Q: Is Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary running on the Reach engine?
A: No, well, sort of. Anniversary is running on the exact underlying code that powered Halo: Combat Evolved ten years ago. The game will feel the same in every sense. The improved graphics are built right on top of the engine that powered the original game. This enables the very cool feature of being able to switch between the old and new graphics at the press of a button. Frank O’Connor said the new visuals were essentially “painted” over the originals. It is an apt description. The confusion over the engine is because of Anniversary’s multiplayer element. The seven maps described in the trailer are for the Reach multiplayer suite. So these maps are of course running in the Reach engine.
Q: Ohhhhh, new maps?
A: No, well, sort of. From the information we have all seven of the maps look to be remakes from Halo: CE multiplayer with some caveats. One of the maps has been confirmed to be a brand new Firefight map lifted from the Halo: CEA campaign. In the trailer we can clearly see Damnation at :54, Hang ‘Em High at :57, and Beaver Creek at 1:01. So to recap, we know three of the adversarial maps to be remade, leaving three to be revealed, and one unknown Firefight map.
Q: Great, an ancient campaign and two map packs for sixty dollars…
A: First, that’s not a question. Second, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is going to be forty dollars.
Q: Who is developing this? There sure are a lot of names here.
A: Saber Interactive (Timeshift) is handling the Campaign. Certain Affinity (Defiant Map Pack) is handling the multiplayer maps. 343 Studios, Microsoft’s internal Halo studio is overseeing all aspects of the project.
Q: So, the important question, are there going to be Achievements?
A: Yes, even the Burger King Xbox 360 games had achievements.
Q: Forge? Theater?
A: No news yet, but I don’t see a new Halo game coming with less features than the last.
Q: When will we know more?
A: Anniversary’s next date with the press is PAX East’s Halofest, Augest 26-28.
Q: Release Date?
A: The exact ten year anniversary, November 15, 2011.
If you have any follow up questions fire off a comment or a tweet to @Nintendubus. Your point of contact for E3 2011 at Gameranx.com.
