During a recent interview with IBTimes UK, 343 Industries Executive Producer Daniel Ayoub has revealed that the developer had once considered adding Halo Reach and Halo ODST to the upcoming Xbox One anthology – Halo: The Master Chief Collection. “We obviously considered [the two games], but the realities of time and space really just dictated what we could do”, explained Ayoub. “The reason we stuck to the Master Chief games… there are two reasons, really. First of all, Halo 5 is coming, so we wanted to tee up that release by having all of the Master Chief games, and honestly, the second one is (again) just a question of time and disk space”.
“The number of questions I’ve gotten about ODST and Reach… it’s definitely made its way into our subconscious. I know my boss Bonnie [Ross, 343’s Studio Head] and I were behind closed doors at E3, and we were shocked just how many people were asking that question”. So will Reach and ODST ever make it to Microsoft’s latest console? Well, 343 doesn’t have anything planned at the moment, but Ayoub would certainly want it to happen. “I’d love to”, he said. “As a Halo fan, I love the idea of having all the games available on the current generation. That said, we don’t really have any plans to go after those right now”.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection includes Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4 (with Halo 2 receiving the Anniversary treatment), replete with their full catalogue of extras, including all multiplayer maps and gameplay modes. All four games are running at 60 frames per second and in 1080p, and feature lighting upgrades. The games have received no changes to their original stories or gameplay, but the Halo 2 cutscenes have been redone by Blur Studios using pre-rendered CGI, and are slightly longer than they were in the original game. Furthermore, the collection includes a Mission Setlists mode, where players can create and play custom sets of missions from any of the four games.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection launches on November 11th in North America and November 14th in Europe, exclusively on the Xbox One.