The next Golden Age of Halo has come, and it all started Tuesday March 12th at 5:04 PM. 343 Industries, the developers of the Halo franchise announced that the Halo game bundle MCC (The Master Chief Collection) would be coming to PC.
Unprecedented as this seems, let’s remember that Halo has been on PC before.
I’m not talking about that unauthorized fan port of Halo 3, either. ElDewrito was the Halo community showing with action, not words, how dedicated they are. I’m not sure any other FPS game’s community can hold a candle to the effort and love that Halo’s has shown for it. To say the Halo series is beloved falls short of the true meaning, but I fail to see this as anything other than an underperformance of the English language to accurately describe this fandom.
No Halo:CE (Combat Evolved, the first game of the series) and Halo 2 both saw some action on the PC back in their day. However, support and market for them quickly diminished. Now finding an original Halo PC copy is a very rare thing indeed. Regardless, 343 Industries has seen fit to put in the word required to breathe new life back into this franchise.
Platform
What may be as incredible as Halo on PC, is the choice of platform. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that nobody expected them to choose Steam, Valve Corporation’s digital distribution platform for (almost exclusively) games. The steam page has already been created and is live for all to find their way to (an exercise left to the reader) and follow as we await more information.
I will love to see Steam’s statistics page for most played games get obliterated by the Halo community. Also, what a smart move this is for Valve. The number of people that play mostly on console and don’t ever touch Steam will shift with this choice. 343 gets to use a well vetted and solid digital distribution platform, while Valve gets an even larger audience (not that they were in desperate need of one, Steam hosts some of the most played games in the world.)
Reach
I know more than a few people that have their fondest memories in Halo 3. Even more with poor opinions of Reach, regardless 343 has deemed that the games for the MCC would be released to PC in order of in-game chronology. Reach, being a prequel to the original game Halo CE will be the first to release.
Promised as well has been 4K game quality at 60 fps on both PC and Xbox versions of the game. These are some high bars being set for the people at 343, but if they pull it off the results will pay for themselves in no time. I could not be more excited.
Remember. No pre orders.
Preordering games is a habit that game publishers have gotten into, and has degraded the quality of games at release these days. For that reason I generally dissuade people from preordering. Games end up coming out as being half-made or just blatantly lies as the marketing material and actual substance look nothing alike. Pre ordering games rewards a developer and publisher for putting in as little effort, and making their developers focus on lean work hours. Creativity does not arise from the “what is the most you can get done with the least amount of time” mindset.
I also understand, however, that everyone has their hype-breaking-point. That point at which you’re so excited for the game that you’ve already swiped your credit card before thinking. Personally, remaining firm on not pre ordering any games no matter how excited I am has been my small way to try to help the gaming industry, despite not having a strong voice in it. Halo MCC, well, this may very well be my breaking point.
