Depending on how you count it, Halo: Campaign Evolved is (at least) the third major re-release of the first Halo game. So why is publisher Xbox Game Studios returning to the well yet again? According to a wide-ranging interview with key members of developer Halo Studios, the short answer is that Halo is coming to PlayStation for the first time, and that the first game in the series is the natural starting point to onboard new players.
The longer, more nuanced answer is that, done correctly, Halo: Campaign Evolved could set the pace for the future of Halo. It’s a chance not just to modernize a classic, but to correct the shortcomings of the 2011 remaster, and to establish a new method for producing Halo games. Again, if done correctly.
Out in 2026 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, Halo: Campaign Evolved is the latest remake of Bungie’s 2001 shooter Halo: Combat Evolved. It’s being made from the ground up entirely in Unreal Engine 5, unlike previous Halo games, which have been developed with proprietary game development software. It won’t launch with a multiplayer component, but it will support co-op (two players on the couch, or up to four players online). There are a number of other changes, ranging from the inclusion of a sprint mechanic to the addition of three brand-new missions. But the biggest change is arguably the PlayStation thing.
“We have a really important milestone ahead of us, the 25th anniversary of Halo. And again, what better place to start our journey for new players and for veterans alike,” Damon Conn, executive producer of Halo: Campaign Evolved, told Polygon in a group interview conducted at Halo Studios this month. “[It’s the] largest audience that will ever have played a game at the same time with this first story that started at all.”
Halo: Combat Evolved, of course, has been around the block. Its 2001 release established Halo as a de facto Xbox mascot, and led to a 2003 port for Windows PC. Following Bungie’s split from Microsoft, then-nascent studio 343 Industries released a remastered version, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, for the Xbox 360 in 2011. That version of the game was included as part of 2014’s Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One. Over the years, players have had plenty of chances to play the first Halo game. The latest version has to present something at least a little bit different to stand out.
“The game itself is rebuilt. It’s remade in Unreal 5. It’s modernized,” Conn said. “We’ve done everything we can to make sure that we preserve the heart of Halo as we rebuild and retouch everything. The tone, the atmosphere, and the emotional impact of the original is preserved with what we’re building.”
“Every asset has been touched or modified or reviewed in some way as we brought it forward,” game director Greg Hermann added, noting that Campaign Evolved will also feature re-recorded voice lines from key actors like Master Chief’s Steve Downes and Cortana’s Jen Taylor.
It’s a tricky balancing act. Don’t change enough, and it’s just another re-release of a game that’s been released many times (see above). Change too much, and you alienate longtime fans. I played a portion of the game’s fourth level, “The Silent Cartographer,” as part of a demo for Halo: Campaign Evolved. While it’s an immediate aesthetic and tonal achievement, some of the newer features, like an optional sprint mechanic, make clear this isn’t just the 2001 (or 2003, or 2011, or 2014) version of the game.
“We’re really looking at, How do we preserve the feel of the gameplay? The way you play through the game? … And then also, What do you naturally do when you pick up that controller in terms of how you play this game?” creative director Max Szlagor said. “The sprint is available for you there if you want it. You can disable it if you don’t. But we’re thinking about it in the context of … what organically fits together in terms of modern Halo player expectations, and how you play this game originally, and then thinking about it — ensuring that the pacing, the encounters, and the objectives all work within the framework of what we’re doing.”
Based on what I played, “The Silent Cartographer” is a geographically one-to-one recreation of its original iteration. Structures are architecturally identical. Enemies are in the same positions. In tighter spaces, the addition of a sprint function is barely noticeable, but in some of the more open areas, it allows you to just… run around some encounters (on Normal and Heroic difficulties, at least).
“We definitely want to make sure that you’re still working through the same objectives, the same encounter spaces, that we can maintain a sense of the encounter pacing and things like that,” Szlagor said. “So with things like sprint, with things like the four-player co-op, it is thinking about the spaces and how you can move through them. We want it to feel like you can get through these spaces.”
Moving to new game development technology allows Halo Studios to rethink not just the original Halo but potential future Halo games as well. The previous game in the series, 2021’s Halo Infinite, was developed on the proprietary Slipspace Engine, which itself was built on technology dating back to the Bungie days. In announcing the studio’s 2024 rebrand, from 343 Industries to Halo Studios, developers pointed to the aging tech as one of the reasons Halo games took so much time to create.
Speaking to Polygon, Conn acknowledged that maintaining the Slipspace Engine while trying to develop Halo games was like trying to build a ship while also trying to build the tools necessary for building that ship. If moving to an industry-standard engine like Unreal minimizes some friction in developing Halo: Campaign Evolved, then the same process could, in theory, be applied to development of future Halo games.
“The goal of moving to Unreal for us is to allow us to focus a whole lot more on the process of making games,” Hermann said. “When we were working with Slipspace, we were kind of a combination studio, an engine studio and a game studio, and over time it just became a lot more natural for us to say, OK, our real focus needs to be in this space and to rely on other folks, like Epic, to provide us with more of that engine side of things. That said, it is really important for us to maintain that authentic experience and Halo feel as we move on to Unreal.”
In many ways, Halo: Campaign Evolved does fundamentally feel like a Halo game. The floaty jump is still there. The heft of the magnum pistol is still there. Moving from one engine to another did not strip the Halo out of Halo, as some fans catastrophized, but it did result in some compromises. Halo games, particularly Halo: Combat Evolved, have long been championed for wonky, almost comedic physics systems. In the original game, for instance, you could string together a bunch of grenades to create massive chain-reaction explosions. Szlagor said they’re still working on replicating that.
“The original Halo: CE physics system was entirely custom and it was not something that the Halo engines had really passed down. We mostly relied on Havok [a popular physics engine] or Havok-based physics. So some of those behaviors are really very challenging to replicate,” Hermann said. “Exactly how that will manifest? I’m not entirely sure, in the final product, for some of those. I do actually really look forward to seeing how the speedrunners engage …because I think we’ll all find out a whole lot more about the game we built when that happens.”
