is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.
Halo Studios has created something special for the 25th anniversary of Halo next year. Halo: Campaign Evolved is a full remake of the original Combat Evolved that launched alongside Microsoft’s first Xbox console in 2001. It has a fully rebuilt campaign with 4K visuals, new weapons and vehicles, a four-player online co-op mode, and brand-new story content.
And it’s all coming to the Xbox Series X / S, PC, and — for the first time — PlayStation 5 in 2026.
I’ve been playing a prerelease demo section of The Silent Cartographer mission this week to get a feel for all the changes. It’s the same level that was used as the demo version of Halo: Combat Evolved for both Mac and PC, but this remade version opens immediately with updated cinematics, improved voice lines, and greatly overhauled visuals and animations.
It looks and feels distinctively Halo, but then I started sprinting toward a rebuilt Warthog that has an extra seat at the rear and I realized there’s a lot going on in Campaign Evolved beyond its Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals.
“We did this work on Halo Anniversary. There were certain things that we weren’t able to achieve at that time, there were certain things we weren’t able to do,” says Greg Hermann, technical director at Halo Studios. “As we were building this out, we didn’t just put a coat of paint over the original cinematics. We ended up revisiting exactly how they were blocked out, how they were sequenced, and how they were put together. We’ve done that across the board.”
Halo Studios even brought in the core voice actors of Combat Evolved to re-record their lines. It was something I noticed immediately as The Silent Cartographer mission loaded in. “This really provides a degree of fidelity that we weren’t able to do for Halo Anniversary,” says Hermann.
Unreal Engine 5 powers the visual overhaul of Combat Evolved. Image: Halo Studios
The iconic vistas in Halo have also been rebuilt, as well as the alien architecture and environments. It’s really designed to be the ultimate remake of the original campaign that’s both welcoming to new players and also built in a way that respects Bungie’s original creation and story.
“Whenever we make a change, the number one thing is to be true to the original game,” says Dan Gniady, lead game designer at Halo Studios. Gniady joined Halo Studios last year and previously worked on the original releases of Bungie’s Destiny and Destiny 2 titles.
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