Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto reviews Campaign Evolved in public

Marcus Lehto, a co-creator of Halo and the designer of Master Chief, has been posting his impressions of Halo: Campaign Evolved on social media as he works through the remake, GameSpot reports. His verdict is broadly positive, with a handful of specific complaints.

"Overall, I really love the upgrades: movement, cinematics, visuals. Damn, the lighting is brilliant," Lehto wrote, adding that his gripes were "taking a back seat to the fun." He is playing on Heroic, which he said was the difficulty the original Bungie team used when testing a level for its fun factor; Legendary, he said, is for players "who love punishment."

Where he pushed back

Lehto's sharpest criticism was aimed at the remake's new system for telling players where to go next.

He also called a few of the added cinematics "absolutely cringe," singling out the new outro for Assault on the Control Room as something he "can't un-see." Elsewhere he was more complimentary: he said the Assault Rifle "feels great," described the Covenant weapons as "much more brutal with a solid punch," and credited Halo Studios with the "real effort" of rebuilding the game in Unreal Engine. On the original game's lighting during the Flood missions, Lehto was blunt, calling it "f**king awful."

Lehto also addressed the negative reaction the remake has drawn online, saying platforms such as X foster that hostility. "I bet we would all eventually have a pretty damn good time playing the game together," he said of the prospect of critics playing it in the same room.

Campaign Evolved is the first Halo game released on PlayStation and, as its name indicates, ships without multiplayer. It follows 2011's Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary as a remaster of the first game and adds three prequel missions under the Operation Meteorite banner. GameSpot notes that early sales data suggests a soft start on PlayStation, which one analyst attributed in part to its price.