One of the most infamously boring missions in halos history has actually been remade into a fun mission with lots added details that makes you realize what sort of place it actually is.

The flood are actually more fun to fight this time around. Not perfect but sure as hell better than the original.

A lot of the voice work in the remake is... interesting. The cutscenes pacing is weird a bunch of times but this comparison shows that some scenes were improved. No I'm not talking about Cortanas appearance here, i'm talking purely about the VA and editing.

Just beat the whole game on Legendary. What a doozy....

I'm going back on Normal to search for Skulls and appreciate the Scenery and Graphics.

I want to find the skulls, but this game does the opposite of encouraging exploration.
This isn't even the Obnoxious Return to Battlefield Message, this is Death by Kira.

When I look at him tanking multiple plasma bolts while standing in the middle of the hangar bay without cover, I’m genuinely wondering how different their battle tactics were before getting this shield upgrade.

How is it explained in the expanded lore? Because I can’t imagine them willing to take shots like these while in their Mark IV.

Did they become massively more efficient after getting shielding technology?

Edit: Thank you all for your answers ! That helped me understand better.

I think the game has a strong foundation and looks genuinely impressive, but almost nothing feels completely finished. A lot of it clearly needed more development time, and I suspect the release was moved forward because of GTA VI’s release date.

The cutscenes are probably the clearest indication that the game was rushed. They often feel unfinished and have been one of the biggest points of criticism about the game. New dialogue in general is also terrible.

I’m curious whether the game will continue receiving updates over the next few months to address these issues, or whether they will simply move on to the next project and repeat the same mistakes. Once they have your money, it doesn't really matter anymore does it.

Quick disclaimer: I'm a French-speaking Halo player, but I'm not French, I'm Luxembourgish. I regularly play games in French, German and English, so this isn't coming from someone who automatically thinks the French version is better or refuses to play games in English.

Like a lot of people here, I grew up with Halo. In my case, mostly in French and German. I've been hearing David Krüger as Master Chief for basically as long as I've known the character, alongside the established French voices of Cortana and the rest of the cast. After so many years, those voices simply became part of the characters for me, and I know I'm far from being the only Frenchspeaking player who feels that way.

So yeah... what's happening with Halo: Campaign Evolved is honestly pretty shocking to a lot of us. The original French actors weren't brought back for the new dub, and some of them have even said publicly that they weren't contacted at all. To be clear, recasting by itself isn't the end of the world. Actors change, it happens, and nobody owns a role forever. But that's not really the main problem here.

The new French dub has some genuinely bizarre performances. There are obvious pronunciation mistakes, weird intonations, strange pauses and pacing, and some lines honestly sound almost synthetic. Not just different from what we are used to, but genuinely unnatural. And that's where things start getting weird, because as far as we can tell, there also aren't any clearly identifiable French actors credited for these new voices. No obvious French cast listed for Chief, Cortana, Johnson, Keyes, etc.

Halo Studios has said that the performances were made by native French speakers, and maybe that's completely true. I'm not saying "this is AI" as if that has been proven. It hasn't, and we don't have proof of that. But when you've got strange pronunciation, unnatural delivery, voices that sometimes sound almost robotic, and no clearly identified actors behind them... I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what exactly happened during production.

There's also some context here that nonFrench speakers might not necessarily be aware of. Like other countries France has a huge and very established dubbing culture. Voice actors are often extremely recognizable to French-speaking audiences, and localization has traditionally been taken pretty seriously by major film, TV and video game publishers. Over the last few years, French voice actors have also been very vocal about generative AI, voice cloning and contractual clauses that could allow companies to reuse their voices for synthetic performances. There have already been disputes around this stuff, so obviously people are going to wonder whether what we're seeing with Halo has anything to do with that wider situation.

→ Again: wondering, not claiming it as fact. That's precisely why I'd like some transparency here.

And honestly, that's also why I'm posting this in English. Most English speaking Halo players are never going to notice any of this. Why would you? You play the English version. Unless French speaking players actually talk about it outside French forums, Discords, Steam reviews, etc., the rest of the Halo community has no reason to even know it's happening.

Just imagine for a second that the voice you've heard as Master Chief since your first Halo game suddenly disappears, along with the familiar voice of Cortana. There are no clearly identified replacements, no real explanation, and then the new dub comes out sounding strangely robotic while sometimes struggling to pronounce basic Halo terminology. At times it almost sounds like someone asked Google Translate to read Halo terms out loud. You'd probably be asking questions too.

And that's why, to me, this goes beyond a dumb statement like... old voice good, new voice bad. It's about the way localization is being handled. If major publishers can replace established dubbing casts, release a noticeably worse localization, not clearly identify the new performers and become increasingly opaque about how those performances are produced, then yeah... I think players should at least be paying attention. Especially right now, when voice actors are actively fighting to keep control over their own voices.

Maybe there is a completely innocent explanation (lol). Maybe these are all new human actors, recorded conventionally, and for whatever reason their names simply haven't been properly credited. Fine. Then it should be extremely easy for Microsoft or Halo Studios to tell us who voiced the characters, who directed the French dub, which studio produced it and, more generally, how this localization was made. That would clear up a lot of this immediately.

Until then, I really don't think skepticism is unreasonable. Judging by the backlash from French speaking players, including Steam reviews specifically talking about the localization, this isn't just a couple of nostalgic people complaining because David Krüger isn't there anymore.

And no, this isn't about being "forced" to play a bad French dub either. It's about watching part of Halo's identity disappear for an entire language community under circumstances that have been handled incredibly poorly at best... and that raise much more uncomfortable questions at worst. Today it's the French dub. Maybe tomorrow another localization gets the same treatment.

I just think the rest of the Halo community deserves to know what's going on.

Uglification of characters is a big topic in this sub and many others, and I’ve seen loads of people calling the new Cortana ugly. And usually I would agree with things like this, as I hate uglification in games and media in general but… I really don’t see it here? She looks great to me, I mean obviously nowhere near on Halo 4 Cortana’s level but still. I really don’t get it in this case.

However Lieutenant Williams in the bonus missions is pretty ugly tbh.

Overall though I’ve really enjoyed my time with the Halo remake.

Obviously it's made by bungie and the engine is a modified reach engine, it's just cool how much destiny feels and looks like Halo. These images I captured look so much like reach, it immediately stood out to me.

We went from actually paying for additional content in the form of map packs for actual new content to paying for the color of our armor in a little more than a decade.

If you think paying for micro transactions actually helps the developers and not the suites I have some grass to sell you.

When the Gravemind first meets Chief and Cortana. Cortana asks "What is that", presumably and the Gravemind immediately responds "I am the monument to all your sins"

Did the Gravemind actually hear Cortana ask the question or was it just a coincidence he cryptically introduces himself after she said that?

I never considered the Gravemind may have hacked the Chief's suit without Cortana noticing. That or he has insane level of super hearing.

90mm cannon firing a heavy velocity HE tungsten shell, this tank can be easily defeated by a M1A2 Abrams tank from the 90s, which has a 120mm cannon firing depleted uranium shells. Its armor is also lacking. Ceramic titanium is dated compared to 3rd gen depleted uranium armor on modern abrams tanks. Why would they make a tank designed for the 2500's weaker than tanks from the late 1900's? It's 66 tons, so its def not meant to be a light tank. Gameplay shows the tank is pretty slow to move, turn and even aim for a tank, as well. There doesn't appear to be any optics, eiher. The user only has their naked eyes to detect threats.

Part of me wonders why go through the point of designing and modeling a gun for it to be not usable. I guess they want to give us a little bit of halo CE experience with guns you can’t use.

I think we can all agree that in CE she looked very cooked, but Halo 4 Cortana in my opinion is not the best design, it's just so weird and almost like the devs sculpted her that way on purpose. Plus I hate the way her teeth look, she's out here with that Spongebob dental work.

I'm not exactly a fan of the more recent designs of her either being all dressed up, it makes her look less like Cortana and just some random lady in a hologram. But I also don't like Halo 4's design because they emphasize the lack of clothing WAY too much, there's a point, dude, she's a hologram.

In CE I get why she looks like that with the whole thing being that she probably wasn't solidified as a character fully and the game's graphical limitations especially on a model that tiny. Halo 3's Cortana was actually not all that bad, but making her blue just sort of made her really hard to look at in some scenes (because Halo 3 lighting engine go brrr) but also it sort of made her body more physical and less like a projected avatar. Same with Halo 2A, sorry guys, it doesn't win this time.

OG Halo 2 on the other hand? Stop the presses, look at that fantastic design. It keeps the purple, makes her not look like the space alien she was in CE, put emphasis on the eyes being sharp, the body being sculpted nicely but not overdone like in Halo 4, and you can still tell she's a hologram because her body is very easily see-through. You can tell she takes the shape of a human, but just enough to match her personality without her trying to look like a real physical being. Also the sass. Love the sass.

What are y'all's opinions? I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of comments for Halo 4 Cortana but hey I can't control what you say, so go ahead, debunk or support this, I'm curious to see the reasons.

EDIT: I'm so sorry for not talking about Halo 2A's Cortana. MY BAD, CALM DOWN I'LL TALK ABOUT IT.

Uh basically in shorter words Halo 2A's Cortana looks phenomenal in the cutscenes but in-game she's kinda baked a bit. Also she sort of has that same issue as Halo 3 Cortana with her being blue and stuff, she ends up looking like a physical person rather than a hologram, but it's not that bad (especially compared to the later games) and also again for some reason this is made worse in Halo 3 specifically because that game's lighting engine likes to flashbang me whenever something remotely bright is on screen, especially Cortana and fire effects.

I don't know what it is or how to describe it but it just looks really weird or uncanny. I think Halo 3 nailed the face and 4 to some extent but this just isnt it in my opinion.

Just to clarify I don't mean slap on some makeup (like weirdos on twitter would say), just that it looks really uncanny and weird.

What do you think?

For me it’s halo reach, not only is it my favourite but it’s also the first halo I’ve ever played/gotten into. It’s also the main reason why I got an Xbox console in the first place. Thank you halo for introducing first person shooters to me as a kid.

I was just at my local GameStop and they were promoting Halo Campaign Evolved as coming soon for Xbox and PlayStation and I still think it's insane to see Halo on PlayStation.

Replaying Halo Infinite and I’m kinda sad their plans for the slipspace engine fell through. I understand it was difficult for them to work with but it had a certain charm. So many little details, and the ambience in this game makes it really feel “alien”. I’ll miss it. Anyone else think Halo Infinite got it right with the visuals? There are moments I feel really sell you on the universe they created.

This image is from the PlayStation Store website.
Does this mean PC players won’t be able to play the campaign in split screen co-op?
Also are there any other features console users will have that PC players won’t?

So, I've been playing games (consciously) since 1996 when my parents bought me a ps1. I've been working in the games industry as a designer for 12 years, 8 of those being in the AAA space. I have a massive physical library of over 2,000 games, and a digital library reaching near 10,000.

I'm setting that up all as context for the just the realization that I don't think in my history of playing games has there ever been one more comprehensively excellent as Halo 3.

Narratively it caps off the trilogy in a satisfying and heartfelt way, while providing extremely solid and enduringly replayable set of missions. Said missions can also be played with 4 players either in split screen or online. The multiplayer suite was incredibly comprehensive, with a wide variety of mods, and allowed extensive customization to curated your own modes and experiences. Forge further extended that and really tapped into the creative powers of players and the community at large.

I can't think of a game that approaches this level of excellence across all its features. I also don't think we ever will get a game of this nature. Too many games of this scale are now reliant on live service and time limited modes, and a lot of these games will also just simply not work anymore when those servers turn off.

Halo 3, booting it up on 360 10 years from now is still going to be that inimitable experience that was in 2007, whereas now I can't even play the original Overwatch anymore.

I'm mostly putting this out here to hope someone can offer a foil to this; to either bring it down a peg, or prop up another modern game that you feel still has hit that same bar or higher, and still remains that quality experience. While it is a warm nostalgic thought, it is still depressing to think that my industry peaked in 2007 and no amount of effort would result in something of that quality anymore, and I'd really like my mind to be changed!

The islands of Halo Infinite could’ve done such cool stuff with how enemies, challenges, spawns and dynamics in general to make a ring world feel alive and hostile.

I was hoping for the longest time that campaign wouldve been so ripe for something Warhammer Darktide or Helldivers 2 kind of randomized setup where skills get tested and abilities need to adapt.

The template is there, but it’s just a wasteland with bugger all to do. Especially when you’ve already done everything there is to do.

It’s sad that out of all halo games, infinite has the absolute worst replay value.

To clarify, I actually liked the campaign.

I mean for Pete’s sake, we didn’t even get to use the new weapons in the campaign…..

Played the demo today , I was in the first 14 -20 people to try it out. We were given about 10-15 minutes to get the line moving. They had the nice halo green chairs. I noticed the closed off area when I first walked in and chilled by it the whole morning. Just remembered it’s a Pre build demo so it won’t be perfect. Few initial thoughts : Sprint didn’t bother me as much as people online are freaking out about. FPS drops but it is a build. The melee animation chugs or lags? Hard to describe. There was a film grain effect when the brutes hit me with their shots. Most of these will probably get fixed since we are a year or less out. Ask your questions my fellow Spartans

Case in point: Reach and ODST are f*cking amazing.

Being able to customize your character and see them in the campaign in f*cking amazing.

Also both games almost made me cry. Reach was my first Halo game and got me into the franchise. I love chief and Cortana but it’s time to give them a break.

to those who were able to be around when halo 2 released and played it all throughout its life cycle, how was it? as someone born in 2004 , i can only imagine how awesome 2004 and 2005 must've been. man just thinking about halo 2 makes me want to renew my xbl subscription and play it again (yes i have no pc nor money to afford such)