The Evolution of Halo: A Revolutionary Gaming Franchise

Halo: Combat Evolved is a 2001 first-person shooter game that was created by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox console. The game came out on November 15, 2001, but it wasn’t until 2003 that people could also play it on Windows computers and Macs. Later, in 2007, players with older consoles like the Xbox 360 could download Halo: Combat Evolved. This game is set in the future, more than 2,000 years from now, where you control Master Chief, a very strong and high-tech soldier who has been transformed into a machine with special powers. Master Chief isn’t alone; he has an artificial intelligence companion named Cortana to help him on his quest. As they fight against bad aliens, they want to figure out what’s going on with the Halo ring-shaped planet that was created by these aliens, a very advanced and artificial world.

In 1997, Bungie started working on what would eventually become Halo. At first, it was supposed to be a real-time strategy game, but later became a third-person shooter before finally becoming a first-person shooter. When Bungie was bought by Microsoft, the company decided to turn Halo into the main game for their new video game console, the Xbox. As a result, Halo turned out to be very successful and is often considered one of the best games ever made. Because it was so popular, other games were compared to Halo or were predicted to be even better, with labels like “Halo clone” and “Halo killer”. A sequel, Halo 2, came out for the Xbox in 2004 and created a massive multimedia franchise that includes not just video games but also books, toys, and movies.

By November 2005, over six million copies of the game had been sold globally. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of its initial release, a special edition called Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was created and released on Xbox 360 by a company called 343 Industries in 2011. This Anniversary version was later bundled with the original multiplayer mode as part of another collection called Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which came out in 2014.

Gameplay The Master Chief takes aim with his assault rifle at a group of enemy Grunts, which are displayed on the screen’s corners as icons for ammunition, health, and motion sensors.
Halo: Combat Evolved is a first-person shooter game where players spend most of their time exploring a 3D world from a unique perspective. The player can move around freely in any direction and look up or down to see more of their surroundings. The game includes vehicles like big armored trucks and tanks, as well as weird flying things that are often under the control of the player. When these vehicles are being used by pilots or gun operators who sit on top, the camera view changes to a third-person perspective. Meanwhile, people sitting inside those vehicles keep seeing everything in first-person view. The game’s special display shows where things like friends and enemies are moving around within a certain area around you.

The player has a special protective barrier that stops enemy attacks from causing harm. A blue bar in the corner of their screen shows how much power the shield still has, and it automatically starts to fill up again if nothing bad happens for a little while. If the shield runs out of energy, the player becomes very weak and gets hurt more easily. The longer they get hurt, the lower their health points go down. When their health reaches zero, the character dies and the game starts all over from a saved spot. Health can be restored by collecting special packs with extra health that players can find around the levels.

Halo’s weapons are mainly science fiction-based. The game has gotten a lot of praise for making each weapon special in its own way, so it can be useful in different situations. For instance, firing a charged plasma pistol at an enemy can completely drain their energy shield when the pistol is one of only two guns that can instantly kill with a head shot – as long as there’s no shield to block it. Because players can only carry two weapons at once, they have to think carefully about which ones to use and when, making it important for players to make smart choices about their firepower.

Halo breaks away from standard first-person shooter rules by allowing players to use their gun and other attacks at the same time. This means they can fire their gun and then throw a grenade or punch an enemy without having to stop first. The game has two kinds of grenades that work differently: one explodes quickly when it hits something, while the other sticks to things before blowing up.

The main enemy group in the game is called the Covenant, made up of different alien species that share a common faith. Their forces include the Elites, who are strong warriors protected by special energy shields similar to those used by the player; Grunts, which are small, weak creatures that usually follow an Elite leader and run away when they don’t have one; Jackals, who wear a powerful shield on one arm and carry a plasma gun in the other; and Hunters, large, heavy creatures with thick armor plates covering most of their bodies and a big gun that fires green plasma blasts. Another enemy is the Flood, a kind of alien parasite that appears later in the game in different forms. There’s also the Sentinels, robots designed by an old civilization called the Forerunners to protect their buildings and stop the Flood from spreading. The Sentinels can fly around inside spaces and create a shield when they’re attacked, but they don’t have much protection and use powerful laser guns instead.

The player usually gets help from United Nations Space Command Marines and the ship’s crew, who provide ground support by following the player, copying their moves, and operating gun turrets or riding in vehicles while the player drives.

The computer-controlled Marines and crew members can be told apart because of what they wear, but they also act differently. The Marines are very aggressive and tend to rush forward, while the crew members often hide behind cover or fire back while retreating. However, if the player kills too many crew members, they might start fighting against the player instead, trying to take them out.

A special multi-player mode lets two players work together in the campaign of Halo. The game includes five team-based modes that can be changed, to fit for a small group of people and a big group, ranging from 2 to 16 players; on one Xbox, up to four players can play side by side, while more players can join using a special connection method called System Link that lets up to four Xbox consoles connect together in the same room. Unlike some other games, Halo doesn’t have computer-controlled opponents, and it came out before an online multiplayer system was available; this means that many people had to meet in person at LAN parties to play with more than 4 players – a first for a video game console, but something that critics thought was hard to set up. Despite this limitation, the multi-player parts of Halo were well-liked by players, and it is now considered one of the best multi-player games ever made.

Even though the Xbox version of Halo doesn’t have official support for playing with others online, some third-party software can help people find workarounds to this problem. On the other hand, when you play Halo on your computer or Mac, it’s possible to play games with up to 16 players and use multiplayer maps – something that wasn’t available in the Xbox version. However, a feature called co-operative play was removed from these versions because it would require a lot of extra coding to make it work. In April 2014, it was announced that GameSpy’s servers, which Halo PC relied on for online matches, were going to be shut down by May 31 of the same year. A group of fans and Bungie employees came up with a plan to create a patch to keep the game’s multiplayer servers running after that. The patch was released on May 16, 2014.

The game Halo: Combat Evolved takes place in a futuristic setting where humans have traveled to other planets using special technology called slip-space travel. The planet Reach serves as an important center for science and military activities. A secret program, led by the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), creates super-soldiers called Spartans who are trained to fight against enemy aliens. Over 20 years before the start of the game, a group of advanced alien species known as the Covenant begins a war against humans, calling them an affront to their gods. Humans suffer many defeats in this war; although the Spartans are good at fighting the Covenant, there aren’t enough of them to win. In 2552, the Covenant attacks Reach and destroys the human colony. The spaceship Pillar of Autumn escapes with a group of Spartans, including Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 on board. The ship uses its special technology to jump into slip-space, hoping to confuse the enemy and protect Earth.

The game begins when the Pillar of Autumn exits slip-space and discovers a huge ring-shaped structure that nobody knows anything about. The Covenant quickly finds out and attacks the ship. With the ship badly damaged, the captain orders his computer, Cortana, to help Master Chief stop the Covenant from finding Earth. The captain tells everyone to leave the ship and crash-land on the ringworld so they can escape.

On the surface of the ring, Master Chief and Cortana work together to save survivors and plan a counterattack against the Covenant. They soon learn that Captain Keyes has been taken captive by the Covenant, so they lead a small group of soldiers on a mission to rescue him from the Covenant ship Truth and Reconciliation. Once rescued, Keyes shares crucial information about the Covenant’s plans for the ringworld, which they call “Halo”. According to Keyes, Halo is seen as a powerful weapon by the Covenant, and he decides to search for any hidden military supplies. Meanwhile, Master Chief and Cortana launch an attack on the control center of the ringworld. Cortana then hacks into the computer systems of Halo and discovers something extremely disturbing. In response, she sends Master Chief on a new mission to stop Keyes from continuing his search for supplies and uncovering secrets about the ring before it’s too late.

Master Chief searches for the captain when he meets a new enemy – the parasitic Flood. The Flood’s arrival triggers Halo’s guardian, an AI named 343 Guilty Spark, to ask for Master Chief’s help in defending the ring. When Master Chief gets the ring’s activation code, 343 Guilty Spark takes him back to the control room. However, just as Master Chief is about to activate the ring, Cortana stops him. She had figured out that the ring was designed to wipe out all intelligent life in the galaxy, which would leave no more hosts for the Flood to feed on. When Cortana refuses to give up Halo’s secrets, 343 Guilty Spark becomes angry and attacks both her and Master Chief.

To prevent Halo from coming online, Master Chief and Cortana decide to shut it down by destroying the installation. They need Keyes’ neural implants to take out the Pillar of Autumn and Halo at the same time, so Master Chief heads back to the Truth and Reconciliation. When he arrives, he finds that Keyes has been taken over by the Flood, and he gets the neural implant from the captain’s body. After 343 Guilty Spark tries to stop them from using the Pillar of Autumn as a target, Master Chief and Cortana instead mess with its reactors, narrowly avoiding a huge explosion in their fighter plane. Cortana explains that destroying the Covenant fleet will end the Flood threat and she thinks they’ve won, but Master Chief disagrees, saying it’s just beginning. In a post-credits scene, 343 Guilty Spark is seen floating away in space, having survived the destruction of the ring.

Halo’s creation was inspired by Bungie’s previous first-person shooter games, Marathon and Marathon 2: Durandal. After releasing Durandal in 1995, the team started thinking about their next game and wanted to try something different from a direct sequel. One idea they explored was a new type of first-person shooter that would be similar to Quake. At the same time, they were working on a vehicle combat game with tank battles set in a futuristic world, code-named “The Giant Bloody War Game”. The team’s lead designer, Jason Jones, created a 3D engine that could show hills and mountains using special graphics. He suggested using this technology to create the vehicle fight part of the game. Everyone was excited about this idea and decided to drop their first-person shooter project to focus on “The Giant Bloody War Game”. However, Jones had trouble making the vehicles in the game move realistically, which made Bungie change its mind again. This time, they created a real-time strategy game called Myth: The Fallen Lords, released in 1997.

Around the same time, Bungie had about 15 employees working in south Chicago, Illinois. Once Myth was finished and they decided to make a sequel, Jones assigned the development work to other designers at the company and went back to work on technology that hadn’t been applied to the 1997 game yet. A team of three Bungie staff members started creating a real-time strategy game set in science fiction, with realistic physics and three-dimensional terrain. Initially, they used the Myth engine and an isometric perspective. The project had an early title called Armor, but it was changed because it sounded boring and the game had undergone significant changes from its initial concept. It was later renamed Monkey Nuts, then Blam! after Jones couldn’t bring himself to tell his mom about the original name. To make controlling units more interesting, Bungie added a feature where the camera attached to individual units, moving closer as the developers realized it would be more enjoyable for players to drive the vehicles themselves rather than relying on the computer. “It was like this shouldn’t be an RTS game,” said Seropian. By mid-1998, the game had transformed into a third-person shooter.

In his new role as executive vice president, Peter Tamte used his connections from his time at Apple to arrange meetings for lead writer Joseph Staten and project lead Jason Jones with Bungie’s CEO, Steve Jobs. When he met with them, Jobs was very pleased and agreed that they should show their game to the world at the Macworld Conference & Expo in 1999. Before the game was officially announced, industry journalists who had seen it at a private event called the Electronic Entertainment Expo 1999 were talking excitedly about it to anyone who would listen.

Before the big announcement at Macworld, Blam! didn’t have an official name yet; some possible names were The Santa Machine, Solipsis, The Crystal Palace, Hard Vacuum, Star Maker, or Star Shield. Bungie hired a branding company that came up with the name Covenant, but artist Paul Russell suggested some other ideas, like Halo. Some people weren’t happy with the name – they thought it sounded too serious or personal care-related – but designer Marcus Lehto said, “The name captured the essence of what we wanted for this world in a way that sparked curiosity.” On July 21, 1999, at the Macworld Conference & Expo, Steve Jobs revealed that Halo would be released on both MacOS and Windows computers.

The story behind the game centered around a spaceship that carrying humans crashed onto an unexplained ring-shaped planet. The Covenant, early versions of which arrived on the scene, saw the opportunity to plunder what they could and war broke out between them and the humans. Since the technologically advanced alien species was too much for the humans to handle, they had to resort to hit-and-run tactics. At this point in development, Bungie hinted at an open-world game that would react and change shape after explosions, feature detailed environments with real effects, and have varied weather conditions – all of which were eventually cut from the final version. Initially, these early versions included creatures unique to Halo, but they were later scrapped due to design issues and their impact on the surprise appearance of the Flood. The main character, known only as the cyborg, was still a third-person shooter when it debuted at E3 in June 2000.

Bungie’s financial situation was unstable during Halo’s development. Before releasing Myth II: Soulblighter, the company relied on sales from Myth and had missed several release dates due to technical issues. A bug in Myth II that destroyed files caused by the game’s installation only surfaced after 200,000 copies were already made for its December 1998 launch. To fix this problem, Bungie recalled and reissued the affected copies at a cost of $800,000. This setback led to the company selling part of itself and its publishing rights to Take-Two Interactive. Despite facing financial difficulties, Peter Tamte contacted Ed Fries, the head of Microsoft Game Studios, about potentially merging with them. Fries was in charge of designing software for Microsoft’s first gaming console, Xbox. He negotiated a deal between Take-Two and Microsoft that allowed Microsoft to acquire Bungie and gain control over Halo, while Take-Two retained ownership of Myth and Oni properties. The rest of the team at Bungie presented this option as their chance to shape the future of a new game console. Microsoft officially announced its acquisition of Bungie on June 19, 2000, with Halo set to be the main attraction for Xbox’s launch.

Within less than a year, Bungie had to transform Halo into a fully developed product on an uncertain console. To create a more immersive experience for players, Jason Jones advocated for switching the game’s perspective from third-person to first-person view. A significant challenge was ensuring that the game performed smoothly on the Xbox controller, as first-person shooters on consoles were relatively rare at that time. Led by designer Jaime Griesemer, a team worked tirelessly to create code that could accurately detect the player’s intentions and assist with movement and aiming without being too obvious. The game used buffering to delay player inputs, resulting in smooth player movement rather than what was actually being inputted.

Other projects that Bungie had in the works were canceled as they rushed to finish Halo. The people working on it took over some other teams that used to be with Bungie. Griesemer explained that after his team moved to their new office in Redmond, Washington, he was extremely busy and didn’t unpack all his stuff for six whole months. At the office, the designers started creating a small area of the game on their own computers, just to experiment and test ideas. This small part of the game showed them how fun it could be to play, and they were so excited that they decided to use it as the fourth mission, called “The Silent Cartographer”.

To create its release date, Bungie made significant changes to the game’s features and scope. The open-world plan was completely canceled, and it became clear that the lengthy planned campaign wouldn’t work out. One level was removed and replaced with an explanatory cutscene. Staten described his role as filling in gaps in the story with “duct tape.” To save time, Lehto suggested using pre-made levels for the campaign; to help players navigate, glowing arrows were added after testing showed they got lost. Microsoft writers Eric Trautmann and Brannon Boren also rewrote the script just before the game’s launch. Because Xbox Live was not ready, an online multiplayer component was dropped. Just a few months before release, it became clear that the multiplayer wasn’t fun, so it was rebuilt from scratch using team members who moved to Bungie West after completing Oni.

Bungie’s company culture and tight deadline made sure everyone contributed ideas across different departments. When designing levels, designers had to work together with artists who created the environments players explored. Initially, only Robert McLees and Lehto worked on what would become Halo. Later, Shi Kai Wang joined as an artist to improve Lehto’s designs. The alien enemies in the Covenant started out differently designed, but were changed once their roles in gameplay were finalized.

Design
Bungie’s social culture and the pressure to finish the game made team members share feedback and ideas across disciplines. Level design required collaboration between designers and artists. Initially, only McLees and Lehto worked on Halo’s visual aspects.

Led by Paul Russell, the game’s visual design evolved to match the changing gameplay and storyline. The artists made deliberate choices to make each faction stand out through their unique architecture, technology, and weapons. The original UNSC design was modified to be more blocky in order to differentiate it from the Covenant, while human-made objects were kept simple and projectile-based to contrast with the Covenant’s high-tech energy guns. Even vehicles like the Warthog took inspiration from off-road adventures. Interior spaces on the Pillar of Autumn drew inspiration from film production design, especially from the movie Aliens. This style featured smooth curves in shades of green and purple for the Covenant, while the Forerunner was defined by its angular structures. The original design also incorporated Aztec patterns and Louis Sullivan’s work before being refined just months before the game’s release.

The music for Halo was composed by Martin O’Donnell and his company TotalAudio. They were tasked with creating a score that would evoke an air of ancient mystery. O’Donnell decided to use Gregorian chant, which he performed with his co-composer Michael Salvatori and other singers. To accommodate the unknown length of the music piece, O’Donnell created flexible opening and closing sections that could be expanded or cut as needed. This allowed him to create a rhythmic middle section. The music was recorded in Chicago and sent to New York on the same night it was completed for its debut performance at MacWorld.

Right before Microsoft bought Bungie, O’Donnell joined the team as an employee while Salvatori stayed with TotalAudio.[citation needed] To make the music interesting and dynamic, O’Donnell designed it to be broken down into smaller parts that could be mixed and matched in different ways. He created special middle sections that could be easily swapped out if needed, so the game’s intensity could change from one part to another. O’Donnell worked closely with the level designers to create music that would respond to the gameplay, rather than being static. “The designer told me what he wanted a player to feel at certain points or after completing tasks,” and based on that information, O’Donnell created cues that could be programmed into the game’s levels. Together, they played through the missions to test the music and make sure it worked well. O’Donnell believed in using music sparingly because he thought it was most effective when used to boost a player’s emotions and create a strong impact. He avoided having music play constantly, as this made it lose its effect and become like background noise. Unfortunately, the cutscenes were developed so late that O’Donnell had only three days to score them.

Ed Fries explained that the time before the Xbox’s launch was extremely stressful; “It was like being in a mix of extreme anxiety and high-energy situations, but we also had unlimited budgets,” he said. The team spent lots of money trying to accomplish many ambitious tasks. However, after several planned partnerships with Steven Spielberg’s movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence fell through, it became clear that Halo would have to be the main attraction for the Xbox console.

Halo’s first release was well-received, but its new home on an untested Xbox console made things cooler for critics than they were before.: 16  Although there was a playable demo of the game at Gamestock 2001 that got great feedback, critics had mixed opinions about showing it off at E3 2001. When they did, the gameplay looked very rough with slow frames and technical problems.: 17 Even within Microsoft, Halo sparked disagreements. After Bungie refused to change the name of the game to please marketing experts, a subtitle called “Combat Evolved” was added to make it sound more interesting and compete better with other military-themed games. A top official recalled that some analysts had suggested that Halo’s colors were not the right fit compared to other console games; however, this evidence was never shared with Bungie.

The game’s release date in North America matched that of the Xbox console, which occurred on November 15, 2001.

Halo: The Fall of Reach was published before Halo: Combat Evolved. Author Eric S. Nylund wrote the book in just seven weeks. However, things looked grim when Nylund almost gave up halfway through writing it; he thanks Trautmann for helping save it. The novel became a huge success and sold nearly 200,000 copies, making it a bestseller according to Publishers Weekly. A year later, the game would be turned into a book titled Halo: The Flood, which was written by William C. Dietz.

On July 12, 2002, Gearbox Software started working on a Halo version for Windows computers. When it showed up at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2003, some people liked it while others were unsure. It came out on September 30, 2003, and included features like online multiplayer and better graphics. However, some players experienced problems with the game running smoothly because of poor optimization. Later, a Mac version was released on December 11, 2003. A year later, on December 4, 2007, Halo became available for download on the Xbox 360 from its online marketplace.

Halo was not an overnight hit when it first came out, but it had a steady stream of sales that kept going for a long time and its owners attached to their Xbox consoles. In the two months after its release, more than half of all Xbox buyers also bought Halo. By five months into its life, Halo had sold almost one million copies, which was faster than any other sixth-generation game at the time. Just a year later, in July 2003, it had sold three million copies worldwide. Another year went by and it hit four million copies by January 2004. Five years after its launch, Halo’s Xbox version still had sales of around four million copies and was earning $170 million just from the United States alone. Its computer version sold a lot fewer copies – only about 670,000, but still made over $22 million. Next Generation said that Halo was the second best-selling game for any console like PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube in the US between January 2000 and July 2006.

Reception The video game Halo received high praise from critics, earning a score of 97 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on reviews from 68 professional reviewers. A reviewer for Edge magazine called Halo “the most important launch game for any console” and noted that GoldenEye set the standard for multiplayer console combat, which has since been surpassed. GameSpot said that playing Halo’s single-player campaign was worth buying an Xbox just to experience it alone, concluding that it was not only the best of the Xbox’s launch games but also one of the best shooters ever played on any platform. IGN agreed, labeling Halo as a must-play game with no hesitation or doubt. An editor at Official Xbox Magazine described Halo as “a remarkable achievement.” Jonathan Licata from AllGame praised Bungie for doing an outstanding job with Halo by combining successful elements from previous games to create a highly enjoyable experience. Reviewers particularly appreciated aspects like the balance of available weapons, the importance of drivable vehicles, and the enemy AI’s behavior.

The Xbox version of Halo received more than 40 awards, including several Game of the Year honors from reputable gaming organizations such as AIAS and EGM, as well as Edge and IGN. A prominent gaming website ranked Halo as the third-best console game of 2001, and it won two special awards from that site: “Best Xbox Game” and “Best Shooting Game.” The site also gave Halo a runner-up spot in its annual “Best Sound” category. Meanwhile, a prestigious British organization recognized Halo with an award for “Best Console Game,” while another influential music publication honored the game’s soundtrack with their own “Best Original Soundtrack” prize. Additionally, a popular online gaming community awarded Halo the top honor in 2001 as “Best Console Shooter.” Furthermore, various fans voted Halo the best combat game of the year through an annual readers’ choice competition, and it took home another prestigious award from a well-known gaming publication for being the best Xbox game overall. In 2002, Halo was also named the top Xbox game of the year by yet another prominent gaming organization, while three years later it received recognition as one of the best PC games of its time through a major gaming awards show.

Halo: Combat Evolved took home four prestigious awards at the 5th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, now known as the D.I.C.E. Awards, including “Game of the Year”, “Best Console Game”, and two other notable categories. The game also received several nominations for its technical excellence in areas such as innovation, design, gameplay, and art direction. Next Generation magazine gave the Xbox version of Halo a perfect score of five stars out of five, saying it was so good that if you didn’t think an Xbox was worth buying, playing Halo would change your mind.

Even though Halo generally received positive reviews, some critics were not impressed with its level design. GameSpy said that playing through the same hallways and fighting the same enemies over and over was very frustrating, especially since the game had some amazing parts. Similarly, an article on Game Studies.org noted that later in the game, it relied too much on repetition rather than creativity. Eurogamer said that Halo is divided into two different halves – the first half is fast-paced, exciting, and full of surprises, while the second half has cool plot twists and great movie-like parts, but its level design got boring after a while. Since Halo came out before Xbox Live, it didn’t have online multiplayer or computer opponents to play against, which was a problem for GameSpy. They even included it on their list of “Top 25 Most Overrated Games” in 2003. The PC version of Halo got generally good reviews and had an 83% score on Metacritic. GameSpot called it an amazing action game that’s still considered classic, giving it a high rating of 9 out of 10. IGN thought it was almost as great if you played it on Xbox, but didn’t have much new to say for PC players. Eurogamer said the game missed its chance to be something special, but liked the online multiplayer part for experienced players. The PC version had some serious performance problems even on powerful computers at the time.

Halo is widely considered one of the most excellent video games ever made, and it was even ranked as the fourth-best first-person shooter by IGN. In 2017, The Strong National Museum of Play honored Halo with its prestigious World Video Game Hall of Fame award.

The legacy of Halo is credited with revolutionizing the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. According to GameSpot, many other games have borrowed some of Halo’s clever ideas since its release. The game is often considered the main reason for the Xbox’s popularity and helped establish it as a flagship console franchise. In 2006, Next-Gen.biz reported that Halo was one of the highest-grossing games of the 21st century in the US, with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City being the only game to earn more revenue. The game’s massive success led to terms like “Halo clone” and “Halo killer” becoming popular, describing games that were similar or expected to be better than Halo. The engine used in Halo has been reused for other games, including Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse.

Halo has been shown at both Major League Gaming and the World Cyber Games. The game’s sequel, Halo 2, was a huge success when it came out, selling over 2.38 million units in its first day and earning US$125 million in revenue. This made it the biggest-selling media product in US history at the time. Three years later, Halo 3 broke that record with an even bigger opening, making US$170 million in just 24 hours and setting a new standard for the entertainment industry.

Additionally, the game was an inspiration and helped launch a popular fan-created video series called Red vs. Blue, which is considered one of the first major successes for the art form known as machinima. Machinima is a technique that uses real-time 3D engines from video games to create animated movies.

Halo: Custom Edition was released on March 15, 2004, by Gearbox Software for Windows computers. This game allowed players to use special maps that were created by them or others using a kit called the Halo Editing Kit made by Bungie. The Halo: Custom Edition game has many multiplayer maps and needs an original copy of the Halo PC game to be installed. These custom maps can either work alone or with other players.

During the 2011 E3 Expo press conference by Microsoft, it was announced that 343 Industries would remake Halo: Combat Evolved using its own game engine and add features such as achievements, terminals, and skulls. The game was released for the Xbox 360 on November 15, 2011, marking a significant milestone – it was the tenth anniversary of the original game’s release. This remastered version includes online multiplayer and cooperative play capabilities, which are new to this Halo game. Notably, the remaster also features Kinect support, making it a unique addition in the series. The game runs on two different game engines: the original engine designed by Bungie for gameplay and a newer engine developed by 343 Industries and Saber for improved graphics. Players can switch between these modes seamlessly at any time. For multiplayer mode, a custom version of the Halo: Reach engine was used to mimic the original multiplayer experience, rather than including the original game’s multiplayer features.

The anniversary celebration was added to Halo: The Master Chief Collection afterwards.

The Anniversary edition of the game is the one included in The Master Chief Collection for Xbox One. The single-player part of the game looks almost exactly like the original Xbox 360 version, with some extra features. Players can switch between the newer graphics and the old ones, but the new graphics don’t support special 3D viewing for TVs. Unlike the Xbox 360 release, this edition has a different multiplayer mode that was used in Combat Evolved, not Halo: Reach. It’s also playable online through Xbox Live.