While developer Halo Studios is remaking the original game's campaign with Halo: Campaign Evolved, the team is also including three new missions, expanding the available story for players to go through in single-player or in co-op.
In a group interview with Halo Studios, the team was asked about the nature of these missions and if they'd be retreading any ground players have already seen in other mediums. Creative director Max Szlagor noted that they would not, and that these missions are "all new," telling a story that hasn't been seen in Halo before.
"It's about Chief and Johnson. It's a prequel to the original Halo Combat Evolved story. It was really key for us to maintain the original story as it is, to not insert sort of new story in there," Szlagor says.
"It actually takes place in a fairly short timeline in the way that the lore works. And so finding a good place in the lore to tell this story with Chief and Johnson, it's going to have, you know, new story, new gameplay, weapons, enemies, environments. So a lot of cool stuff there."
Game director Greg Hermann added that while it is a new story, it will cover "settings you may be familiar with, if you know the franchise."
Let the speculation commence
Master Chief and Sergeant Major Avery Johnson were friends for a long time before the events of the original Halo trilogy, so I'm truly fascinated to see where these missions end up taking place.
While I've seen some comments around seeing part of the fall of Reach — and I'll admit that getting Master Chief's perspective on that in a game would be awesome — the fact is that it would be pretty hard (if not impossible) to do if this is truly an entirely new story.
Personally, I'd be most interested if this were further back in the timeline than many might be expecting. We could see a slightly less confident Master Chief, perhaps even wearing the Mark IV armor that's become iconic thanks to Red Team in the Halo Wars games.
It's my favorite Spartan armor outside of Master Chief's look in Halo Infinite, so I'd love to see this happen.
The comment around new enemies is also interesting. I'm not sure what would fit there, but it could be a good place to have vehicles like Phantoms and Scarabs show up that aren't present in the original Halo.
No matter what, I'm just happy we'll be hearing some new lines from Sergeant Johnson.
Until we learn more, be sure to check out my hands-on preview of Halo: Campaign Evolved. While I went in fairly skeptical, I'm happy with the way it plays and feels, something that was absolutely critical for the team to get right due to changing up the engine. I'm also keeping a running tab of all confirmed changes in this remake, big or small.
Halo: Campaign Evolved is slated to launch at some point in 2026 on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Steam and Xbox on PC), and PlayStation 5. Like all Xbox first-party games, it’ll also be available in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass at launch.
FAQ
What is Halo: Campaign Evolved?
Halo: Campaign Evolved is a remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved's campaign. Developed by Halo Studios, Halo: Campaign Evolved is being built using a customized version of Unreal Engine 5, bringing in new enemies, AI improvements (in regards to enemy behavior), new gameplay features, new weapons, and more.
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