They call it “Halo”
The original Halo: Combat Evolved opens on the following shot of the Halo ring:
This is the first image in the series. In this moment we, the players, see the reason the game has its name. We understand that this is science fiction. We begin to wonder what this moon-like ring could possibly be, and we are wired into the mystery that propels the story.
The Pillar of Autumn soon emerges on the right. We are introduced to Cortana and Captain Keyes, the game’s two major supporting characters, as they concisely discuss relevant backstory. The cinematic soon seamlessly fades into the following first-person perspective, where we find ourselves in control of the camera.
We have never seen the Master Chief at this point, though we catch a glimpse of him on the cryosleep monitor, and anybody in 2001 would have seen his armor on the game’s cover. This is, nevertheless, our crucial introduction to who he is: from first person, we see his green armor. We’ll see the whole thing a few seconds later when he climbs out and the cutscene concludes.
Before you ever see the Master Chief’s helmet in Halo, you get to live inside it.
This small moment bridges interactive and non-interactive sequences as we enter the tutorial of Halo: Combat Evolved. It eases us into our new body. It shows us who we are. It is very cool and very memorable.
I love this cutscene. It is simple and compelling, and the dialogue is incredibly snappy. We understand the tone, the stakes, and the story by the end of its fourth minute. It is the best opening of any shooter ever made.
Halo: Campaign Evolved, the 2026 remake of the series’ original title, opens on the following shot of literally nothing:
After a moment of nothing, the camera pans, revealing a planet, and a moon:
This could be any planet and any moon. Nothing about either of them communicates any degree of mystery or alienness. They look quite similar to Jupiter and our moon, and thus not alien at all.
The Pillar of Autumn then emerges from slipspace. Though the planet and the moon have been on the left side of the frame, as in the original, the Pillar also appears from the left. Don’t worry: it’s still flying toward the planet. It’s just on the wrong side of the frame.
Have you noticed something missing from the opening of this Halo game so far?
The cutscene that follows does not show an establishing shot of the ring that the rest of the game will take place on. The fleeting glimpse of this little hula hoop on the screen below is the only hint we get that it exists at all. If you are like me, you will have missed it completely on your first playthrough:
We will not see the actual ring itself until the closing cutscene of this level, long after Captain Keyes has declared that he is going to land the Autumn on the “object we found.”
What object are you talking about, Captain? Oh, he means the Halo ring. The thing the developers forgot to show us. We were supposed to know it was there already.
As the first cutscene ends, having done nothing that it needed to do, this new version fades to white, and the player sees this:
Immediately. No view of your own body from first person. No slow emerging from your pod. That has been truncated to a shot of one of the Chief’s hands, then scooped into the end of the cinematic.
There is no bridge between gameplay and cutscene now. We are kicked out of the door of story and into the ocean of systems. The Master Chief is not shown in full until he speaks with Keyes on the bridge. This lets us live inside his helmet before seeing it, like the original, yet also forces us to play through the tutorial sequence without establishing who our character is.
The first shot is the most important part of the opening sequence. Without seeing the ring, nothing that follows makes sense. Why get to an escape pod? Where are we escaping to? I hadn’t played a single moment of this remake before I realized that everything about it would be terribly wrong. The only way that such a fundamental mistake as not establishing the Halo ring at the start of Halo could have been made was if the entire production had been rotten to its foundation.
Bad news had been flowing from Halo Studios for months. My friends and I had laughed at the fact that the new Needler, a weapon with a built-in ammo counter, now also had a digital ammo counter. We had mocked Halo Studios when they announced that the game would have sprint, but that it could just be turned off. We had cringed when we heard the new voice performances. No one expected great things from this remake.
I set an afternoon aside to beat it anyway. Microsoft only wanted $1 for two weeks of Game Pass. Wasn’t Halo worth $1?
Combat Re-Evolved
I have no interest in writing game reviews anymore. There are many problems with Campaign Evolved. They may pass you by if you are foolish enough to read games journalism, but you will discover them the moment you encounter discourse from non-bug people. The graphics are strangled by post-processing effects. The re-recorded performances, Jen Taylor’s in particular, are more grating than beeping energy shields. The new cutscenes are awkward and lifeless. The story changes don’t add anything to justify themselves; if you thought the survival of Linda and Sergeant Johnson would be explained, you can think again. Mostly there aren’t meaningful changes. It is just the game you remember, with new art and much worse acting and a button for sprint.
We could analyze the cadaver of this remake. There is so much to complain about. But who cares? You do not need to perform an autopsy on the victim of a plasma grenade.
The bad of Campaign Evolved is not what interests me. A lot of things are bad. The spoiled meat in my fridge today was bad, too, but I did not feel the need to write a review about it. Indeed, after working on my own game projects over the last three years, I now find it astonishing that anything is ever good at all.
What does interest me about Campaign Evolved is that it actually does have some genuine innovations. These are buried beneath many layers of Flood biomass, and the new narrative components in particular make them incredibly hard to appreciate. Yet I will take you on this Great Journey anyway.
The overall gameplay has not been improved, despite some refinements. Halo Studios did not understand the cadence of the animations in the original, and what they have replicated in their remake feels horrible. But the shooting itself is still Halo. The enemies fight and die like they should. The weapons are reasonably balanced, except in the laughable prequel missions, and the obvious changes to the Flood have been made: they can now be headshot, and they are no longer immune to melee.
This was the least that was required. But it is still more than I expected after there was no ring in the first cutscene.
What is better than the bare minimum are some of the redesigned levels. Consider “The Library.” Who can forget the endless labyrinthine corridors of “The Library” in the original game? This claustrophobic nightmare is effective for cultivating anxiety on a first playthrough. After that, it sucks. It was clearly a victim of rushed late dev-cycle crunch. It starts in an area that looks something like this:
And it ends in an area that looks something like this:
I have beaten Combat Evolved hundreds of times. This is the only level I skip.
Every mission in Campaign Evolved has received changes. Most seem to have been made without intention, like clearing away rocks in “The Silent Cartographer” to let the Warthog enter previously impassable areas. This was clearly not the case for “The Library.” Halo Studios knew that this was a level that was incredibly oppressive. They set out to fix it.
“The Library” now begins here:
We follow Guilty Spark downward through multiple elevators. This turns the level from a maze into a descent. The deeper we go, the more horrifying our new reality becomes.
Goopy Flood-floor blooms. Sphincters barf out enemies. There is a hint of what we will see later on in Halo 3, which was mostly absent in Combat Evolved. The areas are easy to navigate without the need for any arrows, and each section looks distinctive and interesting, like a video game level should. You will never get lost or bored.
There is even now a light bridge puzzle. Why is this here? I don’t know. But it adds some variety, and it forces the player to do something while fending off the Flood.
In the original game, you stood around while Guilty Spark disappeared. And then you did it again. And again. And again….
Halo fans are already at war with one another online arguing whether this new “The Library” is too much of a departure from the old. Some say it is too bright and that the hideousness of the original was the point. I think it looks fine. It is spooky and atmospheric. But unless you are simply against all changes, I do not know how you could say that its overall impression is not a vast improvement.
And if you are against all changes, why are you playing a remake?
I can list many things about Campaign Evolved that I think have been devolved. This level is certainly not one of them. Halo Studios actually made “The Library” fun to play.
But it isn’t just “The Library.” Taking the series’ worst level and improving it was probably not a tremendous challenge. But they also managed to improve the best level in all of video game history.
The new Warthog Run is phenomenal. No longer does the Master Chief feel as though he has been transported into a pocket dimension inside the Pillar of Autumn’s spine. For the first time you will feel like you are really driving through the intestines of a crashed ship.
You will now have to turn…
…and you can now see the sky…
…and there is variety, where before there was a long, long cylinder. The new Warthog is powerful and accelerates quickly. There are fewer hangar sections, and the frustrating speed bumps have been made easier to navigate. The Banshees that kill Foehammer are set up, though I missed them on my first playthrough, and everything feels so much more real.
I cannot count how many times my friends and I played the Warthog Run as children. This is my favorite part of any game that will ever be made.
It was improved.
At least, so long as you ignore the uncanniness of Cortana sabotaging her own performance. I think Jen Taylor may be sick of playing this role.
These improvements come to spaces. Areas that suffered from the original game’s limited budget, hardware capabilities, and dev time have been enhanced. “The Library” and “The Maw” were both levels that could be improved in a map editor, and they were. This is what we should have wanted.
The rest of Combat Evolved could not be improved in a map editor. Thus the rest of the game was not improved. The result is a highly uneven remake. Where there was clear intentionality, where some specific flaw like the layout of “The Library” or the unmeleeability of the Flood was identified, specific changes were made for the better. But mostly there was no intentionality. Sprint was added because games are meant to have sprint. The Needler received an ammo counter because guns should have ammo counters. The best levels, like “The Silent Cartographer,” were made worse, because there was nothing to fix.
Halo: Campaign Evolved could have been good. This ancient game I love is not perfect. It could have used a real remake. In two or three places, with the sound off, in the dark, Campaign Evolved is that remake.
But it is not otherwise. And you really only need to look at the first second of the first cutscene of the game to see why.