Halo 2 was released on November 9th, 2004. On November 11th 2014, celebrating 10 years of Halo 2, Halo Master Chief Collection will be released for the Xbox One. Halo Master Chief Collection will contain Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo 4, each boasting 1080p resolution, running at 60 frames per second and multiplayer in all its original form to relive the glory days.

Rumours have been circulating for months about Halo 2 Anniversary. For me and many other Halo fans, this is a dream come true. The rumours weren’t only true, they’re better than we could have imagined!

Halo – Master Chief Collection Teaser

Rather than rehash the information that is already out there I wanted to share my thoughts and opinions.

Halo Anniversary

Halo Anniversary was a let down. Don’t get me wrong, replaying the campaign with updated graphics was awesome and brought back many memories of my brother and I playing through co-operative mode, but as a competitive player what me and many others really wanted was to finally have the ability to play Halo on Xbox online. XBC and other network tunnelling programs allowed unofficial online play back in the day but Halo 1’s netcode and the difficulty of setting up the network properly meant the pool of players was very limited.

When Halo Anniversary was first announced I had my hopes up of finally being able to jump on the couch, fire up the Xbox and play my favourite game of all time online but I was let down when only the campaign was remade and the multiplayer was just some Halo 1 maps redone for the Halo Reach engine.

Multiplayer

From the information I’ve gathered so far it seems that Halo Master Chief Collection will indeed allow Halo 2 to be played online with the original gameplay intact, not Halo 2 maps running on the Halo 4 engine. This has me very excited. Better yet though, is that Halo Master Chief Collection supposedly allows the original Halo: Combat Evolved to be played online as well. After more than a decade I may finally have the ability to jump into match making and quickly and easily find other competitive Halo 1 players. This will certainly test my marriage.

Halo Master Chief Collection will allow you to queue up in a playlist and vote from maps from different Halo titles. You will then be seamlessly loaded into the chosen game engine and map thanks to the awesome UI that allows you to navigate through different campaigns and multiplayer options. Of course, the option to play custom games will exist as well.

Halo 2 Anniversary multiplayer will feature 6 maps that have been re-created to take advantage of the new technology and I believe these will co-exist with the original maps as well in case you prefer the originals.

All the DLC for each game is supposed to be included giving access to about 100 maps on the disc spread across 4 Halo titles.

There will be some form of ranking system that will be similar to the Halo 2 rankings and more information regarding this will be released soon. I’m really hoping for a Halo 1 2v2 ranked competitive playlist. I’d like to see how my brother and I match up against some of the newer Halo players that arrived in Halo 3, etc.

Forge has apparently been added to Halo 2 which will allow players to change up the power up and weapon spawns. I think Bungie got most of the weapon and power up placements right the first time but it’s still cool I guess.

I haven’t found any information about a spectator feature unfortunately.

System Link?

Apparently we won’t know if system link will be included in the game until later. Apparently it has been “planned” though, so it’s looking hopeful. LAN capabilities is very important for tournaments (hopefully there will be some!) so I’d definitely be disappointed if the feature isn’t included.

Dedicated Servers

Halo Master Chief Collection will run multiplayer on dedicated servers. Exactly what this means I’m not sure. My guess is custom games will be hosted normally and then match made games will be run through dedicated servers. I’ve got no idea how this is going to work for cross region play but as an Australian I’m hoping I’m going to be playing only on Australian servers (unless I have the desire to play on US based servers).

Halo 5: Guardians – Multiplayer beta

Halo Master Chief Collection will contain a pass for the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta which will be available from December 2014 for a limited time.

More Info

Here’s a few links to some of the best articles and videos I’ve found so far if you’d like to find out more:

Official Teaser Video

IGN – Master Chief Collection Info and Gameplay (22:37)

Kotaku – Everything We Know About The Halo Master Chief Collection

Game Trailers – Halo 2 multiplayer gameplay