Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary PC Beta to Begin Early Next Year

[Tsing]

The PC port of Halo: Reach is finally getting released next month (December 3), but with four games left to remaster in The Master Chief Collection, 343 Studios has plenty of work ahead of them. Luckily for fans, the team is moving as quick as they can to complete the stack: community director Brian Jarrard confirmed that his team would be tackling Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary immediately after the holiday, with flighting beginning in early 2020. Those of you who can't wait to play the original Halo on PC can cope by revisiting Gearbox Software's 2003 port.

“We’re taking a game that’s very old, and we’re trying to update it for this platform – making it run at 60 fps, 4K – but also trying to account for all the requirements that PC gamers expect nowadays. That’s things like uncapped frame rates, an FOV slider, and support for different aspect ratios.” Jarrard says “it’s been more challenging than we initially thought, and it’s taken longer than we expected. But it is important that we don’t cut corners.”

 

[ThreeDee]

I used to work at a school for troubled teens as kind of the JR I.T. guy and scraped up enough parts to build 10 or so computers good enough to play the original Halo for PC under Vista pre-release .. and once they got their homework and stuff done, then we'd all play Halo over the LAN and frag each other .. job didn't pay well but it was one of the funnest jobs I've ever had ...

 

[Niner51]

I used to work at a school for troubled teens as kind of the JR I.T. guy and scraped up enough parts to build 10 or so computers good enough to play the original Halo for PC under Vista pre-release .. and once they got their homework and stuff done, then we'd all play Halo over the LAN and frag each other .. job didn't pay well but it was one of the funnest jobs I've ever had ...

I used to play this over LAN with friends and it was a blast.

 

[Riccochet]

Yeah, back in the good ole days when the server software came with the game. I ran a Halo server for a while. Good times.

 

[iissmart]

"But it is important that we don’t cut corners "

Then why are they releasing Halo: Reach on PC without an uncapped framerate like they promised?

 

[DrezKill]

Had a lot of fun playing Gearbox's Halo 1 PC port at LANParties for years. Even got it installed on my current PC. A friend sold me the Anniversary version for X360 for like 10 bucks. That version was limited to 30fps. The XB1 version in the MCC runs at 60fps. I never bought MCC cuz I was ****ing tired of playing Halo games on console. Will be nice to finally play Halo 1 Anniversary on PC with mouse+kb, along with all the other Halo games that never made it to PC. Halo 2 Anniversary will be nice to have, but on PC Project Cartographer already has me covered for Halo 2 (also installed on my current PC). Halo 2 Anniversary will just get me the fancy new remastered graphics.

Really I was just waiting for Reach and ODST to hit PC. All those years I suffered trying to play those games on X360 with a ****ing controller, with my aiming looking like a drunk baby was playing. Soon I will be able to properly play these games, on PC where they ****ing should have been to begin with. Will be cool to have Halo 3 on PC as well. Could've used that last year after I ran through Halo 1 and 2 on PC again. Halo 4 wasn't bad but I played through it twice in co-op on X360 and that was good enough for me. I don't need to play it again, even with mouse and keyboard.

I played most of these games to death on console (usually in co-op), especially Reach and ODST, but when I finally get to play them on PC with mouse and keyboard, it will be like playing them for the first time for realz.