Marcus Lehto (and me!) on Campaign Evolved. (long) (Gaming)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Monday, August 17, 2026, 09:59 (1 hours, 50 minutes ago) @ cheapLEY

Overall, I liked the game. I played through everything on Heroic, and I had a genuinely good time. I haven't really felt the desire to go back in, though, which is fine.

I think lots of the changes are good, like the reworked levels. While Assault on the Control Room and The Library are the biggest obvious changes, I really loved the way they reworked The Maw. The Warthog run is really cool now, and I just love how much it genuinely sells running/driving through the crashed Pillar of Autumn.

Agree.

I miss the scale, though. Everything feels smaller. Standing on the cliff outside the crashed escape pod on Halo just looks like standing on a normal mountain now. In the original, it felt like you were miles in the air. Likewise, The Truth and Reconciliation feels tiny. It feels like an aircraft carrier 200 feet above you, rather than a truly incomprehensibly massive ship thousands of feet in the air like it used to. The big jump during the Warthog run is gone, too.

It's funny that you say that, in that I don't think it IS smaller. I wonder if there's something about visual perception involved. There is so much to attract the eye that maybe scale is perceived differently? The OG was genius in the way it used technical limitations to serve the game, with the unnaturally smooth structures, for example. Maybe they brought T&R closer in the new game because they could do so believably. And I really think they lost opportunities with the cutscenes. For example, the first entry into the control room is all closeups, unlike the original, which makes the master chief look tiny in that space (that might be my favorite original cutscene). And although I like what they did with the flood spaces, all the flood detritus everywhere made things a bit claustrophobic.

I think it's a totally fine remake of the original game that did some really cool things with some other missteps, but it's ultimately something I don't think I'll spend any more time thinking about. I have no desire to go grab all the skulls or find the terminals. Again, totally fine. I got my $50 worth out of it, and I think that's enough.

I paid $70 and it's been totally worth it. Just finished a co-op playthrough this past weekend, and look forward to another one soon.