As part of our trip to Halo Studios back in May for our recently announced Halo: Campaign Evolved cover story, I had the chance to sit down and play through all three of the new missions included in the remake package. These missions take place prior to the famous narrative of Halo: Combat Evolved, giving us more insight into Master Chief pre-Cortana, as well as his relationship to Sgt. Johnson. These hands-on impressions are just a part of our in-depth cover story that chronicles the creation of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, as well as the upcoming 25th-anniversary remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved.
To read the full story, which spans 22 pages in our print edition, subscribe to Game Informer by heading here.
The story of Master Chief and Cortana in Halo: Combat Evolved is widely known by this point. And though Halo: Reach gave us glimpses into the days leading up to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, the games have stopped short of giving us many interactions with Chief ahead of his debut title. Halo: Campaign Evolved not only delivers a remake of the full original story of Combat Evolved, playable with up to four players, but also a trio of bonus missions set in 2551, around a year before Combat Evolved’s story begins.
While Halo Studios could have easily rested on its laurels by simply delivering a remake of the original content, the team wanted to see how it could further flesh out the universe in the events leading up to that story. This decision includes bringing in weapons, enemy types, and other elements that wouldn’t debut until subsequent Halo games.
These inclusions make the universe feel more alive, as though these elements were always present, rather than conveniently popping up in the in-universe timeline just as the developers added them to gameplay. The three missions star two of the most popular characters in Halo: Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson. The latter has appeared in several games, but the Halo: Campaign Evolved bonus missions look to further explore and establish his relationship with Chief.
“It’s a big universe with a lot of great characters, a lot of great stories to tell, and things that happen in this time period,” creative director Max Szlagor says. “These missions are before the events of the main campaign, but specifically, Chief and Johnson, they’ve had a relationship for some time, and so it’s really interesting to dig into what that’s like, or the relationship between the ODSTs and the Spartans. […] When you first see Johnson in the original campaign, you’re like, ‘Okay, who is this character?’ So, just having that context, I think, really enhances the overall feel of the experience.”
Despite these missions taking place chronologically before the events of the original game, Halo Studios recommends that players who are either new to Halo or whose skills may be a little rusty start with the original campaign, as the bonus missions jump pretty quickly to the difficult end of the spectrum. Despite this, the story plays out like a fun prequel, giving us more insight into Master Chief before he partners with Cortana. Immediately, I see a slightly chattier Chief than I’m used to, with him even making small jokes that you would typically hear between friends with Johnson.
Senior franchise story lead Jeff Easterling oversaw the creation of the narrative, while longtime Halo novelist Troy Denning worked closely with the team of writers as a contributor. “A couple of Troy’s most popular [novels] were dealing with the early dynamics of the relationship of Sgt. Johnson and The Chief,” Easterling says. “We always felt like, Sgt. Johnson, we want to spend more time with him, and in the original [Combat Evolved], I think people forget that Sgt. Johnson actually doesn’t play a huge role. It really is only in Halo 2 and 3 where he becomes the Johnson that we know in our minds, and we try to ‘retro’ that into CE, but we’ve done some interesting things with Campaign Evolved and these three missions being paramount to elevating Johnson into the Johnson that we remember. Troy was an easy pick to be involved with that.”
“We knew that we wanted them to get some mapping coordinates trying to find a map for the Covenant homeworld, and after that, we sat down and started talking about the three parts of the story, how we would structure it, and just tossing out ideas,” Denning says. “I obviously had a blast writing Johnson and The Chief together [in Halo: Silent Storm], so it was fun to be able to do that again.”
The trio of missions begins with Boarding Action. Chief and Johnson smuggle themselves aboard The Triumph of Tolerance to retrieve nav data that would allow them to strike back at the Covenant following the glassing of a planet. The first room is full of Grunts and Jackals, as well as one Elite, but it’s nothing I can’t handle while in control of the powerful Spartan. After the coast is clear, Chief opens a hatch in the ship they came in on to let Johnson out.
As Johnson works to open the first door, Chief asks, “Any way to speed this up?” Johnson replies, “Until we can find a way to cram an AI into that suit of yours, this is the best we’ve got.” References to events still to come give nods, both subtle and overt, to the broader universe.
“It’s fun because the writers and the creators on the game can deep-seed some lore that a newer player may not know anything about, or they may be discovering some of these things for the first time,” executive producer Damon Conn says. “We made sure to put in a lot of nods to lore around The Chief and Johnson and what they have gone through, and things that have happened in books and other media to make sure that we’re anchoring some things in there that, if you’re a real Halo lover, you’re gonna have something to look forward to in these, because you’re gonna discover some nice little notes as we tell as new story.”
I played through the entire three-mission arc, but I don’t want to spoil too much of what unfolds. However, as I work my way through these missions, I love seeing these various elements from games outside of Combat Evolved crop up. I’m excited that one of my favorite weapons from later in the franchise, the battle rifle, is a mainstay in these missions, and I could find powerful arms like the fuel rod cannon and energy sword regularly, but I continually gravitated towards the needle rifle as my go-to. And, since this is built on Halo: Combat Evolved, you know I put the notoriously powerful pistol to good use.
One of my favorite sequences came in the first mission when Chief stumbles upon a sparring room, which serves as a sandbox arena for one of the best encounters. Since it’s a training room for the Covenant, dozens of different weapons are scattered throughout the area, giving you access to a large arsenal. The thrill of swapping between favorite weapons as more and more enemies poured in was nearly unrivaled during my hands-on time. And when I finished that room, I exited to a fully stocked armory, making me feel like a kid in a candy shop.
You’ll need to use the wide range of weapons to make it through. Facing off against Elites, Grunts, Jackals, and Hunters is expected, but shortly after that training room encounter, the story takes a turn. As Chief and Johnson enter a room, a cutscene shows their fight interrupted by an unlikely voice: a Prophet. And not only that, but the Prophet Harmony introduces a new enemy type into the mix, The Brute. These ape-like creatures, who originally debuted in Halo 2, are now a mainstay for the rest of the bonus missions, and their aggression fundamentally changes the flow of how the combat encounters play out.
The second of the three missions sees Chief and Johnson exiting the claustrophobic hallways and tailor-made battle arenas in favor of an outdoor biome. The third mission brings the conflict to a head with the most challenging stretch of combat, including a moving platform sequence where you must survive the ride as enemies fire on your position from all angles.
The three missions culminate in yet another surprise: a space battle. I won’t talk about what’s happening in the story at this point, but you must accomplish your mission while piloting a Covenant Seraph. After hours of boots-on-the-ground combat, putting an exclamation point on this bonus content with a distinct gameplay style inspired by Halo: Reach was a fun way to shake things up.
I’ll be the first to admit I approached these new missions with a sense of apprehension; after all, how do you expand upon the story of a game like Halo: Combat Evolved without feeling like apocryphal fan fiction? But by being smart with the chosen time period, how it tells the story, and how it incorporates elements from the wider Halo universe, Halo Studios delivers an incredibly fun, bite-sized prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved that stands capably alongside the original content.
Halo: Campaign Evolved arrives on July 28 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. To read the full cover story, be sure to subscribe to Game Informer. If you already subscribe, you can read the 25th anniversary retrospective of Halo: Combat Evolved here, and the in-depth look ahead at Halo: Campaign Evolved here.