Halo 2 Anniversary Mods – Custom Campaign Missions!

It isn’t just painting Daleks that has kept me occupied during lockdown – I have also been working on a huge range of campaign mods for the PC version of Halo 2 Anniversary, available on Steam. Since the start of June I have been regularly uploading these mods to the Halo: The Master Chief Collection Mod Nexus, and between then and the time of writing this post the mods have had over 4,800 combined downloads.

But what do these mods actually do? The answer varies from mission to mission. Initially the project began as a simple idea to implement one tiny change to Halo 2: I wanted more allied Grunts on Uprising. After downloading Assembly and fiddling around with several failed attempts, I finally figured out how to ensure that the 2 hapless Grunts that spawn to help the player at the start of the mission are now 4 hapless Grunts. Or 6 hapless Grunts. Or 8 hapless Grunts. Or 20 combat-ready Elite Majors dual-wielding Brute Plasma Rifles.

Since childhood I have been playing the same campaign missions over and over again – whether that is a testament to the game’s enduring replayability or my zealous obsession is up to you, but either way over time I have come to know the Halo 2 campaign missions very well, and this knowledge came in very handy when creating modded versions of each mission. Because the program breaks down the entities in the game into lists and assigns each entry on the list a number, all that is required is to figure out which number correlates to each entity from there the rest falls into place after 100 or so botched experiments.

I eventually had a stable build, which I dubbed ‘Uprising Evolved’ – simply because ‘Evolved’ was the first Halo-sounding word that popped into my head as I was naming the file. I have since realised that this is somewhat ironic, as the inclusion of the tagline ‘Combat Evolved’ on the original Halo was a decision made entirely due to marketing purposes. Nonetheless, this began a naming convention for my mods of the Arbiter missions in Halo 2.

The mission ‘Sacred Icon’, modded to include Brute allies and more Grunts and Jackals

Over the month of June I created mods for every campaign mission in Halo 2, and I created a mod page for each campaign mission on the Nexus so I could upload several versions of each level. The regular versions of the mods added more allies to the mission and expanded the range of weapons and ranks that pre-existing allies have. Another feature of the mods was that each one had several variations – for example, The Arbiter included a Heretic Edition which allowed the player to play through the level as Heretic forces fighting the Covenant, and the modded Chief missions had variants that added Elite allies.

However, when Halo 3 was released on PC, disaster struck. 343 industries made changes to the Halo 2 level files, correcting bugs with the port that had existed since the first release of MCC on Xbox, including the infamous disappearance of dual-wielding in Halo 2 Anniversary. This update, whilst absolutely necessary for the long-term health of the MCC, also had the unfortunate side effect of breaking all the mods I had created up until that point, which included all of Halo 2’s campaign and the various sub-mods.

The mission ‘Regret’, modded to include ODSTs and more allied Marines

Since then, I have been rebuilding my mod portfolio from scratch, and although the current mods do not have as many variations as the original range, they are arguably more polished as I was able to learn from the mistakes that I had made when creating my first set of Halo 2 mods to ensure that the second wave are more stable. Although a future MCC update might render them all unusable, for now these Halo 2 mods are fully-functional and they can be found here. If you want to play through Halo 2’s campaign in a whole new way, all you have to do is download the file, make a backup of your Halo 2 mission files and copy the new ones over. All the instructions are included on the mod page, the installation process is quick and simple.

Since the release of Halo 3, I have also released modded versions of Sierra 117, The Storm and The Covenant, with more on the way. These mods add more allied Elites, who were tragically overlooked in the vanilla game, to make combat encounters more exciting. Across all of the mods currently released so far it is possible to play through Halo 2 with allied Elites on almost every mission, so for those who love to fight alongside the greatest warriors of the Covenant, these mods are for you.

Halo – MCC Gets a PC Release and Reach DLC – Classic Halos FINALLY get a PC Release

In a stunning move, 343 industries have exceeded fans’ expectations two-fold by not only announcing that Halo: Reach will be added to MCC, a wild but popular fan request, but also announcing that the long-awaited PC release for MCC is imminent and, remarkably, the game will be available on Steam. This is perhaps the biggest piece of Halo gaming news since the announcement of Halo: Infinite, and fans are ecstatic.

This can only mean good things for the Halo community, as provided that 343 doesn’t make the same mistakes as they did with MCC’s Xbox One release back in 2014, the Halo community is going to grow with a new influx of PC players who are either newcomers to the franchise and are curious or nostalgic former fans, perhaps those who never bought an Xbox One and switched to either Playstation or PC, who will now take the opportunity to revisit the franchise.

Xbox 360 Era Halo Games are coming to PC at last on the MCC –

Another important thing to note is that the release of MCC on PC will mark the first time that Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 4 will be released officially on the PC. In fact, a mainline Halo game hasn’t been released on PC since Halo 2 Vista in the mid 2000s, so this announcement is a big leap forward for Halo in the PC community. With the inclusion of the full classic multiplayer systems for all the Halo games, as well as Firefight, Spartan Ops, Forge, Theater, and not to mention the Campaigns for every classic Halo game, MCC in its current state is quite an impressive game in terms of content.

However, there are some technical conditions to this release regardless of what version of MCC you have – for console users, Reach’s Campaign and Firefight are premium DLC, whilst the multiplayer and forge are available for free. For PC users, each game in the MCC will release separately in chronological order – that is, starting with Reach, then CE, then 2, and so on. 343 industries have decided to release MCC on PC in this way to ensure that there are as few issues as possible with the release and to mitigate any immediate problems. Whilst this may frustrate some PC users who really want to play Halo 2 Anniversary or Halo 3 on PC, this is a good sign that 343 industries are have learned from the mistakes of the original release of MCC in 2014.

Modding Halo MCC on PC Will be Possible – But Not on Release

Although not every fan would necessarily ask for it as a feature, the idea of including modding capability for Halo: MCC on PC has been thrown around. For one, we know that modding Halo on PC is hardly a new idea – mods have been created for Halo: CE (via the official Halo: Custom Edition), Halo 2 Vista (but only just) and even Halo 5: Forge for PC, and we have already covered a popular new mod that was recently released for Halo: CE on Sacred Icon before – known as Halo: SPV3, this incredible mod is a full conversion that adds features from many other games to the original Halo and expands the weapon sandbox, levels and enemy variety. Could this kind of content become available for all the games included in the MCC for PC in the future? Could we see a new renaissance of the Classic Halo portfolio thanks to the ability of the community to continuously create new content?

Given that games like Skyrim or Star Wars Battlefront II, both games that have been available for a considerable number of years, still have a massive playerbase thanks to the release of new mods, it could well be possible that the Halo community, which has suffered more than a few distinct schisms and crises since 343 industries took over the series, may finally come together once again in the way that the original release of the MCC back in 2014 was intended to.

Halo MCC – Top 5 Features that Need to be Added to the Master Chief Collection

With 343 accelerating their efforts to fix Halo: The Master Chief Collection through regular updates, the team are listening to what fans want to see added in the near future. As such, this list ranks the top 5 features that need to be added to the Master Chief Collection:

#5 – Classic Halo: CE Sound Effects

One of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary’s greatest shortcomings when it came to recreating the classic Halo experience was the lack of an option to restore the classic sound effects. Although this feature was present in Halo 2: Anniversary when MCC was released, the same was not true for the ported Halo: CE Anniversary. However, with 343 industries recently proving that making changes to the base game of Halo: CE Anniversary is possible, fans have asked for the classic Halo: CE sound effects to return when playing in classic mode on MCC, for posterity and nostalgia purposes.

#4 – Customisable Campaign Playlists

When the playlists feature for MCC was announced back before the game launched, the idea was praised as a novel one – having the ability to play various thematically linked levels from across various Halo games in one long uninterrupted playlist was a great idea, but due to the lack of customisation options with the playlists, nowadays they sit abandoned. However, if 343 industries introduced the ability for players to create their own playlists, customise scoring, timer, skulls and other settings, and perhaps even share their playlists with other fans through the soon-to-be released custom games browser, undoubtedly the feature would become far more popular.

#3 – Halo 3 ODST: Firefight

As Halo 3: ODST was added to the game when it was still in its disorganised and uncompleted state, at the time fans were simply grateful that something was being done to try and improve the game in some way. However, a lot of time has passed since then and, now that MCC is in a much better state, fans are now asking – where is Halo 3 ODST’s Firefight mode? After all, Halo 4’s Spartan Ops was included in the MCC, so there is no reason why Firefight couldn’t be implemented, and fans are eager to relive the Firefight matchmaking days on the MCC.

#2 – More Maps for Halo 2: Anniversary

Another piece of extra content that was added to the MCC alongside Halo 3: ODST was the remastered version of Halo 2’s map Relic, now called ‘Remnant’, which became the seventh map in the Halo 2: Anniversary rota, not counting Forge maps. Many fans have pointed out, however, that seven maps is a pitifully small amount for what is essentially a standalone multiplayer system, and this leads to the multiplayer eventually getting repetitive – if Halo 4 maps were playable in the Halo 2: Anniversary engine then that would alleviate this, but what fans really want is more remastered Halo 2 maps. Classics that should definitely be remastered are Headlong, Gemini, Containment, Turf and Waterworks, just to give Halo 2: Anniversary multiplayer a bit more of a kick.

#1 – Increased Customisation Options

Arguably the thing fans want most out of Halo: MCC is customisation, be it armour sets and visual cosmetics to customise the player’s multiplayer character, or skulls to customise the campaign experience, or even a main menu music selector (a feature that definitely needs to be added). 343 should take the opportunity to make Halo MCC as varied and customisable as possible, in order to give players the Halo experience that they’ve always wanted on Xbox One. While fans are of course eager for new content, there are several aspects of Halo: MCC’s customisation system that can be improved using previously existing material from past Halo games – for example, adding in the ability to modify separate armour pieces like in Halo 3, or add in the skins and armour sets from Halo 4’s DLC that was omitted from MCC. However 343 industries decides to go about implementing it, increased customisation is definitely top of the list for many fans when it comes to potential new features for MCC.

At the end of the day, no matter how many features fans want to be added to MCC, the greatest wish of many Halo fans has already been granted – 343 industries is working to fix MCC, and even if none of the potential features listed here end up making it to MCC, the fact that the company is making progress on fixing MCC, but also expanding it to add new features never seen before in a Halo game, is great for Halo fans and might just be the critical show of good faith from 343 industries that will draw former Halo fans back to the franchise as it moves into a new era with Halo: Infinite.