The developers over at 343 Studios are constantly publishing updates to the community to stay transparent in their development. These have been especially fantastic to read through during the last few months as Halo: The Master Chief Collection continues to trickle out game by game.
Their latest release, Halo: Combat Evolved, has been received with generally positive reviews, as was Halo: Reach just before it. As the games come out chronologically by story rather than by their original dates of release, Halo fans await each release with baited breath, reading through the community updates to discover the latest bit of news about the franchise.
While the development team works towards a release of Halo 2, they’re already looking ahead and giving us a bit of information on the things further up the pipeline. Their latest update included several pictures from the in-progress Halo 3 remaster that they’ve got in the works.
The pictures are from the first mission and show a remarkable amount of improvement over the original, which still holds up decently well to this day. The environments are lush and alive with a good amount filling the screen, without having the issue that some of the 343 Halo‘s have had where enemies can be difficult to distinguish amongst a busy background.
343 also shared two screenshots from the incoming ODST remake, which are just as beautiful. As with the previous screenshots, these ones take place on the first mission, setting a contrast from the lush and living jungle of Halo 3‘s screenshots against the cold night city of ODST. You can view the pictures through 343’s Halo Waypoint here.
Looking towards the launch of the Halo 2 remaster, 343 discusses the April 17th release date of the flighting for the game. 343 invited over 100,000 Halo Insiders before upping the number towards the final weekend, getting a rigorously intense amount of beta testing in for the title. There was a good bit of discussion over getting this testing done, as well as the sense of pride and joy that came from seeing so many players happily reliving their memories.
“As soon as folks were in flight, we saw social media sites across the board light up with tweets from folks getting in and having loads of fun participating,” Tyler “Postums” Davis writes in the update. “It was pretty cool getting to witness and join in with so many reliving these games on PC.”
With production still well underway, it’s clear that 343 is approaching these remakes with a great amount of passion. Hopefully, they’ll continue to make fans happy as they release these legendary titles once more.
