We've known for ages now that, for Microsoft, the age of platform exclusive games is over. Xbox president Sarah Bond called exclusives "antiquated" just this week. But to me, it didn't really feel over until I saw a PS5 logo in the trailer for Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the most legendary Xbox game of all time (and a PC favorite, of course).
I see the logo. I accept it's there, and I'm even excited about it. But it's weird and melancholy for reasons separate from the Halo campaign remake itself, which looks fine for an Unreal 5 tech demo. By picking up a Dualshock, Master Chief is resigning his role as an honest-to-god platform mascot, and one of the longest serving outside the Nintendo ensemble. He may be the last new one we'll ever see.
"It's really a new era—Halo is on PlayStation going forward," Halo Studios community director Brian Jarrard said on a livestream today. This isn't just a one-off for the series: it's the final bit of proof that even the most precious jewels in Microsoft's crown will be available anywhere and everywhere in the future.
Mascots were fun. I realize rallying behind brands like they're something more than capital machines is backwards, and "console war" rhetoric has contributed to the worst kind of fandom in our hobby, but there existed a way to be normal about it all. Master Chief was the north star for an entire era of gaming—his appearance told you what Xbox was about, and Halo's success informed what kind of games Xbox would create an identity around.
There are distinct pre- and post-Halo eras for first-person shooters on consoles. Halo 2's online matchmaking features were literal years ahead of what other online games on consoles offered at the time; it almost singlehandedly made Xbox Live a thing. And Halo 3's supplementary features, mapmaking tool Forge and clip editor Theater, set such a high bar that even its sequels would end up looking a bit anemic by comparison.
As a kid who was a solid decade away from a gaming PC when Halo: Combat Evolved came out, that Xbox identity was useful. It validated my preference for shooters over RPGs and helped me develop actual tastes—what a controller should feel like, if graphics matter, whether or not Master Chief should show his face at the end of Halo 3.
By tearing down the mascot, the character becomes less special. When Master Chief was tantamount to Xbox, you could count on Halo's importance. Now it's just another name in Microsoft's sea of properties.
The upside is an opportunity for Halo, now standing on its own feet, to really be back. I hope millions of kids younger than Halo itself, and who definitely skipped Xbox this generation, will see what makes it the best.
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