Halo: Campaign Evolved is a great experience, and it feels weird

Hi there! Today, I've got another quasi-review, as I've been spending time with Halo: Campaign Evolved from Halo Studios and Xbox Game Studios. There's a lot to go over, not just with what this game is and what it does, but the context in which it is releasing.

In addition to writing out my own thoughts, I also partook in a roundtable discussion with Jon Clarke and Jesse Norris of DayOne, as well as David Burdette of GamingTrend. We had a fun setup, playing in co-op while discussing what did and didn't work for each of us. I've linked the video below.

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Revisiting a classic...again

For the unfamiliar, Halo: Campaign Evolved is a remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, which released almost 25 years ago. Developed in Unreal Engine 5 (with some of the BLAM engine code used as well), it's the second revisit to the legendary game, coming 15 years after Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary.

Over the past week and some change — I received a review code from Xbox — I've played through the rebuilt campaign alone and in co-op, as well as trying some of the new things that have been added on to the experience.

Straight away, there are some fundamental improvements pulling from later entries in the franchise. Enemy vehicles can be hijacked, a feature that was introduced in Halo 2. Meanwhile, four-player co-op is available online, something that wasn't in a Halo game until the third entry.

As the name implies, this is a campaign-focused endeavor, with no player-vs-player multiplayer arena. There are a few new features, with some entirely-new missions to play, as well the Campaign Remix feature. Overall, I've had a great time, but it's come with a strange feeling, as this game is releasing on the back of major cuts at Xbox.

Layoffs across the gaming industry aren't anything new, but 2026 has already been brutal, with numerous studios and 1,600 jobs being cut across Xbox alone, with more to come.

The weight of that lost talent and real people being affected was impossible to ignore. One minute, I'd be enjoying playing as Master Chief across the iconic ring-world. The next, I was wondering how many people touched this game that won't have jobs in a month, or three, or six.

How can anyone in that kind of environment be expected to produce their best work when they are terrified of suddenly being cut without warning? Halo Studios hasn't yet been hit by the layoffs that devastated so many other teams, but others that still worked on this game in some capacity have been, including people in PR and accessibility experts.

It's obviously not the fault of anyone working on this game that it's releasing when it is, and I want to credit them for the great work they've done. The lighting and visuals in Campaign Evolved are gorgeous, hewing far closer to the original concepts and art direction that defined early Halo, while still providing room for technological improvements.

From the ice caverns in Assault on the Control Room, to the murky swamps in 343 Guilty Spark, everything here always looked right, eschewing some of the strange decisions in Combat Evolved Anniversary that just looked plain bizarre or out of place for the setting.

Level design hasn't been changed as much, though there are some differences. The Library, in particular, has been heavily reworked, with more interesting visual detail that funnels players along instead of a confusing, drab corridor.

Alongside these changes come new cutscenes and lines of dialogue. These are few and far between, with a small handful of changes clearly meant to provide additional narrative connective tissue. None of them ever felt out of place, such as with Captain Keyes mentioning his daughter, a character that appears in Halo 2 but went unremarked on in the first game.

Co-op play is of course still a blast, especially now with four-player support. Rolling through Halo campaigns with a friend or three has always been the ideal way to play them, and I can't see myself going back to the original game now that this option is available.

For anyone that wants even more reasons to replay the campaign, there's a new mode called Campaign Remix. This is basically an official version of the randomizer mods that have become popular for games like FromSoftware's Dark Souls and Elden Ring.

Players can turn on unlockable Skulls (which provide in-game modifiers like a burst of confetti when headshotting Grunts) and the existing enemies and weapons in the game are completely remixed. Dread the idea of facing Tank Form Flood and Hunters on the beach in The Silent Cartographer? It's now quite possible!

By far my favorite bit in Campaign Evolved is Operation: Meteorite, three new prequel missions set a year before the events of the main game. This mini-story follows Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson as they board a Covenant vessel in search of data on the Covenant homeworld.

From the cheesy one-liners to the varied encounters and beautiful environs, these missions are genuinely great, and they have me more excited for the future of Halo than anything else right now.

Halo: Campaign Evolved presents a path that makes sense, and I would love to see Halo Studios take a page from Capcom here moving forward, introducing remakes of other titles in the series while still having plenty of new ideas. The work done around The Library, in particular, bodes well for the changes that would be ideal to see if/when the studio also revisits Halo 2 and Halo 3.

Yet, none of that will matter if the teams that worked hard on this game aren't allowed to stick together or are ripped apart by yet more layoffs.

When I talked to some of the developers at Halo Studios during Summer Game Fest, they were cautiously excited. Clearly tired and a bit nervous, but overall, the team was happy. They were proud of how Campaign Evolved had come together, and even moreso that this game's development hadn't taken three years.

I've enjoyed my time revisiting Halo and seeing the original game treated with care while still being modernized for a new generation of players. I've loved getting a taste of something new with the additional missions and I can't wait to see what other fresh ideas the team can bring to the fore.

More than anything, I truly hope the people who made it happen will still be working on the franchise in the years to come.

Assorted news

While my thoughts on Halo were the lion's share of this newsletter, I also wanted to mention a few bits of non-layoff news over the past week that caught my eye.

• Compulsion Games, newly independent, continues to garner awards, with its adventure title South of Midnight taking home Game of the Year at Games for Change 2026. It's well-deserved, and I'm rooting for this studio's continued success.
• Dispatch from AdHoc Studio is finally launching on Xbox on July 29, 2026. It supports Xbox Play Anywhere, and I recommend checking it out if you haven't already.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's upcoming 2027 expansion, Songs of the Past, will be shown during the Opening Night Live at Gamescom showcase on Aug. 25, 2026 at 11:00am PT/2:00pm ET. I'm looking forward to seeing what the teams at CD Projekt RED and Fool's Theory are working on.
• Xbox is introducing Backward Compatible games on PC. Starting with four Original Xbox games that include Conker's Bad Fur Day, these games include Xbox Play Anywhere support. More games and support for Achievements will be coming later in the year.