GamesBeat: Were there any big or difficult fixes to the anniversary editions that were very different from the classic games?
Szlagor: For the most part, where we could, we kept the experience authentic. We made sure it felt the way it should. Certainly going to 60 frames per second makes things feel different, but generally it’s been very well-received by everyone who’s had a chance to play.
GamesBeat: Are you encouraging an e-sports community around this? Do you have any activities going on in that direction?
Szlagor: As I mentioned, we work with pro players on the series in general. We looked at that for Master Chief Collection. It’s a big piece of making sure the games feel authentic, that they’re viable for tournament play. We’ll have more to talk about later on.
GamesBeat: People will be able to compare things, details like the different look of Master Chief. What do you think they’ll have fun comparing?
Szlagor: All the original content’s been unlocked. We’ve added a lot of unlockable options. I don’t know much time you had to see the customization options, but there are 100 different avatars you can pick. I think 200 nameplates, what shows up when you’re in the lobbies. Emblems you can set. A lot of those customization options are earned through doing the achievements, some of which are a little harder to get. There’s a comparison that happens there.
As I mentioned, with the campaign scoring, you can compare your fastest time on a mission or level. That’s per difficulty, per map, per playlist. Even if you aren’t the best player in the world across everything, you can find your map that’s your thing.
We also have a feature in there for rivals on those leaderboards. You can set a friend as your rival, and as you’re playing, in real-time, you’ll see how you’re doing against them as far as how fast you are, how well you’re playing, what score you reach. Some interesting comparisons will come from there. When you’re in campaign, if you have a rival set, you can turn on a specific HUD element and see your scores side by side at different checkpoints throughout the level. Same thing if you’re going for speed. You can turn it on or off. We want to make sure that for people who want to play the story experience the way they remember it, they can do that, and then others can layer on the comparisons if they want.
GamesBeat: These games were never designed to be part of something like this. I imagine that’s the hard part.
Szlagor: When we originally started to think about this, that was an important question. How do we make this feel cohesive? I spent a lot of time early on just playing the games back to back, trying to figure out the connection points. There was this moment where it seemed like, yes, this is going to work. This is a thing that can be done and could be exciting.
Certainly there are always challenges in different things, but as it turned out, we definitely felt like we could put together a compelling collection of these things. It feels like a cohesive game.
GamesBeat: The multiplayer beta comes on the disc, right? You unlock it on a given day.
Szlagor: Right. You’ll have an option in the menu that’ll be active on Dec. 29. You can launch it then.
GamesBeat: People have a couple of months of content before they can start getting into that, though.
Szlagor: Well, I hope they have years of content in this collection, with all the ways you can play it. We’re excited about all of the Halo experiences this year.
GamesBeat: Are there ways you could deliberately bring people back to the collection? Do you have plans to make any more content for this?
Szlagor: I think we’ve packed in as much as we could. Not only did we pull in all the console content, but we’ve pulled in all the PC multiplayer maps for Halo 1 and 2. Halo 2 Anniversary has, I think, about 70 different game types, plus Forge. The new Forge features effectively allow you to create more levels than you could have before, and you can share those out. We feel like there’s a humongous amount of value and content in the package already.
GamesBeat: Are you able to record gameplay, in the Theater mode?
Szlagor: We have Theater where it existed before, in Halo 3 and Halo 4. It’s also included for the Halo 2 Anniversary multiplayer. Halo 3 has it for the campaign, while it didn’t exist in the Halo 4 campaign. But yes, your clips are recorded as you play, and then you can go back and view them. With this day and age being where it is, we encourage people to push that out to game DVR and Twitch as a longer-term way to save their footage.
