After months of speculation, the cat is officially out of the bag – Halo is getting a Combat Evolved remake called Halo: Campaign Evolved, and it will be released next year in honor of the franchise's 25th anniversary and for the first time ever on PlayStation.
The title “Campaign Evolved” is particularly notable as the Halo Studios-led remake will have no multiplayer suite at launch. It will have local co-op play as well as online co-op features, but if you were hoping to play Slayer with your friends on the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, then unfortunately that won't happen.
So far, much of the focus on Campaign Evolved has been on the additions made, including new prequel missions, plus the use of Unreal Engine 5. But it's not yet clear why the first-person shooter won't have multiplayer like Gears of War: Reloaded when it launched in August.
Turns out Microsoft didn't reveal why either.
Combat Evolved didn't “launch” Halo multiplayer, but it's still an important element
As first reported by The Verge's Tom Warren, ahead of Campaign Evolved's official reveal, where media had access to a pre-beta version, he asked Microsoft about the lack of multiplayer, something many consider a hallmark of Halo as a franchise.
“I asked Microsoft to comment on the lack of multiplayer, but the company declined to discuss it,” Warren wrote.
While Microsoft is keeping quiet as well, it's unclear what exactly led to the decision not to include multiplayer. While Warren notes that Combat Evolved technically didn't have “online” multiplayer, it did have local maps, and in the decades since CE's release, multiplayer has become increasingly popular and synonymous with Halo, so the whole decision was pretty confusing to say the least.
Perhaps more fascinating than finding out why there's no multiplayer is just how that will affect the price of the yet-to-be-revealed game.
