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After going hands-on with Halo: Campaign Evolved earlier this year, which gave us a first look at the original genre-redefining campaign rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, we got another lengthy look at the remake in all its glory. The first preview featured a huge chunk of The Silent Cartographer, beginning with the iconic beach landing, so I was eager to see where this second hands-on would take us and which of the game’s new features it might showcase.
I had hoped we might get a taste of the bonus missions, which feature a self-contained story that takes place a year prior and serves to give a greater context to the relationship between Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson. As it turns out, rather than serving as a prelude to the campaign proper or being peppered throughout as flashbacks, they’re in a separate menu on the start screen.
Thinking about it, I think it’s the right call in the case of Combat Evolved’s campaign—don’t mess with perfection. In any case, these missions might be the most tantalising reason to hop back in, with Brutes making a surprise appearance and elaborate space dogfights that go hard in what look like the first fully-fledged low-orbit battles since Reach. As it happened, this hands-on gave us a look at the reimagined Assault on the Control Room. As one of the original game’s longest levels, it’s the perfect grazing board for the game’s many features—new and old.
After the first hands-on gave us a great sense of the altered mobility in Campaign Evolved, which, admittedly, I didn’t love as I think of Master Chief as something of a tank on legs, an immovable object. But going hands-on with Assault on the Control Room in full, I have kind of done something of a one-eighty with relation to how I feel about the remake. For all of the modern bells and whistles, there really has been no sacrifice to the mission structure and design philosophies, although the team did say they had to make imperceptible changes as a direct result of the player now having more options to keep the pacing and feel intact.
There were so many things I was now doing that might have become second-nature in Halo as the years went on, but weren’t possible in Combat Evolved, that felt so natural within what is one of gaming’s most epic and unfaultable campaigns. With their attention to keeping the pacing brisk and in keeping with the original, I did ask whether they had fixed the notable slow points that were present in the original. There’s no sugarcoating it, I mean The Library. Fortunately, it sounds as though the answer is yes—kind of. Though the level remains an arduous descent through multiple levels of Flood-infested archives, they’ve made significant changes to the encounters to make each of the levels a bit more unique. This was music to my ears in the form of a monk’s chant.
By integrating features from later Halo titles into this remake of Combat Evolved, including vehicle hijacking and a wieldable energy sword, which both originally made their debut in Halo 2, Campaign Evolved already feels like such a different experience at times. This is true still when modifier Skulls are applied, but even truer still when engaging with the game’s new Remix levels, which can be unlocked piecemeal by collecting two of the three available Skulls in a level.
While Skulls have a more direct effect on a certain game element, whether it’s Mythic that doubles enemy health, or Iron, which kicks you back to the level’s beginning upon death, and even the new Perspective skull, which will let players experience Combat Evolved’s campaign through a third-person viewpoint for the first time, Remix shuffles things like weapon drops and the placement of enemies to create a more unpredictable version of the levels that we know back to front. It adds replayability to a campaign that’s already so moreish and fun to rerun.
Not that Combat Evolved has aged poorly, thanks in large part to the strength of the original art direction led by Marcus Lehto, but Campaign Evolved absolutely sings after shifting over to Unreal. All of the colours are so much deeper, including the Covenant’s trademark purple, and the lighting is a marked improvement on the flat, textureless appearance of Halo Infinite. The weapons, most noticeably the sword, look tremendous, and the refinements to the megalithic Forerunner structures contrast gorgeously with the sleet and snow blanketing the canyons.
I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong, and I think, on first blush, I judged Campaign Evolved a bit harshly. Assault on the Control Room, the enormous blockbuster battle that it is from beginning to end, has sold me. At the end of the day, it’s Halo, one of gaming’s premier narrative-led campaigns, and more features aren’t going to jeopardise that.
If anything, it’s a case of my steak being too juicy, or my lobster too buttery.