Halo Studios Faces Creative Backlash Over Campaign Evolved Prequel Missions

Guys, I finally played through Halo Campaign Evolved, including the three prequel missions, and, uh.it actually made me physically uncomfortable. I'm like, "Oh my god, you're right." But [__] it. Why did you do that? Do you want to explain something? Seriously, I'm not kidding. It takes more than cool armor and a good PR campaign to impress me. This is a complete piece of [__]. Have you ever remembered something painfully embarrassing that you did or said about ten years ago? are the same, only stretched out over two and a half exhausting hours. And making me feel

uncomfortable is something you have to try harder. I mean, this is the level of craziness of Eric Andre or Nathan Fillion. But they do it intentionally. And here, in Campaign Evolved, it's a byproduct of a lack of talent and vision for what it was supposed to be. Boom. You disgust me. We're talking specifically about the prequel missions, as they're not related to Combat Evolved or the remake at all, so that'll be a separate review. But it seems like Halo fans aren't even trying to defend the franchise anymore. They just look at you like that. I don't want this video to be all negative, and if you love Halo like I do, you'll definitely need a " palette cleanse" after this. So I want to take this moment to say a big thank you to the

authors of the many other mods for Halo 1 that I think are worth your time. They are free. You have MCC, and all these mods are just incredible versions of Combat Evolved. The ones I've replayed: Infinite Evolved, Campaign Revolved, the Havoc mod, and Ruby's Rebalanced. I would also recommend Cursed Halo, of course, and there's also Insanity Campaign if you want to go really crazy. They are all simply fantastic and I will leave a link to each of them in the description so you can rate them after the video. Please. "Operation Meteorite" is completely separate from Halo 1 and has no relation to it. The plot itself, as far as I know, also tramples the established lore of the game. So in the end it's really quite pointless. That was my first

thought when I went through it. I thought, " What was the point of that?" Wow, they cut multiplayer for the sake of this. This is madness. And this has nothing to do with Halo 1 at all? They're like, "What the.I just.Why did they do that?" The existence of these missions puzzles me, as Halo Studios clearly didn't have the time or resources to remake Halo 1's multiplayer, despite it being 5 years after Infinite. And they were so poor and impoverished that they had to reuse character and weapon models from Infinite instead of creating new ones. But somehow they found the time to create original content, and for the entire Covenant, this new faction, they made completely new character models?

Something is wrong here. What does this say about their priorities or even how they view Combat Evolved? It's like, "Yeah, you know, we can just throw together something for this, but this original content is what players really want from a Halo 1 remake." What are you doing? This feels like the fifth part of an unfinished campaign. Are we already moving on from the Exiles, or is that all? You know, I was hoping we'd get some kind of resolution to this, or, you know, maybe a resolution to the big cliffhanger at the end of Halo Infinite, like I'm getting ahead of myself. It's quite obvious that this is where most of their resources and time went into developing the remake. And I'm here to show you why that was a huge mistake.

You're pretty screwed. So let's dive into those infamous Halo prequel missions. I have one consistent positive comment that I will voice here because I can't say it in too many other ways. The game looks good. There are definitely a lot of polygons here, and I'm sure the sharpness and pixel count have increased. Seriously, the artists did a pretty good job on some of these new locations, and I just think: damn if they spent as much time making the game interesting as they did making it beautiful. If that were the case, the game could have been pretty damn good. This space has to be interesting before it can be beautiful. So it all starts with text crawling across the screen in the style of ODST or Star Wars, while

Winter Contingency from Reach plays in the background. This is Winter Contingency. This is strange. The problems start immediately. The movements of Jackal and Grant are so awkward here, as if Campaign Evolved really creates an "uncanny valley" effect in most cutscenes, that it seems like it was generated by artificial intelligence, although it is not. I, I don't know. I mean, I heard it wasn't AI generated, but maybe they fixed it. So, did this game use generative AI? Uh, no, generative AI was not used here.

The point is that every scene is incredibly awkward and has a strange pace. There is no dialogue in this scene. These are just standard Grant sound effects recorded 25 years ago. Yes, they just turn on random sounds. My brain is immediately confused, I'm in pain, and not just because I'm a huge idiot. Is this offensive? And it's not just because I'm a special person. I don't know what's supposed to happen and what I'm supposed to feel. Grant begins to open the doors of the Spirit one by one. He turns away, and I'm not kidding, they really do have this "He's behind my back, right?" joke.

He's right behind me, right? Bro, it's only been 2 minutes. We are only 2 minutes into this game. Laugh your way out of pain, guys. Hasn't anyone looked at this jackal and said, " He doesn't look right"? He's just a Tipu, what? This doesn't look like a jackal at all. When I think of jackals, I think of Halo Reach and skirmishers, the way they glide across the ground-it's just wow. This is cool. How did the High Mercy approve this at all? I mean, you can already see me wincing at this failed attempt at slapstick humor.

Boo. Oh my God. Not only stealing a 22-year-old joke, but also ruining it-that's just amazing. Who are you, Halo Studios? Carlos Mencia? Awkward pauses, terrible animation, and out of place random sound effects make this scene one of the worst in the entire franchise. But the good news is that nothing can get worse after this Sometimes the warning is quite obvious. So, I go up to these guys and uh.I have to do something? I don't know where to go. The first room of the game, and it's a dead end. I spent 90 seconds wandering in circles until finally the cutscene decided to play. What? Already spoiled. The Chief knocks on Spirit's door-another reference to a scene from Halo 2-and then Johnson walks out, listening to his MP3 player. He

plays the song from the level "343 Guilty Spark". So, in the first 3 minutes, we have five references to four different Halo games. Can you wait a little longer with this nostalgic byte? Then Johnson pulls out his Station rifle. Oh, Sophie. I have to pause here, because you see, Halo Studios are masters of clickbait. In their trailers, they showed off the Station rifle, which has long been an iconic weapon in the Halo universe but has never officially appeared in the game. You know, it's one thing when Halo 5 tricked us into thinking we were going to get some kind of story and then nothing came of it, but it's another thing entirely to just show a weapon on screen and then say in a community post, "No, you can't Here is their official

explanation for why players can't use the Station Rifle. This is his personal weapon, and he doesn't like to share it. Go to hell. Halo Studios, sorry, but could you please stop blaming a fictional character for your own shortcomings? Just say you were lazy. Or that you didn't have time to do it. Or that the game designers and the people who made the trailer didn't agree. Your reason for not making the Station rifle is that Johnson is actually a selfish [__]. He doesn't like to share, guys. Also, one time he gave us a tank. Yes, that was quite generous of him Oh, I know what the ladies like.

No. Johnson is a jerk. No. No " Station" for you. Sorry. Give it to me. Just give it to me. I mean, if Johnson dies, he even drops his weapon and you just can't pick it up. I move to the next room, and "Impend" from Halo 2 starts playing, which confuses me even more because I thought these were prequel missions to Halo 1. These sections are completely normal. I think the ship looks pretty good. There are definitely a lot of graphics here. And at one point I'm hitting bodies and it seems like they forgot to add the melee sound effects. They removed the melee sounds, huh? I mean, the sound design is just a disaster.

The first meeting with the hunters was unimpressive and was accompanied by even more awkward dialogues. I don't know what you're into there, my master, but this surpasses everything. What the hell is a worm priest? What is a worm priest? I've never heard of such a thing. Wait, no, no, that's a reference to Rosaria from Dark Souls 3. Ah, I get it. I understand. I guess I play too many video games, huh? So, Johnson activates this elevator, and I decide to give him a light spanking. I take the elevator up and again find myself at a point where there is no clear path forward. I

wander around for another minute and a half before the chat tells me that Johnson should activate. Just don't say I blocked the game just because I hit Johnson. But no. I broke the game's progression by simply hitting Johnson in melee. Yes, I just broke the whole game. I broke the level. I had to reset the checkpoint. You know, restarting a checkpoint isn't a big deal, but did you see what the budget for this game was? There Nobody, nobody tested this. Testers, what are they? What are testers? What are you talking about? Look at all of them. Look at all these guys. They don't even work for Halo Studios. But where exactly are we and what are we doing here? Well, we're on a Covenant ship called the Triumph of

Tolerance. We are here to obtain navigation data that will lead us to the Covenant homeworld. Sounds simple enough. And I have to say, the artists here just gave it their all. I think it looks fantastic. The artwork behind these new designs works because it's something completely new. And you know, it's not like their take on the Forerunner aesthetic, which they completely failed. And this is a type of Covenant ship that we have n't seen before. It looks like some kind of luxury cruise ship. Although it reminds me a bit of the Leviathan raid from Destiny 2, I guess I'm willing to forgive that. But how do these prequel missions play out? Let's talk about gameplay and level design. To be fair, I held it back.

You can watch the full stream in the description and witness my suffering. But by the end, I had already abstained for 7 hours. So I was partially exhausted from that already. I'm willing to give a little credit, but I still find the level design and combat extremely monotonous. It's effectively one long shooting range: you go into a room, sometimes there's a Covenant there, you shoot them, then a bunch of doors open and even more Covenant appear. And so on in a circle, that's all Oh yes, elite stealth. My God, to hell with these elite invisibility cloaks. They did it again. Even on Heroic difficulty, it feels like an endless shooting range where you're just forced to spam high-precision weapons until everything dies. I've always hated when Halo games descend

into such mindless gameplay. This is exactly the type of mission structure that Bungie was trying not to create. You don't get the feeling, "Oh, I'm just going from room to room and killing more enemies." No part of the gameplay was given proper context. Bungie has always been great at adding these little vignettes or unique moments to all of their games, and the examples are endless. There are so many memorable fights in this franchise that are built around an idea or a certain feeling that the developers wanted to convey to the player. The moment I remember best is where two Elites supposedly duel, but they're obviously not programmed to do anything more than stand awkwardly side by side, move around, and

occasionally wave their weapons. But the way it's presented just looks monotonous and boring. And it's so strange, because the second level takes you to open hunting grounds, where the Sacristan Covenant hunts enemies for fun. But this has nothing to do with the gameplay at all. For example, there is no new Covenant type that is more agile or sneaky in the jungle or elsewhere. The environment doesn't really affect the gameplay at all, which is a shame because the idea is great. So yeah, most of the time I just spammed the needle from afar.

Sometimes you get rockets or fuel cannons, but it gets tiring. Again, these areas of the ship look much more interesting than they are fun to play. And unlike Campaign Evolved, artificial intelligence supposedly works here. But in the remake part of the game itself, the artificial intelligence completely breaks down and freezes. They are all, they are all just broken. Moving further, we find ourselves in a room with test tubes, inside of which are designs of Jackals and Elites from Halo 4 and 5. Craig also appears there. I understand what they were trying to achieve. They wanted to show that as a new company with new leadership, Halo Studios was starting from scratch. Perhaps admitting that we were right about the graphic style. But this

moment only works when Campaign Evolved is a great remake. And he's actually not like that at all. The Chief points out that these are failed experiments, and I begin to wonder if the game I'm playing now is just such an experiment. But here we come to the biggest problem with the remake, without a doubt. And that's just a lack of originality. We actually take assets, music, character models, sound effects, sound design, level design, geometry, and ideas from Halo 1, 2, 3, Reach, 4, 5, and Infinite. They take elements from every major Halo game and just throw it all into a blender. So much is shamelessly stolen from previous games. You might think Halo Studios is a garbage recycling plant. And by the way, none of these elements have integrity and do not

work together. That's why I think this remake, these prequels, and Halo Studios are just creative bankruptcies. And what's worse, the original content they created, the storyline and the levels, is terrible. Campaign Evolved doesn't feel like a love letter or even a good introduction for new fans. It looks like a compilation of stolen ideas, stolen art, stolen music. What did you actually redo here? This gondola ride is straight out of the quarantine zone in Halo 2. It's a pretty good interpretation, but there are platforms on the sides, and if you jump on them, there's a death timer, of course. I'm starting.Oh my god, you're right. But [__] it.

Why did you do that? Why? Oh, now I'm trapped. Oh my God, you're gone. You guys are gone. We don't want you to have fun exploring a new Halo game for the first time. No, get back on the damn gondola. I mean, there's probably so much more recycled content out there that I have n't even noticed. I know some of the marine dialogue from Reach was also stolen and stuffed here, but let me know in the comments if I missed anything else. It's just.Oh my god, the script says I have to talk about that scene. Oh, no, no, no. No, the video is over. The video is finished. We don't have to go any further. Come back here, man. So, the cutscene we're going to talk about now is worse than anything in Halo 5, and honestly, it makes you want to

watch the Halo series. You're kidding, right? It's like.I have to put a horror warning on the screen because this is truly incredible. Why do Covenant look like absolute clowns here? What does this Elite do? Why are they standing in the hallway and not hiding behind cover? Where are they shooting at anyway? Why are projectiles so slow and sluggish? Why is the song of the death of Truth playing? Why is the Prophet of Mental Retardation slowly sailing towards the Covenant troops, who are conveniently lined up in line? What are we doing? What are we.Do I really have to keep talking about this? So, the Prophet of Mental Retardation sails to the Covenant forces.

Stop shooting at enemy invaders. I need to give a monologue and introduce each of you. I watched a bunch of Dragon Ball Z, and [__] Ginyu Force is just fire. I want that too. Johnson and Chief for some reason jump out of cover, aim at the Prophet, but don't shoot. Yes, shoot him. He's right there. Do you enjoy your stay here, demon? Just shoot. Shoot, he's right there. You have a weapon. Shoot him. Yes, shoot. Shoot him. Can you press the hook with your finger? Shoot him. Hey, you.They're still not shooting.

Shoot. Sorry to interrupt, but we're short on time. Okay, oh, now you're shooting. My God. This is so stupid. scene could have been fixed if the mission had been to capture the prophet alive. Then there would be at least some reason to say, "You're coming with us, buddy." I mean, at least there's a reason not to blow his brains out. It's like being 10 meters away from Mussolini during World War II and saying: " No, let's not touch him. Let's better look for the papers with the list of troop deployments." It's like, "Dude, no, grab Mussolini. Grab him. He's right there. That's Benito Mussolini." So, prophet of missing chromosomes, does that sound offensive? So, the prophet of fools begins to boast about how strong each type of Covenant is combined. You must

feel the same way I do. You must suffer with me. For you must suffer as I suffered. Our collective strength is a reflection of the strength of each participant. the Covenant is so strong and united. We introduced a species that is killing everyone else. Nobody thought about it. Nobody said it was [__] stupid. This is complete crap. No Covenant.that's great. Yes. You couldn't make this scene any more stupid even if you tried. Maybe with the fake mustache and clown makeup, but other than that-this is one of the worst scenes I've ever seen in a video game. We're talking about the Ride to Hell: Retribution level, like what's going on. This scene was supposed to make a cool introduction to the new Brutes, but it came out really silly. Aside from their new

vulnerable spot, Brutes don't react to gunfire at all. Overall, the idea of letting the player pit soldiers against each other is a good one. That's one of my favorite things about Halo 1-just watching the two factions fight each other. But it was implemented in the worst possible way. I mean, Halo Infinite and Halo Wars 2 spent two games and expansions to make the Exiles a truly serious threat. Not only because of their physical strength, but also because of Atriox's cunning strategy. Brutes were never stupid. Stubborn-yes, but stupid-no. So they just trampled everything they achieved with Brutes and Exiles in their last two games. The

problem with this studio is that they throw away even their good ideas and start from scratch every time, dudes. So, what does this mean for lore? Are you trying to say that a year or two before the events of Halo 2, the Brutes were complete morons, and during that time they somehow turned into competent soldiers? In short, nothing works here. Everything is wrong. Yes, this is worse than anything in Halo 5, 100%. And if you had told me 10 years ago that 10 years later I would be playing a Halo game with a story worse than Halo 5, I wouldn't have believed you. The next game segment is simply battles in eight wide open rooms.

Boredom. The transition to the second level was so abrupt and strange that I thought I was being teleported to the surface of the planet, until the chat said, " No, no, you're still on the ship." Wait, is that still on the ship? What? Who could possibly design such a ship? It looks like some kind of super-mega luxurious space liner. Next we are introduced to ODST, one of the new characters, Williams, who was so wonderfully received. I mean, she's such an amazing addition to the cast, and it takes a little more than cool armor and a good PR campaign to impress me. I like that this is the second time 343, that is, Halo Studios, has written a character who immediately starts to read the player when they meet them.

I thought you would be taller. Shut your mouth, [__] I know that the Spartans and the ODSTs are at odds, but the way it's presented is so rushed and bad that her entire character boils down to just the phrase, " I hate you, Spartan." Until we started playing second fiddle to the soldiers we created, not gave birth to. What's the problem, huh? Bro, I'm here to help you wherever you are. I'm here to help you, dude. This dynamic could have been made interesting if the Chief was on a mission with the ODSTs and there were some jokes, but hey, man, we just rescued your stupid ass from captivity. Can't you be a normal person for even five minutes?

Seriously, is she trying to cosplay Vegeta? I don't need your help, Kakarotto. I don't need anyone's help. I can defeat Frieza myself. It seems like Halo Studios is just trying to make us immediately hate this new character, or it's some kind of self-inserted image to insult the player. What's the point of this? And my god, Prophet of Harmony is no better. In my review of Infinite, I made fun of the main antagonist Esharum because all he did was chat, like in Xbox 360 chat or over radio broadcasts. He did n't do anything. He just sat and

chatted. At least his dialogue was interesting, but he did n't do anything. And here is exactly the same problem. What's the point of introducing a character to just talk on the radio and then disappear? Why even add a prophet here? So yeah, they steal another scene from Truth and Reconciliation where after you save the Marines Not bad, Spartan. I'm almost starting to believe this propaganda. Two elites with swords walk in the door-it's so shameless how they copy other people and game developers. So, this is 25 years of game design in completely new content that you created. This is just an insult.

The Marines here are also crazy, or so I thought, because they didn't pick up their weapons, even when they were standing right next to them. Everything looks so sloppy and broken. Like, "Oh, we had to go even further so they could come back and get the assault rifles." These are long, large stretches of time where you're just constantly shooting enemies, and it gets boring. Apparently, the Lobotomy Prophet was delivering clichéd villain dialogue through some kind of communication system you can't even see. Let's move on to the soundtrack. And this is the part that really pisses me off, because like I said, they didn't create any new original

music for this game. Well, you'd expect them to use the Halo 1 soundtrack. I mean, yeah, it works. They messed up there, but how can you mess it up in a prequel mission? Oh, I don't know. Let's just pick tracks from Halo 1, 2, 3, and Reach completely randomly. Each game was completely different, designed with a different mood and atmosphere, and the music was chosen for the specific experience. It was tied to the story and gameplay, you know, to fit a certain tone. Here, I mean, you can completely ruin the tone and feel of a scene just by putting on the wrong Yes, they just throw darts at a target, and whatever they hit-the same music plays.

I put more thought into the background music of my videos, like the one you're watching now, than Halo Studios puts into their games. This, bro, is so sad. This is so pathetic. There's this silly moment where Johnson asks Chief if he's tired of being such a strong and almost silent guy. Don't you ever get tired of this cliché character you have? No. And it's at this point that " Heretic Hero," one of the best songs in this franchise, coincides with this phrase. No.

They adjusted the music to suit it. Oh, wow. You know, someone at Halo Studios said, "Oh, yeah, we've got a lot going on here." They thought it was such a cool phrase, and whoever was in charge of the sound design just didn't make any good decisions at all. You know, they insist that the music should play constantly, without stopping. Action, action, action. You now have a TikTok brain.

You all have TikTok brains. Like, ring the bells. Ring the bells, okay? Here are the keys. Come on, guys. Oh my God. I'm losing them. I'm need to start juggling. The way they use music is devoid of any weight, development, or consistency. You know, this remake as a whole does nothing more than simply parasitize on the work of the previous games and the artists who created them. Let's move on to the space battle, and like the rest of the prequel missions, it's simply stolen assets and ideas, but with great artwork. You know, the art team for this game is the only one that really did their job. I mean, there's not much to Seraphim is copied from MCC, and most of the time I felt like I was just waiting for the ships to start shooting.

During the dialogue, this silly image of the speaker pops up, as if we've forgotten what these three characters look like. They even put a picture of Chief in there. It was as if he himself wanted to look at a picture of his own armor. As if he doesn't care. Dude, this character icon that appears during a conversation, I've seen that before. Great, Mario. You did it. You defeated Bowser. Before you collect the last star, make sure you're ready to move on and have completed all the tasks. Perfectly. Please subscribe to Dexter Manning. I want to see more content like this. But this Halo campaign simply exudes all the worst aspects of modern gaming. So at this point I've completely disconnected. You know, the game seems to work fine, but that's

because it's a warped Reach engine and Reach AI combined with the "Flood " from Halo 3, and it all doesn't really work together. So, your goal is to protect the UNSC ship "Burden of Proof" from the Seraphim kamikazes, but they haven't programmed you to lose this mission, so you do n't even have to do anything. You just automatically win. Then Williams turns off the shields and simply says, "I have to die here." Which is probably normal. Again, they play the Halo 3 ending theme and say, I'm in the building behind us or something. What the hell? I think we'll just forget you existed. So, yes. In summary, these prequel missions were just awful. I have no idea why they wasted resources on them

. And the biggest blow below the belt is that they cut multiplayer for the sake of it. Activision just ported Black Ops 1 and 2 to PS5, and they each sold ten times better than this remake. There was no point in doing these prequel missions. You should have just ported MCC. I just can't understand why it exists, if not to be the object of ridicule and mockery. It's hard to say whether Campaign Evolved was created out of disdain for fans, out of arrogance on the part of the creators, or just a good old-fashioned way to cause outrage. If this is a byte for aggression, then it works, and in that regard, it's well done. But yeah, there are practically no new original ideas in these missions, and what new ones they came up with is simply the

worst crap I've ever seen in Halo. It feels like we're back to the beginning with Halo. It's as if we don't have any clear understanding of the future of this franchise, but the modding community does, and before I end the video, I want to remind you: be sure to try the Halo 1 mods. They're really worth playing. You need emotional relief. I need emotional relief. Can't wait for Ruby's balanced Halo 2 to come out. But yeah, what do you think? Was I too harsh on these prequel missions, or not enough? Share your thoughts and impressions in the comments below. Like if you enjoyed the video and subscribe to The Act Man for more cool content.

Okay, thank you all. That's all I had for today. The Act Man was with you, see you later.