Halo: Campaign Evolved announced

Halo Studios (formally 343 Industries), at the Halo World Championship as promised has announced its next Halo Project.

Remaking the original, Halo: Campaign Evolved is a “full remake”, “built from the ground up” on Unreal Engine 5, featuring 4K visuals, some fresh story content and gameplay features.

Embedded below is the reveal trailer showing off the famous Silent Cartographer mission:

Excitingly, Halo Studios has also released a 13 minute gameplay demo embedded below:

From these videos it’s clear, at least for the Silent Cartographer but also the feel & vibe from weapons to music to vehicles to voice acting, Halo Studios is aiming for a faithful remake of the original Halo Combat Evolved. The effort being put into making this game feel next generation, especially graphically, doesn’t go unnoticed and feels like a response to the original reveal of Halo Infinite that seemingly led to its yearlong delay.

Whilst this game looks amazing (and simultaneously exactly how I remember it), and Halo Studios are saying all the right things, I can’t help but feel that trust but verify feeling after such a long time between drinks, regardless, visiting the game that started the franchise, feels right for various reasons including bringing new players on-board and giving Halo Studios time to understand what made us all fall in love with the universe to begin with.

Campaign Evolved features 4-player online co-op and on console, 2-player split screen. Some small changes have been tweaked to the maps and gameplay to support four players including an additional awesome little “seat” on the back of the Warthog:

For a deep dive into the game, this roundtable of Halo Studio Devs is a great watch:

There are a whole host of franchise features that weren’t in the original game that are being added for Campaign Evolved including weapons such as the Energy Sword, vehicles such as the Wraith (including the ability to hijack vehicles) and the introduction of the gameplay modifying Skulls (although Anniversary did add skulls, there are now more than any game has had). Spirt is also being added and can be observed in the extended gameplay demo. Improvements with enemies and AI behaviour were also discussed especially for the Flood where there were more significant changes in later games.

The evolved campaign preserves the original but with updated in-engine cinematics, graphics, UI, animation, wayfinding, level design alongside improved sound design, and new voice recording by the primary cast including Steve Downes and Jen Taylor (the voices of Master Chief and Cortana).

The biggest and most exciting addition in my opinion is three new prequel missions that will feature the one and only Sergeant Major Avery Junior Johnson. I think these three missions will really allow us to gage how Halo Studios is going as a studio when it comes to the progression of the Halo Franchise as a whole especially given they have confirmed multiple Halo Projects are in development.

Hit it, Marines! Go! Go! Go! The corps ain’t payin’ us by the hour!

Overall Halo Studios appears to be treating this remake with the respect it deserves but thankfully (and hopefully) we won’t have to wait too long to verify this as the game is releasing in 2026.