'Halo' finally comes to PlayStation in the form of a brand new remake

There were headlines about the next Xbox console this week, but the biggest news out of Microsoft's gaming division actually concerned a competitor's platform.

On Friday, Xbox and current series developer Halo Studios announced Halo: Campaign Evolved. As its name suggests, this is a full-scale remake of the original Halo single-player campaign, built in Unreal Engine 5. It features all of the original levels, plus some new gameplay features on top of the rebuilt visuals. It's set for release sometime in 2026, and in a shocking development for anyone who used internet forums 20 years ago, it's coming to PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox and PC.

As you can see in a lengthy gameplay demo video set in perhaps the game's most famous level, The Silent Cartographer, Halo Studios has done some work on this game beyond just making it look more like a modern title. Features from later Halo games, like sprinting and the ability to aim down sights with every weapon, have made their way into this game. There will also be some weapons that weren't present in the first Halo, such as the Battle Rifle and Energy Sword, available for use in this game. Halo Studios is also promising three new prequel levels, but did not show them off or specify what they would be about.

This is interesting on a number of levels. First and foremost, for those of us who are old enough to remember the console wars of yesteryear, seeing Halo on a PlayStation console is roughly akin to when they opened a McDonald's in the Soviet Union. It's an anticlimactic conclusion to a decades-long ideological struggle, one that you could see coming from a mile away if you'd been paying attention for the past few years. Microsoft has been slowly building up to this by releasing first-party titles like Gears of War: Reloaded and Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 in recent months. Halo coming to PS5 in some form was inevitable.

It's also not without some controversy. Some longtime Halo fans online are not happy about the visual style on display here, while others have questioned the need to add new vehicles, weapons, and movement abilities to a game that arguably doesn't need them. One of the game's original level designers even weighed in on X to mildly criticize elements of the remake.

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That sort of thing is to be expected when remaking a bona fide classic like Halo, but at least on my social feeds, the reaction was harsher than usual. We'll see how it works out when Campaign Evolved launches sometime next year.