If axe-happy George Osborne ever finds himself stuck for public services to shred, he could do worse than take inspiration from some of the more ruthless videogame developers. Irrational Games is our current score leader for the title of Most Masochistic - according to catlike boss-man Ken Levine, the developer has chopped away two whole games' worth of material from the upcoming Bioshock Infinite. Might want to give the NHS another once-over, George. You may have missed a bit.

As regards videogames, at least, stripping things out is all part of the growing process, but players are increasingly suspicious of the practice nonetheless, given publisher eagerness to repackage dropped levels, guns and characters as DLC - and individual developers are, accordingly, much more reluctant to discuss their leftovers than once they were. Fortunately, the eyes of the internet are many and penetrating, like the eyes of a cyborg spider. Here are six places you didn't go (or at least, have yet to go) in six of Xbox 360's bigger releases.

1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - "Cobra Pilot"

As we never tire of rehearsing, the original Modern Warfare broke the mould for Call of Duty, setting a new standard for tone, direction and online frenzy in a military FPS. But it could have gone further. The campaign was originally slated to include a mission that warped players to the cockpit of a Cobra helicopter, battling bogeys over what appears to be a Middle Eastern city. (Assets for the mission can still be prised loose via the PC version's SDK.) This wouldn't have been your standard mounted gun escapade, however, but the first ever Call of Duty vehicle mission to offer full manual control. A vision of the Battlefield 2 crossover we'll never, ever play, perhaps?



2. Dishonored - Lunatic Asylum

2012's greasy rewrite of Victorian London once included a trip to a madhouse, as Dishonored art director Sebastien Mitten revealed not long after release. "It is always sad when you have to cut features, ideas, concepts," he said, "but that's the nature of our role in this industry. As an artist you have to stay really agile and react positively for the sake of the project. In this case, we had to cut a mental institution which was haunted by some locals called Lunatics. I really liked the mechanics of those non-fighting guys who are really sensitive to sounds, and who drive the player into a corner, hooting when they've detected you." We assume the level was cut for budgetary reasons, rather than because they thought it wouldn't work, because Mitten's thumbnail sketch sounds very appealing.



3. Halo 3 - THE ENTIRE WORLD

Bungie's looking to reinvent console multiplayer with the forthcoming Destiny, which applies generous tactical gunplay redolent of Halo to a planet's worth of persistent environment. If the developer does manage to turn in an Xbox-friendly evolution of the troublesome MMO-shooter concept, we'll be over the moon - but our joy will be tempered by the knowledge that Bungie's tried this particular trick before. As revealed in the PAX presentation below, Halo 3 was once down to include "Global Battles".



It's not 100 per cent clear what this would have amounted to, in practice - tempting as it is to whinny excitably about Chromehounds-style territorial disputes, orbital insertion and ship-to-ground combat, the sprawling shoot-outs you see above could easily be roomy single player areas with extra-busy backdrops. Still, they look worth a play either way, and we're going to go ahead and glare reproachfully at our copies of Halo 3 till the content is re-added via DLC.

4. The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - Cyrodil

This isn't strictly an instance of cut content, but an on-going mystery. In the grim darkness of November 2011, somebody took a console-command-assisted jaunt beyond the boundaries of the Skyrim world map and discovered rough-and-ready models of Solstheim, Vvardenfell and Cyrodiil's Imperial City. The first two have become the basis for a DLC pack (though admittedly, Vvardenfell is never more than scenery), but Bethesda has yet to make an honest woman of Tamriel's ancient capital. Perhaps the rumoured Skyrim DLC pack Redguard will do the honours, assuming it doesn't take place in Hammerfell.



5. Bioshock - Rapture Zoo

Rapture's sizzling nexus of decadence Fort Frolic was supposed to include a menagerie. What we know about it is limited to the following Reddit aside from Levine. "That would have been awesome, but we ran out of time." The zoo is rumoured to have housed an elephant. Alas for the mid-boss battles that might have been...



6. Mass Effect 2 - Asteria

BioWare cut a number of planetary environments from Mass Effect 2, many of which are listed in the official game guide. Here's the scanner read-out from Mass Effect 3 (where the planet does appear) for one of them: "Arvuna, a moon of Dranen, is classified as a water world because oceans or ice cover 90% of its surface. Besides prodigious sea life, Arvuna is home to a host of venomous arthropodal pests in the tropical zone with metallic carapces similar to those found on Palaven to resist radiation coming from Dranen's magnetosphere. There are several well-shielded human colonies on Arvuna, although they are alienated from the Council and politically insignificant to the Traverse and Terminus Systems." You can get a closer look by way of the multiplayer map Firebase Hydra.



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