The Halo franchisee has been something special from the start. From the story, sound design, and gameplay, it was that perfect mixture to create a legacy in the gaming industry. Unfortunately, despite having a big following on PC, the full original Halo trilogy never made it on to PC. That was until the incremental roll out of the Master Chief Collection for PC started. This month, PC gamers will be able to join in the full fun and epic storyline of the original trilogy’s Human-Covenant War.
I game on PC as well as console. In terms of Halo, I’ve played on console, but owned the first Halo on PC. I played the game with friends or family on their consoles, but never really owned a game in the series on console until I got the heavily patched MCC on Xbox One. So, on PC, I felt like I was missing a significant part of the fun, until now. While the overall sales of the PC editions of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 were lower than the sales of the console versions, there is still a sizable Halo fan base on PC. Even with the complaints regarding optimization issues for the PC, the fans on PC wanted more. So, it’s great to see that the full trilogy (including the anniversary editions of Halo: CE and Halo 2 with upgraded graphics) has finally made it to PCs. In fact, by year’s end, the full MCC will be rolled out in almost exact story order, with only games missing now being Halo 3: ODST and Halo 4.
While I don’t necessarily have the hardware for 4k enhanced graphics and unlimited framerate that the MCC on PC currently boasts, I still love the series and would be willing to return to the PC editions before I have the hardware that would make the most of what the PC version of the MCC can offer. That goes especially for the original trilogy.
343 Studios’s revisiting the older games is important. It breathes new life into the franchise by showing us where we’ve been so that we can have at least a little context on where we’re going in the game universe. Returning to the older games also gives us an appreciation for both what we’ve gained over the years. There’s also an added benefit to the developers returning to the older games in order to bring them to PC in the way that they re-released games for the Xbox One. Much like it gives us gamers perspective, it helps give the development team more grounding. Coupled with that, the scalability of PC gaming based on hardware helps them understand what more they can do in terms of improvements toward graphics and gameplay. That’s going to be a huge benefit within the next year or two since Phil Spencer and Team Xbox announced that the goal for the next two years is going to be having games scalable and cross-generation.
There’s only one really major thing to hope for, especially for the competitive players. Since the full MCC is coming to PC, while there is crossplay support for Steam and the Microsoft Store/Windows 10, hopefully Xbox/PC crossplay will also coming soon. Halo Support did post on this when they were starting to work toward the launch of MCC PC, but there is no update as of yet. Whether playing cooperatively or competitively, more people playing isn’t a bad thing. After all, remember #23 of Murphy’s Law of Combat Operations. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at. Regardless, I’m ready to rejoin the fight.