Halo: Campaign Evolved details its changes to the 2001 campaign

Halo Studios has detailed the changes it made in Halo: Campaign Evolved, its remake of 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved, in posts published on the PlayStation Blog and Xbox Wire. Xbox Wire said the game entered early access on July 23 for Premium Edition buyers, and the remake marks the first appearance of the original campaign on PlayStation hardware.

Controls, health and encounters

According to the PlayStation Blog, the control scheme has been rebuilt around modern conventions, moving grenades, weapon swapping and reloading onto the buttons players now expect, with custom layouts still available. A sprint has been added on the left stick click, and the Warthog can be driven with conventional stick-and-trigger controls, with the original look-based steering retained as an option.

Health packs are gone. Both shields and health now regenerate, with health recovering considerably more slowly than shields. Sony's post also describes changes to enemy placement, with Jackals carrying Beam Snipers, weapons introduced in Halo 2, and Flood-infected Hunters appearing in later levels. The Overshield and Active Camouflage power-ups are now stored on pickup and triggered manually rather than activating immediately, and players can hijack enemy vehicles, a mechanic drawn from later games in the series.

Every weapon now supports aiming down sights, and weapon audio has been reworked to pair with the DualSense controller's haptics on PS5. Guns from later Halo titles, among them the SMG, Needle Rifle, Fuel Rod Cannon and Beam Rifle, have been added, and the Energy Sword can be picked up from defeated Elites.

New missions, co-op and Campaign Remix

Xbox Wire said the remake runs on Unreal Engine 5 and adds three bonus missions under the banner Operation: METEORITE, set roughly a year before the events of the original campaign and following Master Chief alongside Sergeant Johnson. The campaign also supports up to four players online for the first time, with cross-platform play; weapon spawns scale with the size of the group, levels have been adjusted for the extra players, and more vehicles are available.

Skulls, the collectible modifiers hidden through the campaign, have been moved from their original locations, and new ones have been added. One of them enables an optional third-person camera.

Collecting any three Skulls unlocks Campaign Remix, a mode for replaying finished missions. It enables three further modifiers by default: Adaptation randomises enemy types, Reload randomises weapon placement, and Armistice turns every enemy faction against the player rather than each other. Remix also adds nine weapons drawn from elsewhere in the series and two visual filters, a night-vision mode that outlines enemies and points of interest, and a Flood spore effect that fills the environment with fog.