Halo: Campaign Evolved wiki history: Halo began as an RTS

Four years before Halo: Combat Evolved came out as an Xbox launch title on November 15, 2001, it was an isometric strategy game built on the engine of Bungie's Myth series. It changed genre twice before release. The 2026 remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved, rebuilds the version that shipped.

Halo started as a strategy game called Armor

In 1997 Bungie had 12 to 15 employees in a small office on South Halsted in Chicago. Marcus Lehto joined Jason Jones on a side project, and the trademark for its working title, Armor, was filed on September 24, 1997. The idea was a real-time strategy game on the Myth engine with an isometric camera. The team thought Myth would work better as science fiction and StarCraft would work better without resource management.

The team then called it Monkey Nuts. Jones did not want to tell his mother he was working on a game called Monkey Nuts, so it became Blam!. Bungie filed the Blam.net and Blam.org trademarks in March 1998.

The change of genre came from a vehicle. The prototype let the team attach a third-person camera to a single unit, and they used it to drive an early Warthog. Engineer Charlie Gough had already mounted a camera on a tank turret in the strategy build. In Halopedia's words, the fun of driving it "led to the camera getting closer and closer." By late 1998 or early 1999 the game had fully become a third-person shooter.

Jaime Griesemer was hired in mid-1998, when the team was eight or nine people working mostly on the engine. The builds he played had one assault rifle, and it fired grenades. There was a boat called the Doozy. Staff stopped work at 4 p.m. every day for a four-versus-four deathmatch mode.

Bungie and a branding company went through hundreds of candidates for the name, among them Solipsis and The Crystal Palace. Jones preferred Red Shift. Paul Russel suggested Halo; the name clicked when he wrote it on the whiteboard. The trademark was filed in February 1999.

On July 21, 1999, Steve Jobs announced Halo for Mac OS and Windows at Macworld Expo. Jones showed the first gameplay footage on a Power Macintosh G3, and Jobs promised the game for early 2000. Jones was visibly nervous about a bug that could crash the game on startup.

Microsoft bought Bungie and Halo became a first-person Xbox game

Bungie's Myth II shipped with an installer bug that forced a recall. On August 13, 1999, the studio signed a publishing deal with Take-Two. Microsoft's Ed Fries pursued Bungie for the Xbox, and the acquisition was announced on June 19, 2000, for around $30 million. Halo became an Xbox exclusive, which upset PC and Mac fans.

Jones had opposed a first-person camera after making first-person games six years earlier, but after the buyout, advances in the graphics won him over. Griesemer built the console controls from scratch, with aim assist and a two-weapon limit on a single switch button. The open archipelago with on-the-fly terrain was dropped as too RPG-like. Russel later said, "We made 90% of the game in 9 months." The multiplayer was rebuilt in the last four months before release.

Microsoft's marketing team told Bungie the game would be subtitled Combat Evolved. Bungie disliked the name and learned to ignore it.

The ports and the 2011 remake kept the 2001 game alive

The Xbox version reached North America on November 15, 2001 and the PAL regions on March 14, 2002. Gearbox Software's Windows port followed on September 30, 2003, and Westlake Interactive's Mac OS X version in December 2003. The PC and Mac ports added online play for up to 16 players and removed co-op.

The original Xbox game sold over 6 million copies by November 2005 and holds a Metacritic score of 97 out of 100. The original came to the Xbox 360 as an Xbox Live Marketplace download on December 4, 2007. 343 Industries remade it as Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on November 15, 2011.

Combat Evolved is sold today only inside The Master Chief Collection

The legal digital route is Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Its Steam page lists Combat Evolved Anniversary, the 2011 remake, next to Reach, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, ODST and Halo 4. Every other version was pulled from digital sale in 2020. The collection also carries the original game's multiplayer.

On October 22, 2026, the Steam page listed the collection at €39.99 with no discount. 91% of 165,161 English reviews were positive, for a Very Positive rating. The minimum graphics card is a GeForce GTS 450 or Radeon HD 6850. The install wants 43 GB, and Steam itself needs Windows 10 or later.

Halo: Campaign Evolved remakes the same campaign

Halo Studios released Halo: Campaign Evolved on July 28, 2026, with early access from July 23 for Premium buyers. It is a campaign-only remake in Unreal Engine 5 for PC, Xbox Series X and S, and PlayStation 5, the first Halo on a PlayStation. The remake rebuilds all ten original levels and adds three prequel missions set a year before the story starts. Anniversary had kept the 2001 design and let players switch between the original and remade graphics. Co-op takes two players on console split screen or four online. The Standard Edition is $49.99 and the Premium Edition $69.99.

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Questions people ask

When was the first Halo game released?

Halo: Combat Evolved launched on the Xbox on November 15, 2001 in North America. Europe and other PAL regions waited until March 14, 2002.

Which Halo game is considered the best?

By review scores the answer is the first game: 97 out of 100 on Metacritic for Xbox, with more than 40 awards. Its PC port scored 83.

How much does Halo: Combat Evolved cost on Xbox?

It is not sold on its own anymore. Combat Evolved comes inside The Master Chief Collection, which cost €39.99 on Steam on October 22, 2026. The remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved, costs $49.99 for the Standard Edition on Xbox, PlayStation and Steam.

Is Halo CE the same thing as Halo 1?

Yes. Halo CE and Halo 1 are the fan names for Halo: Combat Evolved, the first game in the series. The "Combat Evolved" part came late in development, from Microsoft's marketing team, not from Bungie.

Is Halo: Campaign Evolved a new Halo game?

It is a remake of the first one. It is a campaign-only rebuild of Combat Evolved with new art, voice acting and music, plus three new missions.