The developers of Halo will give modders cut content from the first two games
343 Industries published blog entry, which reported some exciting news: a dedicated team within the studio dug through the archives of old material and found a number of assets cut from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2. Now, these assets are planned to be combed and put into the hands of the community.
According to the developers, they have a warehouse with Halo 1 and Halo 2 files, but over the years it has turned into a rather chaotic pile of data. In 2021, they started restructuring these archives - the authors of the initiative hoped to save as many sources as possible and gradually realized that some finds could be handed over to fans.
For its purpose, 343 Industries assembled a small team of specialists called Digsite: they looked at assets and, if possible, made them intelligent - for example, creating animations or correcting shaders. As a result, current owners of the Halo series are willing to share the following:
Halo: Combat Evolved
- Bits of content from back when Halo was supposed to be a real-time strategy game for the Mac. Among them are transport, weapons, animations, models of cyborgs and aliens.
- Iterations of the plasma pistol and plasma rifle, as well as several versions of the submachine gun and the "microwave rifle".
- The original version of the Specter transport, the Kestrel aircraft and the Viper stealth tank.
- A few types of transport that the Digsite team could not bring to life, so they leave it to the modders - the Predecessor tank and the Doozy boat.
- Elite Covenant of the 1998 model, as well as creatures Slugman Thornbeast, Blind Wold and Killbug.
- Several maps for different purposes - from sandbox for testing game elements to locations for cut in-game modes and very strange drafts of the story campaign.
Halo 2
- Mongoose transport, Uberchassis car and Piglet, Warthhog toy version.
- Alphamoon - cut map of the story campaign. Some of its parts got into other segments of the plot, but players never saw this level in its original form.
- Earth City - a map from the Halo 2 demo at E3 2003. It is known for the fact that it was dust in the eyes: the level of quality shown in the final version of the game could not be achieved.
Assets will be available in the toolkit that comes with Halo: The Master Chief Collection. According to 343 Industries, there is enough data to create mods based on it or even port it to other parts of Halo (but not to other games - this is prohibited by the distribution license).
Assets will be released soon. When exactly will be told later - first some internal processes need to be completed.
