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Twenty-five years after the original Halo: Combat Evolved launched alongside the first Xbox, the remake arrives on PC this Thursday. Halo: Campaign Evolved, developed by Halo Studios in Unreal Engine 5, begins early access on July 23 at 8 AM PDT for Premium Edition and Collector’s Edition owners. The global launch for everyone else follows on July 28. Standard Edition is $49.99 and is available via Xbox on PC, Steam, and PlayStation 5 on launch day. It is also included in PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with no additional charge.
This is a full remake, not a remaster. Unlike 2011’s Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, which was a graphical pass over the original engine, Campaign Evolved rebuilds the entire thing from scratch: new geometry, new lighting, redesigned encounters, modern movement mechanics including sprint and clamber, re-recorded voice acting, and a new music suite. The core 10-mission campaign from the 2001 original is all here, along with the new addition. Every edition includes Operation: METEORITE, a three-mission story arc set one year before the events of Combat Evolved, featuring Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson on a clandestine mission aboard a Covenant research vessel.
For co-op players, the original’s two-player co-op has been expanded to four players online, with two-player split-screen available on consoles. Cross-play and cross-progression are supported across Xbox, Windows PC, and Steam. Xbox Play Anywhere means one purchase covers both Xbox console and PC on the Microsoft side.
The PlayStation 5 availability is the headline nobody expected a few years ago. Campaign Evolved is the first mainline Halo title to launch on a Sony console. It is not on PlayStation via some legacy platform arrangement; it is a day-one simultaneous release.
Performance requirements for PC were published last month. PC users will need at least 100 GB to install the game and 16 GB of memory for 1080p/1440p, but are recommended to have 32 GB of memory for 4K. The game also appears to be ever so slightly demanding of CPU, with at least an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X or Intel CORE i9-13900K recommended for 4K Ultra. UE5 titles have historically been GPU-bound, and the 8GB VRAM question that we raised in our RTX 5060 Ti comparison is worth keeping in mind at higher quality settings.
Early reviews are under embargo until July 23 at 8 AM PDT, timed to early access.
Early access: July 23, 8 AM PDT. Global launch: July 28, 8 AM PDT.
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