So at this point 343i has made clear that “Halo Xbox One”'s trailer was not to showcase a specific Halo game. But rather that from this point forward, Halo was an Xbox One franchise, and that the first Halo game for Xbox One was coming out in 2014. The cinematic of Master Chief and the forerunner Bird was mostly meant to tease us that something new was on it’s way, though not necessarily what was coming next. This odd way of revealing the franchise is leading me to believe that the 2014 game will not be Halo 5, rather Halo 5 will ship in 2015. So of all possible games what would make the most sense to release on November 9, 2014?
Halo 2 Anniversary obviously.
So I have a running theory that the Halo for Xbox One in 2014 will be Halo 2 Anniversary, it will likely be like ODST and Halo CEA, in that it will run Halo 4’s multiplayer (effectively porting it to Xbox One as the XB1 is not Backwards Compatible), it will probably include at the very least the entire orignal map list, + Forge Island, + the Halo 2 Anniversary maps. I can’t guarantee it but it could also go the ODST route of including all the Halo 4 DLC map packs along with it. (To make up for the lack of a 360 marketplace on XB1.
If this is the case, there are a few adjustments from Halo CEA that I would like to see happen:
1 - Campaign Challenges unlockable in Halo 2’s Campaign.
After playing Reach for a year, I was sick of it’s Campaign, and the Campaign challenges and Commendations were something the completionist in me just had to strive for. If I had the option to do these in anniversary after it’s release, it would have been pretty awesome.
2 - Campaign Commendations.
Even if they are just like Halo 4’s simple “Beat x level” campaign commendations, this will be a nice addition. As well, if you unlock all the commendations, new armour/weapon skins would be awesome unlockables,
3 - Online stat tracking.
Halo 3: ODST was the first game to include weapon stat tracking for Campaign and it’d be nice to see that available in Halo 2 Anniversary, it was somewhat disappointing to me that it wasn’t included in Halo CEA.
4 - Firefight Mode making a return.
I am looking forward to a Spartan Ops episode 2, but that should be a download. Halo 2 Anniversary should see the return of Firefight mode, run in Halo 4’s multiplayer engine, with new Commendations for unlockables, and Challenges (for those who aren’t 130 yet for whatever reason, or simply like to do challenges)