Testing has been scheduled for the upcoming Halo 2 title that will be released on Steam. 343 Industries has announced that they’ll be working to include content for Halo 2 and a variety of other features for the upcoming updates to The Master Chief Collection.
In an announcement through the Halo Waypoint forum, the developers spoke on the upcoming schedule of releases.
“Many of you already know this, but Halo 2 and Halo 2: Anniversary are now on deck for the next release to PC,” they stated. “With that in mind, the team is heads down on creating the spec for the next series of PC flights. We’re currently planning for our next flight to include content for Halo 2, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo: Reach’s Forge & Theater for PC, and potentially some Halo: Reach audio fixes.”
It’s great to see that they aren’t just pushing out new content, but are also adding in a few fixes and improvements on the content that already exists. Flighting serves as a great way for the team to get early access builds to the Halo Insiders before going live to the public.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has joined Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC with @XboxGamePassPC, @MicrosoftStore, & @Steam!https://t.co/iUUgn1pYnZ pic.twitter.com/ZrbOL196mO
— Halo (@Halo) March 3, 2020
By doing so, the team is able to add another level of polish and clean up the rough edges of the work-in-progress they’re working with. Releasing these games to the public is a massive step that can highlight issues that weren’t able to be seen during production, but by providing the early access builds to Halo Insiders, these issues can be discovered sooner.
“If we remember back to earlier this year, we aimed to start flighting in January, but it ended up rolling into February when those kicked off,” the announcement states, bluntly stating their own flaws in a great moment of transparency. “Please be patient as we want to get these out as quickly as possible, but in development: things happen.”
Throughout the rest of the announcement, the developers discuss how vital it is to them to ensure that “the most playable version of Halo” is brought to the loyal fans of the franchise. They look to excellent performance and a “laudable implementation of cooperative play,” which they admit the PC version has never had despite how vital it is to the core of Halo. They feel that, while the current version is great, it falls just short of properly “preserving one of the greatest games of all times for the generations to come.”
All in all, it’s great to see 343 putting an appropriate amount of care and effort into the title. Hopefully, they’re as thorough as possible with the testing so that the release of Halo 2 gets the quality control it deserves.
