E3 Xbox One: Master Chief Collection Coming Fall, Halo 5 Guardians Announced for 2015
The newest addition to the Halo franchise, Halo 5 on Xbox One, won't be out until 2015, but for those who can't wait for more Halo, 343 Industries and Microsoft are releasing something this fall that will probably distract them from their Halo 5 obsession — at least until the game is launched.
At the Microsoft E3 press conference on Monday, lots of new games were shown off in a lavish multi-screen presentation. But perhaps the most exciting news is about old games, specifically the Halo franchise. 343 Industries is working on a 10th anniversary edition of Halo 2, which will be launched as part of "The Master Chief Collection," a single Xbox One game disc featuring all four Halo games bundled together.
As GameSpot reported, The Master Chief Collection will feature remastered versions of all four Halo games, all running at full 1080p and 60 frames per second for the Xbox One. And because it includes the 10th anniversary edition of Halo 2, 343 Industries is sprucing that game up with the same kind of features Halo: Combat Evolved got in its anniversary edition (which will also be included on the disc). That means a graphics upgrade and the ability to toggle between the new and original visuals in-game.
Other details about The Master Chief Collection are enough to get any Halo fan excited. For one, because 343 Industries is assuming anyone buying the refurbished mega-bundle of Halo history has already played and beaten the games, The Master Chief Collection is going to come with every campaign mission unlocked from the start. In addition, players won't need to launch individual campaign missions from within each game because all of them are unlocked and compiled in a single menu.
This allows players to mix and match campaigns and missions — for example, only playing final bosses or playing all of the warthog escape missions in a row. The Master Chief Collection accomplishes this smoothly by running all of the various older game engines simultaneously. The only sticking point is that Halo and Halo 2 will only allow two-player co-op — the way they were originally designed — while Halo 3 and Halo 4 have the full four-player options.
But on top of that, the original Halo: Combat Evolved, which was never originally network multiplayer-enabled on the Xbox, will come with online multiplayer in its remastered form, running on dedicated servers. And, just like with fully mix-and-matchable missions and campaigns, multiplayer will jump from Halo game to Halo game, depending on which maps and modes players want in the pre-match lobby.
This opens the possibility of playing amazing maps all in a row, like Lockout from Halo 2, Battle Creek from CE, followed by The Pit from Halo 3 and Ivory Tower. It's maybe what Halo fans have been dreaming of — even more than a TV series (announced as "Halo: Nightfall") or Halo 5: Guardians, both of which are on the way in the year after the Nov. 11 release of The Master Chief Collection.
For those future-focused Halo fans, the disappointment about the 2015 debut of Halo 5: Guardians (not that this is a surprise) may be abated by the fact that a beta for Halo 5 will be available by the holiday. But why play a new beta when you can play more than a decade of Halo history all put together?
Watch the trailer for the Halo Master Chief Collection below: