by The iconic single-player campaign from Halo: Combat Evolved is being remastered once again, this time arriving for Xbox Series machine, PC and PlayStation 5 consoles. After going hands-on with two levels from the game on both PC and Xbox Series X, we have a better idea of how the game is shaping up - and thus far, impressions are much more positive than they were for the visually questionable 2011 Anniversary Edition.
Campaign Evolved also marks a big shift in Halo development, as it's the inaugural project for the newly retitled Halo Studios, formerly 343 Industries, and the first Halo project to ship on Unreal Engine 5 - previous release Halo: Infinite was developed using the bespoke Slipspace Engine. This strategic pivot has brought with it some interesting changes, including some substantial tech upgrades and a number of trade-offs too.
The preview we had access to included two classic missions that will be familiar to fans of the original campaign: The Silent Cartographer and Assault on the Control Room. Surprisingly, the Cartographer mission starts with a pre-rendered 30fps cinematic. It looks good but it's not the first impression we were hoping for. However, it's not until you take control of Master Chief for the first time that you get a sense of how impressive the new visuals are. Somehow, iIt feels both true to Bungie's original vision and light years beyond Halo Anniversary.
Lapping the island in a Warthog, the move to more realistic terrain and rock formations makes for a more challenging driving experience (the vehicle does respond to all the new debris), though the extra detail evident everywhere makes up for this. You can even see reflections of the surroundings dancing in the waves lapping up on the beach. Up above, dramatic sunlight and occasional pyrotechnics can create beautifully lit moments, with Lumen global illumination, Unreal MegaLights and great volumetrics work all contributing to the physically-correct and beautifully done environment. The Warthog and your fellow marines also match the increased fidelity elsewhere, with obscene levels of granular detail.
Despite the extra niceties, it's clear that the overall atmosphere of the original biome remains intact - and that's a relief. We'll save further discussion for the final game, which is just weeks away at this point, but suffice it to say that this is already a much more cohesive and fitting remaster than the Anniversary Edition ever was.
The move to Unreal Engine 5 also introduces some unwanted artefacts, particularly in terms of Lumen denoising. Throughout the demo, issues such as sparkling, boiling and temporal noise were evident, especially in darker scenes, which detracted from the overall coherence of the image. Moreover, these effects were noticeable even when running on high-end PC hardware. The Xbox Series X version also exhibited only middling image quality, as all of these effects do come at a price.
Performance testing also yielded varied results across platforms. On Xbox Series X, the game targets a stable 60fps using dynamic resolution scaling. It'll be interesting to see how the game fares on the more power-constrained Xbox Series S, but this version wasn't ready for the current preview. A 30fps quality mode is also available, but was off-limits for the preview.
A more mainstream-based PC setup (using the Ryzen 5 5600X processor with 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM and an RTX 4060 graphics card) exhibited CPU bottlenecking in Cartographer with a 1440p DLSS balanced output resolution running at high settings, though Assault on the Control Room ran a lot better. CPU limitations seemed to kick in with lots of enemy AI in play - something we didn't see on the Xbox version.
The game does scale OK to faster hardware though, with a top-end RTX 5090 PC hitting only 50 percent GPU utilisation at 4K 60fps with DLAA and max settings. Meanwhile, a quick test on ROG Xbox Ally X in handheld 25W mode saw the game default to 1080p at very low settings with low TSR upscaling. This may sound "not great" but performance is north of 30fps even in the Cartographer level and looks OK on the handheld screen. However, something less powerful, like the Steam Deck, might struggle more to hit 30fps - we'll just have to see, bearing in mind that the non-X Ally uses very, very similar hardware.
Overall, I'm cautiously optimistic based on the preview. It looks like the developers are better equipped to recapture the magic of the original game, while the move to Unreal Engine 5 provides a big visual upgrade - even with some image quality and denoising quality concerns. And beyond the tech side, there are some fascinating possibilities in terms of remixing existing levels with originally inaccessible weapons and enemies, plus a suite of gameplay changes that could make the game feel a bit better to play for those used to more modern Halo releases. The game ships on July 28th for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, so we don't have too long to wait to see how it all shakes out.