Halo: Reach's Forge level editor won't be available at launch on PC

The PC version of Halo: Reach will not include the Forge level editor or the Theater replay modes at launch, the development team for Halo: The Master Chief Collection has confirmed. 343 Industries doesn't know how long it will take to get them ready for PC, but it will likely be "a very lengthy amount of time".

Halo: Reach is coming to PC as part of The Master Chief Collection later this year, and it will arrive on Xbox One at the same time. While the Xbox One version will launch with both Forge and Theater, the team says that "bringing both features to PC is extremely complex and time consuming".

"We need to properly give both features enough time, so they are a true PC-first experience," lead PC producer Michael Fahrny said in a development update yesterday. "When you look specifically at Forge and what it truly is, it is a 3D editing tool that was built completely for console. In some cases, it’s built to have mouse and keyboard support, and in some it’s not—and that’s one of our biggest challenges right now with the feature.

It will take an "undetermined amount of work" to get Forge ready for PC, he added. "We haven’t done a deep enough dive to determine how much work it truly is due to the priority of getting the main game up and ready. What we suspect, is it’s a very lengthy amount of time."

The team's main focus is finishing the main game, after which it will try to get Forge and Theater finalized "as soon as possible", with help from studios Ruffian and Splash Damage.

In the same update, the developers revealed that players will be able to import custom maps from previous Halo games on the Xbox 360 to PC. Maps made in the Forge modes on Halo 3, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4 will be playable on PC: to prepare, all you have to do is boot them up on Xbox 360, or Xbox One if available, and upload files to your file share. When the time comes, you'll be able to play them in The Master Chief Collection on PC.

The first PC test for Halo: Reach is live right now.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.