Halo: The Master Chief Collection Teams With Modders To Bring Cut Content To Halo: Combat Evolved & Halo 2

For Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the game spun around its reputation from its very porous release to becoming the pinnacle of an ongoing project that the industry could take notes from. And with the games in the entire package properly running, shipping to PC, developer 343 Industries is looking to new avenues.

In the past, the Xbox Game Studios team has confirmed mod support is coming to the game with limited implementation for select titles already available. Atop of that, cut content is also a focus for 343 Industries to execute which never made it into the original Bungie release. This year we witnessed The Flood being added for Halo 3: ODST Firefight which trumps even the latest Halo Infinite in recent events.

This week, the team returns to share cut content from Halo: Combat Evolved and even Halo 2 is coming in future updates. The team shares this effort is in collaboration with a dedicated cell of modders looking to bring this reality to Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The most eye-opening is the ambition to implement the original Halo 2 E3 demo ‘Earthcity’.

We’ve teased this in a few of the shots above, but I can confirm we are working on a rebuild of the original E3 Earthcity scenario that makes it playable in modern retail Halo 2. This was NOT a trivial process, and we should probably layer on a whole page of caveats that come with taking a demo map for an engine that no longer exists and getting it to not blow up the current lightmapper (among other issues that come from letting people go into areas that were never intended to be seen).

In many ways this is harder than Alphamoon to work on, as it was never made to be played “off script.” Oh, and the scripts. Well over 3400 lines of barely documented haloscript originally written under an insane time crunch almost two decades ago, which itself was made to work around various bugs of the engine at that time. Not a joy to decipher and translate into the modern engine, to say the least.

Alex Wakeford, Halo Waypoint Community Writer

The post references Alphamoon: those who are unaware it is a cut campaign map that was initially in Halo: Combat Evolved, but got severed from the full release. This is a different beast altogether that the modding group is still working on, but has shown to be successful with its progress made so far.

Most of the meat for this blog post gravitates around Halo: Combat Evolved with implementing other cut content for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The post includes missing wildlife such as the Thornbeast, Blind Wolf, and Keelbug. Additionally, vehicles such as the Spectre, Kestrel, Viper, Forerunner Tank, and Doozy were also referenced for the project.

Weapons are also iterated upon with ‘MacWeapons’ also taking up the spotlight. The Shover Sniper Rifle, Plasma Pistol & Plasma Rifle variants, Submachine Gun versions, and even a Needler Minigun was archived and picked up off the cutting room floor. And yes, the Microwave Gun is also on the list as well.

What are you most excited to see being worked on for Halo: The Master Chief Collection?

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is out now for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Source: Halo Waypoint