to have a Prima strategy guide which said: "Cover the door immediately and stop the Elite getting to the Banshee; it'll make your life easier." Presumably the writers were using some pre-release build.