the ability to jump up onto boxes.
Sean Swidersky, who comes from a
pro-gaming background, mentions
that in early test flights European
players’ grenade throws seemed to be
delayed. After upgrading some of the
Microsoft Azure servers used to host
games, and making some changes to
how network traffic is relayed, they
started behaving as they should.
At launch, the most widespread
criticism was that it sounded muffled
and just... off, from the original. It
hasn’t been a quick fix. “It’s caused us
to go back and say ‘Hey, we should
just take a look at the audio for all
titles,’” explains Mike Fahrny.
“Reach’s [digital signal processors] for
whatever reason were not great, so
let’s go back to a partner that has the
sources for these, rebuild them for
modern platforms, while we have an
actual audio engineer go back
through and make sure everything is
balanced and levelled properly. That
takes a long time.”
While fans see 343 as the
monolithic studio in charge of Halo,
the truth is that the team behind The
Master Chief Collection is small. Most
of the work is outsourced, with
Fahrny and his team steering the
ship. “Sometimes things just take
time, and it’s hard to communicate
that out to the fanbase,” he says.
“This is modern game development.
We need to not be scared to say
‘Yeah, we ran into some problems.
This is what our plan is, let’s talk
about that, let’s work together on it,
we’re going to flight it, please give us
feedback on it, what you say matters
to us, we’ll adjust’. It’s moving along
Keyes and Sgt Johnson have gotten
especially big upgrades.
The textures on your marine
companions and the aliens of the
Covenant are sharp and well-defined,
instead of borderline amorphous
blobs. And it has real lighting!
Multiplayer never got the same
makeover, but I’d argue that’s actually
a good thing. There’s a purity to the
first Halo’s multiplayer that I love,
even if, like a lot of players, Halo 3 is
the one I’m really waiting for on PC.
With more detailed graphics, the
simple geometry of classic maps like
Blood Gulch and Hang ’Em High
would look out of place, but adding
objects to the maps would change
how they play, and go against
TMCC’s mission of preservation. Of
all the games, Combat Evolved is the
one for which 343 should be least
concerned about balance.
“You know the story behind the
pistol, right? That was actually a bug
and it shipped that way,” Jarrard
remembers. The almighty Halo: CE
pistol and its killing power has been
the subject of debate over the years,
mostly whenever a successive Halo
comes out with an inevitably weaker
magnum. But today it’s firmly part of
Halo’s legacy. “In retrospect, if we
had flighting back then, we probably
would have had overwhelming
feedback that would’ve made the
team completely nerf that thing into
the ground. But after the fact, the
studio decided to just leave it.”
The other key to Combat Evolved’s
legacy, at least on PC, is modding. I
spent one summer as a teenager
playing the same map day after day,ABOVE: Master Chief
meets 343 Guilty
Spark, and almost
ends all life in the
universe. Oops.pretty well. I think people will be
happy with the end result, though
they’ve had to wait longer.”EVOLUTION
The Master Chief Collection began
on PC with Bungie’s final Halo game.
Now it’s followed that with the first:
Combat Evolved followed Reach onto
Steam on March 3. I spent two hours
at 343 bouncing between campaign
missions in a near-final build, which
sported upscaled versions of the 2011
Anniversary makeover graphics. The
geometry is still mostly simplistic, but
it looks great for its age. All the
character models are far more
detailed than they used to be, and
major characters like CommanderCONTROLLED CROUCH
How do you ensure Halo still feels like Halo,
no matter the controls?
It turns out Halo’s analog
stick crouch doesn’t work
on the digital inputs of
WASD. The fix, coming
soon, is noticeably faster.
“You do get more freedom
to crouch as you’re
moving,” says Sean
Swidersky. “Some users
feel this is natural for
sure, but I’m more curious
about the competitive
side of things... It’s not
too outrageous, but
seeing someone crouch
super fast, in those older
games, it just looks
different.”