Marcus Lehto (and me!) on Campaign Evolved. (long) (Gaming)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Saturday, August 15, 2026, 15:44 (1 hours, 0 minutes ago)
edited by Kermit, Saturday, August 15, 2026, 16:14

I pretty much agree with his take, both the praises and the criticisms.

Now that I've completely finished both the campaign and bonus missions (on heroic), I understand more of the disappointment, but I don't understand the degree, except that on the internet, only extreme hate or love gets any attention. It's a beautiful game in its presentation. I thought the lighting and the art was pretty great throughout. I thought the new recordings of the principals' lines were mostly okay, and if not necessarily better than the original, at least as good in most cases. One would be right to ask why do it in that case, and I bet that the tweaks and additions to the script would have been considered more jarring had they not, and there were improvements made. There were clarifications added and places where they pumped up the emotional resonance for those who are well acquainted with the trilogy (what they did with Keyes pistol was a good example). Based on the credits, our own Grimbrother One may have had a hand in that, and I liked it! The other important thing to say is that the game felt like Halo to me, which is no small feat.

I liked other things, too, such as:

• The selection of weapons from the later games.
  
• How pickups could be saved for later activation
  
• Vehicle jacking and disabling with an overcharge
  
• Changes to the maps (especially The Library and AOTCR) to make encounters more interesting.
  
• The flood are better and scarier—more like Halo 3.
  
• The hunters are scary again (I didn’t like this at first.) There’s no quick solution (unless you have a sword, but like the original magnum solution, it’s tricky).

Some things I didn’t like:

• No more breaking glass. Assault on the Control Room just isn’t the same.
  
• No ice to skate around on.
  
• No going underwater (in the ocean or where fuel had pooled on Keyes)
  
• The removal or change to some cutscenes that had sweeping camera angles that I thought better showed off the environments in the original.
  
• The cutscenes not being in-engine.
  
• Inexplicable boundaries—especially behind the big rock after your cross the first bridge on Halo.
  
• Completely new music. Granted, I remember hearing this only once.

Some things I have mixed feelings about:

• Elites speaking English. I missed backward David Scully but the switch does kinda fix Keyes' line about overhearing the Covenant talking about Halo. (Yes, I guess the grunts could have been talking about it, but the Elites doing it makes more sense, especially since they are the guards.)
  
• Sprint. I mostly didn't mind it. It wasn't that much faster than the original and in my opinion did not break the game.
  
• Terminals and skulls. I just found the last of the terminals, and haven’t yet read them all, but I like what I’ve read. I am glad these are text, as opposed to those waypoint films in Anniversary, which I had very strong feelings about. I wish they appeared in the game as they did in Halo 3, but at least they don’t take you out of the game.
  
• Finding the skulls (with guidance of course—I’m not crazy!) was a nice metagame once I’d finished. I do think that the skulls that allow you to change back to traditional settings should be among the freebies they give you once you’ve found a few (or even just let you have them from the start).
  
• Markers/waypoints. I didn’t mind the markers on remaining enemies too much, although I’m sympathetic to the argument that they break immersion. Waypoints also seemed a bit aggressive, but as someone who easily gets turned around (as anyone who has raided with me can attest), I have to admit I appreciated them. In the original, it was very common for me to get disoriented inside the Truth and Reconciliation, for instance.

Game features/bugs:

• I wish the game had mutilple saved game slots. The ability to save co-op checkpoints would be nice, too.
  
• Quick Resume is buggy on Xbox. I find that if I don’t completely close the game and restart, I might get a black screen during cutscenes.
  
• I found the menus confusing and not well labeled. More than once I forgot which submenu I was in, since they all mostly have the same options past the top level.

More about central characters

I thought the new Keyes was good, and although I didn’t know until I looked it up that it was no longer Pete Stacker, I cannot help but want to hear HIS new recordings.

About Cortana, Jen Taylor’s new line readings were fine, and I liked some of the new animations (the 50-foot woman scene in AOTCR was particularly effective). I’ve seen comments about the new Cortana being ugly. No accounting for taste or how mean the internet can be, but I liked her. It doesn’t hurt that I really like Kathryn Hahn, who she reminded me of, but I thought she was attractive (more attractive than the original) without veering into Playboy Playmate territory like they did in Halo 4. What I didn’t like was that at times her facial expressions did not match the seriousness with which I thought she should be saying the things she was saying.

I thought that Keston John as Johnson did a good job of sounding like David Scully (and it’s worth remembering that the first Johnson was a riff on the Sergeant from Aliens). To be honest, though, this was my least favorite part of the remake, and I don’t blame the voice actor. I blame the animation and writing. They would routinely have him look at the camera and mug. They made Johnson high on his own supply and it broke immersion for me, especially in the bonus missions, where almost everything out of his mouth was some cliched action movie quip. I know Johnson always did bring a bit of comic relief, but nearly gone was the pathos that took full bloom in Halo 3.

About those bonus missions

Playing the bonus missions could poison the well for this game, and I think it might have for those who played them first. I enjoyed the gameplay, and I even appreciated what they were trying to do with the story, but it was just overwrought and overacted. To be honest, some of the original Halo was a bit overdone, too, and the irony is this probably wouldn’t have the received the criticism it has had it been 2001, but our standards have changed. I didn’t hate it, but I did cringe during parts, along with many apparently. Still, the gameplay was better than it was Halo 4 or 5. Forerunners are my least favorite Halo enemies.

Finally

If you love Halo, it's a nice trip down memory lane. I look forward to four-player co-op, which, as I think some of us said, was worth the price of admission. I'm glad it exists. Parts of it will make your eyes bleed, and I mean that in a good way.

Kerm

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