On July 28, Halo turns 25 with a gift for us all. In 2001, the revolutionary FPS Halo: Combat Evolved launched; the July 28 release Halo: Campaign Evolved is a rebuild of and a resounding anniversary tribute to that foundational title. Game director Greg Hermann tells Intel Gaming Access about revisiting the ring-shaped world that has captured the imaginations of millions of gamers.
“Halo: Campaign Evolved is a faithful yet modernized remake of Halo: Combat Evolved’s campaign, rebuilt from the ground up,” he explains. “After crash landing on a mysterious ringworld known as Halo, the Master Chief is tasked with defending humanity against an overwhelming alien force: the Covenant. With the help of his AI companion Cortana, the Chief must uncover Halo’s dark secrets and fight to avert the annihilation of all life in the galaxy.”
Whoever controls Halo controls the fate of the universe. If you’ve played a Halo title before then you know this, but if this is your first encounter with the franchise, Campaign Evolved has got you covered. “Players will experience the epic story that started it all 25 years ago,” Greg says, “along with completely rebuilt environments and cinematics, newly recorded voice acting and all-new mocap.” But that’s not all. The list goes on with remastered music, “and characters, vehicles and weapons built from scratch in Unreal Engine. It’s thoughtfully designed as the ideal starting point for a new generation of fans experiencing Halo for the first time, while also including fresh surprises and brand-new additions for longtime fans.” Core gameplay has also been refined for modern control standards without sacrificing the feel and pacing that made Halo iconic.
“The sandbox has been expanded with nine fan-favorite weapons from across the franchise,” Greg continues. “Mechanics like boarding vehicles, and full support for four-player cross-platform cooperative play. Brand-new features like Campaign Remix and 42 gameplay modifying ‘skulls’ offer more replayability than any Halo campaign before. And perhaps most exciting is the inclusion of three new missions featuring Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson set one year before the events of the original game, featuring added gameplay and sandbox variety along with more immersion and exposure to the characters and world of Halo.”
Halo: Evolved Campaign offers not only more replayability, but also, for the first time, the chance to play together with up to three friends, across all of Halo’s platforms. “Turning on Campaign Remix and some of the game’s skulls creates a near-endless variety of experiences and shenanigans,” Greg says. “Some of the skulls radically alter the experience—for example the ‘Perspective’ skull lets you play the entire game in third person, while the ‘Acrophobia’ skull lets you freely fly all around the maps! And if that isn’t enough, there are hidden story terminals to find, ‘Legendary’ difficulty to conquer, and the ultimate test of might—’LASO’ (legendary, all skulls on).”
Paying tribute to a seminal title is some weight to carry, so you’d expect the team at Halo Studios to be pretty exacting when it comes to performance. After 25 years, they’re not about to compromise now. “We had a number of challenges with CPU performance quite late in development,” Greg explains. “We had to hold a hard line on frame times to ensure consistent performance. Tools such as Intel® VTune™ and pre-release compiler updates from the Visual Studio team helped us with significant wins in the last few months (5–10%). Halo: Campaign Evolved was built to preserve the scale, responsiveness, and fluid combat that define Halo. From expansive environments and large combat encounters to four-player online co-op, consistent performance is essential to making the experience feel smooth, responsive, and immersive.”
Halo: Campaign Evolved has been designed to support a wide range of PC configurations. Halo Studios recommend Intel XeSS to help players achieve higher performance while retaining strong image quality. “We utilized the publicly available XeSS plugins for Unreal that are provided by Intel,” Greg says. “Intel was very helpful answering any questions we had during integration, and overall it was a very smooth process. We also provided early builds so Intel could evaluate performance and any quirks on their hardware and drivers. They encountered several issues that we were able to resolve in our title as a result of collaboration.”
So Halo: Campaign Evolved is cleared for launch on July 28—and where will Halo Studios take us after that ? “There’s a lot of passion and energy across the team for what comes next,” Greg says. “While we’re not ready to talk about specific plans today, we’re looking forward to sharing more with players in the future.” Until then, gamers, it’s time to buckle up for an anniversary mission—back to a mysterious ring-shaped world.
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