Dec 7, 2022

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - misplacedyank

As 2022 comes to a close, we’ve got a new MCC update to share with you that's available today!

From continuing to expand our support for modding with Steam Workshop and Plug ‘n’ Play, to adding new Skulls and campaign collectibles to Halo 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved, as well as a new Match Rejoin feature, retroactive Spartan points, UI updates, and more – let's give you the full debrief on what today's update brings...

Check out the full patch notes here, and be sure to report any issues to Halo Support.

Campaign

Just last month, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of Halo 4. In a special blog post looking back on the creation of this game, we also dropped in a few glimpses at what’s scheduled to come in the future – so let’s talk a bit more about what’s arriving in today's update.

Acrophobia and Bandana Skulls added to Halo 4

Whether you’re looking to get boots-off-the-ground and explore the vast world of Requiem as you’ve never seen it before, or simply don’t want to have to worry about running out of ammo, these additions continue the work we started in the last update where we brought these Skulls to Halo: Reach.

Additional polish work was done to make sure the infinite ammo behavior was respected in additional use cases. One such case is removing overheating turret behavior when the skull is on.

The Target Designator used in the campaign mission Reclaimer will not have infinite ammo from Bandanna, however. This is due to how the level is scripted, where it has a state machine that depends on the weapon's total rounds going to zero in order to progress the mission. However, if the Target Designator is used anywhere else somehow (such as mods or multiplayer), then the infinite ammo behavior will be respected.

Campaign moa collectibles added to Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 4

As part of the “Scavenger Hunt” system we introduced to Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST, the golden moa statues hidden throughout campaign missions have come to Halo: CE and Halo 4.

Each week, a different subset of these collectibles are enabled – you can check the Challenge Hub to see which missions have active collectibles. Claim these collectibles by shooting them (and, as a note, it is generally advised not to attempt to claim any real-life collectibles by doing this.)

Note that these moa statues appear in classic Halo: CE graphics as they are built into that engine, not the remastered one.

Match Rejoin

With this update, we are introducing the Match Rejoin feature for Social and Ranked matchmaking.

Match Rejoin is not a standard join-in-progress feature – this is exclusively for rejoining a match that you disconnected from.

So, how does it work?

As soon as you enter the loading screen of a matchmade game, you’ll save a handle to rejoin the match. This handle is saved to your profile – just like your customization, player ID, and other settings – which allows it to roam between devices in the same platform family (settings also roam between Xbox and Windows Store). If you are disconnected from the match in any way prior to its completion, the next time you enter matchmaking, your rejoin handle will be checked and you will receive a dialog explaining whether you are eligible to rejoin.

If you were booted from the match (for betraying teammates, for example – not that you would do such a thing, right??), you will not be allowed to rejoin and you will immediately receive a matchmaking ban. In all other cases, you'll have until the match ends to rejoin to avoid a ban. We’ve made some other improvements to matchmaking bans as well. Only the first half of players to quit from a team will receive a ban (except in the betrayal boot case above). This now appropriately takes into account players who “dodged” the match by quitting during the loading screen.

The rejoin dialog will provide information if you are not eligible to rejoin. For example, if the match is ending by the time you attempt to rejoin, an error message will explain this. If you try to get clever and change your preferred input device or platform in a playlist that supports input and platform matching restrictions, you will be prompted to restore these and not be allowed to rejoin until you’ve done so.

What games does Match Rejoin work in?

Match rejoin is available in all games in MCC. As with joining in progress in custom games, all of your match statistics are retained upon rejoining, except in Halo: CE (this may be fixed in the future). You will always rejoin the team you were originally on.

Firefight does not currently support join-in-progress in custom games, so it also does not support Match Rejoin. We look forward to adding this support in the future.

How does Match Rejoin affect Challenges?

For Challenges that track in real time (such as “kill X enemies, earn Y medals”), progress is persistent. There are some nuances around the save windows (it's possible to close the game immediately after earning a kill and lose that progress before it has the chance to save), but beyond that that progress is never reverted and is unaffected by rejoining.

For Challenges that track at the end of a match (like “win X games”), you must be in the match when it ends to earn progress. If you disconnect and then rejoin prior to the match ending, you receive credit. If you don't rejoin, you don't receive credit.

Is there a time limit?

You have up until the match ends (when the announcer says “Game Over”) to rejoin.

An Update on Mod Tools

Mod Tools: Halo 4 & Halo 2: Anniversary Multiplayer

Like all previous mod tools, owners of the Halo 4 and Halo 2: Anniversary MP DLC for MCC on Steam will have access to them.

Like Halo: Reach, these games support multiplayer game variant creation via MegaloEdit. You can hot-load Megalo variants from the MCC pause menu for rapid iteration.

We’ve fixed various issues when scaling objects in Megalo for Reach and ported these fixes to Halo 4 and Halo 2: Anniversary as well.

Plug 'n' Play

This is how we defined how mods should “Just Work” when starting out planning. If a player plugs in a mod, they should just be able to play it without additional hassle.

Mods can be "plugged into" MCC in two ways:

First, if you are a Steam user, you can use Workshop to find mods of interest and "Subscribe" to them. This then downloads the mod to your computer and MCC will be aware of it the next time you launch it in EAC-bypass.

Mods are never enumerated under EAC-enabled. Additionally, for this launch, MCC will not detect new subscribed items which are downloaded while the product is already running. This is a feature that could not make it into this update due to additional UI work and edge cases that need to be handled.

Second, if you are a Steam user or own the game on the Microsoft Store, there is a ModManifest.txt file which MCC will read in EAC-bypass to find mods on your computer. Each line in this file relates to a directory somewhere on your computer. Inside each of those directories MCC will then enumerate all immediate subdirectories looking for a ModInfo.json file, which it will then use to determine what, if any, content in the mod can be used.

Each individual mod may only target a single engine. So, you can have a mod for Halo 2 which includes a new campaign (a series of levels), plus a collection of multiplayer maps (there's no hard limit to how many at this time). If you want to also have a mod for Halo 3 multiplayer maps – for instance, say you ported the mod’s Halo 2 multiplayer maps to Halo 3, then those would need to be in a different physical mod that targets the Halo 3 engine.

MCC Mod Uploader

The Halo MCC Mod Uploader is a WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) tool for crafting mod metadata. This metadata is what MCC uses to know how to load mods and inform the engines on how to use them.

The tool is also used for uploading mods directly to Steam Workshop.

Mods are not limited to Steam or Workshop, although the Workshop experience will be the most straightforward. The tool provides a simple editor that lets you configure the paths in the ModManifest.txt config file which are then enumerated by MCC to find mods on your computer. This enables you to test your mods locally before uploading to the Steam Workshop, and the ModManifest.txt setup lets Windows Store players also enjoy mods.

Fun fact: the ModManifest.txt setup was based on a similar setup that was originally added to Halo Wars: Definitive Edition to facilitate modding its files.

The MCC Mod Uploader is available on Steam for anyone that owns MCC on that platform.

Mod Documentation

Your one-stop shop for mod documentation for all Halo games in MCC has arrived!

Mod documentation will be found on MSDocs. For the launch of this site, we're prioritizing MCC Mod Uploader, Halo 3, FBX to GR2 (Halo: Reach, Halo 4, and Halo 2: Anniversary MP), and some Halo 2 Classic sections.

We plan to upload documentation for every game, so keep an eye out for more details in the future.

To find all this information, head to https://aka.ms/HaloMCCModDocs

Mod Showcase

As we bring the mod section to a close, we wanted to take the opportunity to showcase some of the amazing mods that have already been made by some of our intrepid Reclaimers. Hit the title link or associated images below to head to each mod’s Steam Workshop page and try ‘em out with just one click!

(Note that the listed content below is user-generated and user-supported, it is not official content from 343.)

Sundance – A Lone Wolf Firefight Mod by Cryosphered

A custom Firefight mission based on the final Halo: Reach campaign level Lone Wolf. Best played solo, but supports co-op!

Halo: Reach Rat Boss Fight by General Heed

Halo: Reach rat boss fight on Forge World.

HALO: REACH RAT BOSS FIGHT ON FORGE WORLD!

Chiron Station by Delta_905

A Halo 2 Classic remake of the hectic, fun Chiron TL-34 from Halo: CE themed around Halo 2’s campaign mission Cairo Station.

Forget about those adjustments to your A2 scope. Grab a shotgun and prepare for chaos!

Halo CE+ Anniversary Edition by Sean

A 20th anniversary project by VKMT. Features eight new multiplayer maps along with new weapons, Spartan designs, and even remade cut content from Halo: CE's development. Also adds a new campaign experience: Canyon CE+.

Halo: Customization Edition by S3anyBoy

“What have you done with my armor?” / “Just a few... additions I made.”

Use your multiplayer Spartan armor color in campaign; backpack weapons and player-carried weapons appear in cutscenes; enable Campaign Customization for extra weapon customization – and more!

Halo 3 Ivory Tower by Krevil

Halo 2’s Ivory Tower with a fresh coat of Halo 3 paint.

Combat Revolved by Connor Dawn

A complete gameplay and visual overhaul of Halo: CE with the purpose of creating a fresh campaign experience for CE veterans. Also features enhanced visuals that bridge the gap between classic and anniversary, along with challenging gameplay achieved via enemy AI behavioral changes.

Progression

Retroactive Spartan Points

Back in our August Update blog, we spoke about the retroactive granting of Spartan Points in great detail regarding the specifics of how it will work. Be sure to check that blog out for the full breakdown.

With the December Update, we are actioning on this – let's talk a bit more about what’s going to happen...

Spartan Point rewards for levels have previously been quite opaque, and so MCC will now display the SP rewards earned from leveling up as part of the post-game carnage report flow.

The big question, of course, is how many points will players get?

Every progression level in MCC now awards a Spartan Point (that’s 329 in total). Previously, only the first 100 levels did. Any levels past that which were previously reached will immediately pay out upon logging into MCC after this update.

For example, I am currently at Tour 7, level 25 (the 205th level overall). I previously received a point for levels 2 through 101 (because players start at level 1, it doesn’t award a point). When I log in after this update, I will receive points from levels 102 through 205 (104 points total). In the future, I’ll receive a point each time I level up.

Exchange UI Expansion

The UI for the Exchange in MCC has received a slight update to improve visual clarity, along with support to display more items at once so we can provide richer Exchange offers each week.

We opted to design the Limited-Time Items with gold borders to signify their rarity, while also providing a clear visual separation to differentiate them from the Featured Items. We also wanted to avoid having the Exchange UI compete with a potentially “noisy” background video. So, we’ve added a dark transparent backdrop with some blur to help support the visual legibility of the Exchange offerings.

General Updates

New (Old) Upgrades

We’ve got some outstanding Tactical Packages and Support Upgrades from Halo 4 making their way back into MCC with this update. These enhancements are now available to all players when configuring loadouts – they are available in all modes and game variants which support custom loadouts.

Like with some of the armor and weapon skins that we’ve restored or added, this also includes Spartan Ops. This does not change multiplayer game variants that don’t support custom loadouts, such as Legendary Slayer and our Squad Battle variants. Of course, it should be noted that these traits are also are not featured in competitive variants and playlists.

We also fixed a few quirks and legacy bugs with these traits when we re-implemented them, so they’re better than ever. The returning traits across Tactical Packages and Support Upgrades are:

Resistor: Resistor allows the player to retain full mobility despite taking fire
Shielding: Recharge lowers the time it takes before one’s shields begin recharging
Survivor: Survivor prevents the death of operators when their vehicle is destroyed

We’re also offering Challenges based on the original Achievements that were associated with these traits, so be sure to give them a try.

Survive three vehicle explosions in a row with the Survivor package
Score a goal in Ricochet while taking damage with the Resistor active
Recover full shields from low health with both Resistor and Recharge active

Halo 2 Classic Emblem Support

With this update, emblems will appear on Spartan and Elite player models in all game modes, and for the Territories game mode the legacy behavior has been restored so that when a player captures a territory their emblem will appear on that territory’s flag.

This will use MCC emblems instead of legacy Halo 2 emblems, similar to other titles in the MCC (such as Halo 3).

A new gametype option has been added to CTF that will display the emblem of the player with the most kills on their team on their team's flag. In Neutral Flag, it will be the emblem of the player with the most kills out of all teams. Note that matchmaking gametype variants will not have this option enabled, but it is available for use in custom games.

The CTF emblem behavior was originally prototyped during the development of Halo 2 on the original Xbox, but was incomplete.

Fiesta Fix

We’ve fixed a legacy issue which caused players to occasionally spawn with two of the same weapon in Fiesta which resulted in them spawning with only a single weapon. This issue was present in Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo 4, and Halo 2: Anniversary, and it has been fixed across the board.

Killing Frenzy!

We’ve fixed a legacy issue which resulted in a two second delay being applied to the display and announcement of the Killing Frenzy medal in Halo 3 (as well as several gametype specific events like disarming a bomb).

New Nameplate

For the start of every year, we like to expand upon cultural and holiday events to support diversity and inclusivity among our players. One of the new holidays we are looking forward to supporting in 2023 is the Lunar New Year with a sparkly new animated nameplate. Make sure to sign in during the Lunar New Year to grab it for yourself.

Until Next Time...

And that’s everything for this MCC update! Once again: you can check out the full patch notes here, and report any issues by filing a ticket to Halo Support.

We stated at the start of this year that we had a laundry list of items we wanted to check off for MCC in 2022, and while we’ve hit on many of them to continually improve the experience of this legacy collection, we’re still not quite done yet...

We’ll have more to say about what’s coming to MCC in 2023 (such as Theater support for Halo 4’s Campaign and Spartan Ops) later on, but for now we close the book on 2022 with a lot of great stuff that we hope will continue to empower our players’ creativity.

The things folks have been doing with mod tools this year has blown our minds; we’ve had tremendous fun teaming up together against the Flood in Firefight; the Digsite crew have been working on reviving the ancient past of Halo’s cutting room floor; we’ve brought new tools to legacy Forge experiences, and that’s just scratching the surface of this year’s additions.

We hope you enjoy this update, and we’ll see you in 2023!

Aug 25, 2022

August Update

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - misplacedyank

Welcome back to an update on all things MCC, we’ve got a lot to talk about!

When last we met, we provided an update on some of the new features, functionality, and content in the pipeline for Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which included further mod support, campaign collectibles, new armor customization, quality-of-life improvements, and more.

Our next MCC content update is coming soon (very soon!), so let’s dive into the details of what’s coming your way...

OVERVIEW

A good content update is prepared much like avocado on toast for breakfast. You cut the avocado in half and remove the stone, scoop out the flesh, squeeze in some lemon juice and mash what you’ve got with a fork until you’ve got the texture you want. Add some desired seasoning, toast your sourdough bread, throw on a splash of oil, apply the avocado spread, and voila!

That’s game development, folks.

By the way, is now a good time to tell you that we recently released Halo: The Official Cookbook? While we're making you hungry for this MCC update, let's get that belly rumbling like a 100,000-year-old Gravemind too...

We’re cutting the avocado in half, taking a look inside in much the same way that you’ll be doing with the mod tools we’re giving you for Halo: Reach in this update. (And yes, we’ve got Halo 2 Anniversary and Halo 4 mod tools coming further down the line.)

Think of the stone like the seasonal naming conventions we’ve hitherto had in MCC. We’re getting rid of it, as we are (like we’ve previously said) no longer releasing “seasons.”

Then we’re scooping out the flesh, which means that when the time of the week comes for the game to update—refreshing the playlist hopper data—you won’t have to relaunch the title, you’ll always be up to date with the latest event playlist.

Lemon juice. That's a yellowy color, right? What’s another kind of yellowy color? You guessed it, gold! The Golden Moa collectibles that you’ve been searching for in Halo 3 as part of your regular campaign challenges are also coming to Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.

Next, you want to mash up that avocado into the desired texture, much like you want to customize your Spartan or Elite so their appearance fits your preferences. On that front, we’ve got five new armor sets coming to Halo 2: Anniversary for you to play with!

And then comes the seasoning. Well, not seasoning, we just said we’re getting rid of that, but we are giving you the ability to change the main menu background video and set it to any one of your favorites from the past.

Don’t forget to toast your sourdough bread just like you toasted the enemy team in that last match! In the post-game carnage report, you’ll be seeing an updated screen which features the addition of poses, which are themselves also new customization items for you to acquire. All games (with the exception of ODST, which obviously doesn’t have PvP) will have poses implemented for both Spartans and Elites.

Throw on a splash of oil, giving that extra bit of flavor—much like how in-game dialogue (such as key mission dialogue outside of cutscenes and Sangheili dialogue in Spartan Ops) will now be largely subtitled.

Finally, spread that avocado onto your toast. Speaking of which, the Bandana and Acrophobia Skulls are spreading across titles, coming to Halo: Reach in this update so you can take to the skies and rain down an infinite amount of fire from your weapon of choice.

And there you have it. Avocado on toast, game development—how different are they, really?

(Note: do not let this writer’s ability to run with a silly little simile fool you into thinking that these processes are at all similar!)

MODDING

With this new content update, there are not only fixes and improvements to the existing mod tools for Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, and ODST, but mod tools for Halo: Reach are coming as well!

To be clear out of the gate here, mod tools for Reach are still in the process of being locked down. Our intent is to release this alongside the August update when it goes live next week, but there is a possibility that these will come just a little bit later to ensure it is up to the highest possible standard for public release.

While Halo 3's content workflow was mostly an iteration on Halo 2's, Reach's workflow has some notable differences.

FOUNDATION

This is a C#/WPF-based tool which replaces the functionality found in the C++/MFC-based "Guerilla" tool found in the previous games. It is a much richer development environment than what Guerilla has provided users thus far, making it much more than just a tag editor.

MEGALOEDIT

Reach was the first game to introduce a multiplayer game engine which could be driven by scripts, called "Megalo" scripts.

Included with the tools is not only this basic editor (with syntax highlighting and a few other bells ‘n’ whistles), but many of the in-production and old prototype Megalo scripts for game variants you're familiar with. This includes things like CTF, Chess, Invasion, etc.

MegaloEdit compiles scripts into an intermediary .mglo file format. To play them normally, you’ll need to use the megalo-convert-variant-files tool command to convert them into .bin files. However, rapid iteration is a big focus of megalo variant development, and to that end we’ve added a “hot reload” feature to the MCC pause menu. This feature is currently present for Halo: Reach in custom games on PC and will be enabled for H4 and H2A once their mod tools are released.

This feature allows the party leader to directly load a .mglo file and instantly restart the match on it. This allows you to tweak your variant on the fly while playtesting and immediately test out your changes.

The new “hot reload” button for loading variants exported by MegaloEdit (one of the Halo: Reach mod tools) directly from the pause menu.

The dialog for specifying a Megalo variant to load from the pause menu. The match will restart with the specified variant for rapid iteration and playtesting.

ARMORY AMORE

The multiplayer component of Halo 2: Anniversary is getting some love in this content update with the addition of not one, nor two, nor even three, but five new Spartan armor sets and a slew of weapon skins.

Let’s take a closer look at ‘em!

BREACH

TROOPER

MEGAFRAME

PANZERDOLL

BIOROID

You’ll further be able to customize your weapons (assault rifle, battle rifle, sniper, shotgun, and rocket launcher) with the Tie Die, Sandstorm, Blueing, and Black Tiger skins.

HALO: CUSTOM EDITION MAPS

Something that we wanted to inform players in advance is that we are looking to make changes and improvements to modding in Halo: Combat Evolved, which means that MCC’s support for playing Custom Edition map files will be removed in the future, as these changes are not compatible with Custom Edition’s map data format.

As a result, players will need to use the MCC’s Halo: CE mod tools to fix up and rebuild any old Custom Edition levels for use in MCC, as attempting to play old Custom Edition maps once this change takes place may either crash the game or simply cause it to fail to load.

Is this happening with the August update? No. This is intended to be an FYI to let players know that this will be happening in a future update, which—at the earliest—is likely to be the next major MCC update.

THE FUTURE OF SPARTAN POINTS

Back in our June Community Update, we talked a bit about the artist formerly known as “Season Points,” now known as “Spartan Points.”

Due to the vast amount of customization content released in MCC over the years (armor, attachments, nameplates, skins, armor effects, voices, and more), we shared that we are exploring the addition of purchasable Spartan Points for players who found that particular mountain an intimidating one to climb, or who just wanted to button up the last of their items they need to get.

As expected, a lively conversation ensued across the community as well as within the MCC team. In addition to some frustrations at the prospects of purchasing SP, much of the feedback focused on general frustrations with the current SP earn rates in MCC (particularly once players have hit level 100).

No decision has been made around the potential for purchasable SP being added as a secondary vector in the future, but with regards to SP earn rate complaints and the current wall that exists upon hitting level 100 — we agree with you and are working on designs now to address this feedback in a future update.

When we designed the progression system for MCC, the intent was always that Challenges would be the primary means of earning points. The stars didn’t align, and we weren’t able to ship the Challenge system alongside the original PC launch where we introduced the progression system (we held it back so we could meet our goals of supporting real-time Challenge progress, PvE Challenges, and general flexibility).

As a stopgap, we loaded 100 points (the total number needed to complete the Noble season track) into the first 100 progression levels. What we’ve seen since is a lot of understandable confusion about why the gravy train stops after Tour 4, Level 10. After all, what good is continued XP earning if it doesn’t feed back into Spartan Points?

We’ve evaluated this feedback for a while, but there was a key constraint which quickly shut things down each time we considered acting on it. Out of the box, progression level rewards are not retroactive. In other words, if we added a Spartan Point reward to every level, you would not retroactively receive points for any of the levels you’d already reached. This would punish our most engaged players as they would miss out on a lot of SP opportunities from levels they’d already reached.

We are working on a solution to this constraint and are happy to announce that, in a future content update, players will earn a Spartan Point from every level (from Tour 1 through Tour 11 for 329 points total) and players will retroactively receive points from levels they’ve already reached.

For example, I am currently Tour 7, Level 21, so I will instantly receive 101 Spartan points for the 101 levels beyond Tour 4, Level 10 that I’ve reached the first time I sign into MCC after this update.

The addition of SP rewards for all level-ups has the added benefit of making XP-only Challenges more worthwhile to complete. Speaking of Challenges, we’re looking to make continued adjustments to ensure they feel even more rewarding and further align with achievable, positive play behaviors. This means we will be looking in depth at challenge feedback, completion rates, and how they fit with current play patterns to consider additions, removals, and updates to challenge requirements. And we will also be looking to bring back Double XP Weekends.

Having this open dialog with our community is important to us as we navigate this path together. Your feedback has already directly helped drive upcoming changes to our current earnable Spartan Points model. We look forward to your thoughts on these changes and your continued feedback on MCC.

WHATCHA GOT COOKIN'?

Let’s throw it over to a couple of members of the team to talk a bit more about some of the additional things they’ve been working on which are coming in this upcoming August update!

SKULLTACTULAR!

Sean Cooper, Senior Software Engineer:

During the development of this CU, there was a moment in time where I was able to get QA to spend some cycles testing a side project of mine: adding new skulls to Reach!

The two most important skulls I wanted to focus on in terms of simplicity and fun value were Bandana and Acrophobia. These will show up in the campaign lobby only at this time, as adding support for new skulls to Firefight would require new binary versioning handling in the game variant which was beyond the scope of this side project.

I recommend checking them out, as astute players may find one of these new skulls helps them engage certain prey.

FORGE AHEAD

Dana Jerpbak, Software Engineer:

With our April CU, we made a few key additions to our Forge tools (the inclusion of team-based kill volumes and a handful of bug fixes). Our Forge friends seemed to appreciate these additions, but also seemed to want some more!

Well, as Noble Six once said, “I aim to please.”

Here are the Forge additions and improvements coming in our August CU.

Object Duplication (Reach): This feature was introduced in the original Halo 4 release and lets Forgers duplicate an object, retaining all of its properties—color, team assignment, boundary shape and size, etc.—at the press of a button. It’s a super handy feature, so we’ve added support for it to Reach where it now works exactly as it does in H4 and H2A.
Reset Orientation (Reach): This feature was always available in Reach from the Forge menu, but got its own handy hotkey in Halo 4. We’ve added this to Reach as well where it maps to right on the D-Pad on controller and has a customizable keybind on mouse & keyboard.
Delete By Palette / Delete Everything (Reach): This is another convenience feature which was introduced in Halo 4 and is now available in Reach. From the Forge menu, you can now delete all objects within a given palette, or all objects, at the push of a button.
Location Name Markers (Reach): This is a feature which was originally introduced in Halo 5’s Forge, which we’ve added a version of in Reach. Historically, Forge map variants have been subject to the named locations on the base map (on Forge World that’s Quarry, Coastline, Island, etc.) Now, you can set up your own with 256 names (curated from across Reach’s suite of MP and Firefight maps) to choose from. These are currently available on Forge World and Tempest (our “primary” Forge canvas maps).

The new Location Name Marker feature in Halo: Reach which allows Forgers to customize the names of areas on their map variants.

“Hold to Bake Lighting” (H4, H2A): Historically, swapping from Monitor mode to Player mode would automatically bake lighting on all dynamically lit objects on the map. This process is pretty fast on modern hardware, but it can still become an annoyance when repeatedly switching. In H4 and H2A, you can now choose to hold the button to bake lighting, or tap the button to switch modes instantly without baking. This will also be familiar to fans of Halo 5’s Forge tools.
Bug fixes and other additions: Aside from the items above, there were a number of bug fixes and smaller additions to Forge and Forge-adjacent features. To name a few, Elites can now pilot Sabers in Reach and the orientation of space fighters now appear correct for hosts and non-hosts alike in Reach and H4. A few missing vehicles have been added to Tempest’s Forge palettes. A timing issue with toggling rotation axes at high framerates in H4 and H2A has been resolved. Check out the patch notes when they drop for a full list of fixes!
We hope that all of these Forge improvements, alongside the release of Reach mod tools, will empower our creator community to keep making awesome things.

NO TIME TO DIE

Another long-standing issue we’ve fixed in this CU is the inconsistent time-to-kill of the Reach Magnum across matchmaking game variants.

This actually dates back to a quirk from Reach’s “TU1” Title Update back in 2011. This TU added the ability for designers to tune the Magnum’s damage multiplier (to enable things like the three-shot-kill Magnum in the Halo: CE Anniversary “CEX” variants). Modders can now play with this tuning in MegaloEdit!

The TU1 Magnum damage multiplier is a quantized floating point value. In this case, it is quantized such that there are 256 possible values between 0 and 10. This results in a step of 0.039370064. This means that any TU1 variant (that is, any variant created for or after CEX in 2011) can have a damage multiplier of 0.964566946 or 1.00393701, but never 1.0. Pre-TU1 variants default to a value of 1.0.

When spillover "bleedthrough" is enabled, any value in excess of 1.0 results in the fourth shot punching through shields, spilling over, and causing a headshot kill. If spillover is disabled, any value below 1.0 requires a fifth shot to break shields and a sixth to kill.

Legacy TU1 variants had a damage multiplier of 0.964566946 and MCC variants ended up with a multiplier of 1.00393701. For MCC, the team slayer variants used in matchmaking generally used legacy variants as the base whereas the FFA variants were generally re-exported. New variants like Escalation Slayer were also exported on MCC and ended up with MCC's damage multiplier of 1.00393701. This was originally presumed to be due to floating point precision differences between x86 (Xenon / legacy) and x64 (Durango / MCC), but that was debunked by recreating the quantization on a standalone x86 application.

The fix retains the incorrect 0.964566946 multiplier from legacy for variants with spillover enabled. The correct behavior would be to set a multiplier of 1.0, but that would remove the legacy TU1 behavior of the fourth shot leaving a sliver of shields and would change the teamshooting meta so it corrects to the unintended legacy value. For variants without spillover, it corrects the multiplier to 1.0 to avoid the 6-shot-kill issue described above.

HALO 3 UNIFIED MEDALS

Dana Jerpbak, Software Engineer:

Back in our April update, we released a feature which added 51 multiplayer medals to Halo 3. This was something we’d been wanting to do ever since we designed our medal-driven progression system back in 2019.

Here’s a quick recap on the feature: We identified 51 medals from later Halo games (from Reach to Halo 2: Anniversary) which we wanted to include in Halo 3. Under the hood, these work exactly like the existing medals that Halo 3 shipped with. Players can customize how/if they are displayed in game by choosing from the following medal display options, but they are always tracked and visible in the post-game carnage report (and award XP in matchmaking as a result).

Unified: Medals are displayed in MCC’s unified medal flasher, using the unified art style. All medals, old and new, are displayed. This was intended for anyone who wanted more feedback for their actions in the game.
Original: Medals are displayed in Halo 3’s HUD, using their original art style. Only the medals which existed in the original Halo 3 release are displayed. This was intended for purists who wanted the original experience. There was one area where this did not meet the goal of matching the legacy experience which we’ll touch on below. Spoiler: it’s fixed with our upcoming MCC update!
Original+: Medals are displayed in Halo 3’s HUD, using their original art style. Only the medals which existed in the original Halo 3 release, as well as a small selection of new ones, are displayed. The new medals included are Headshot, Assist, and Supercombine and they all use their original Halo 3 art from the campaign metagame feature set. This was intended for purists who wanted the original experience, but with a small handful of targeted additions.
Off: No medals are displayed. This was an added bonus for anyone who wanted to minimize visual noise on their HUD.
Medals are a great way of tracking and rewarding a wide range of player actions across all of the Halo games in MCC. The problem was, Halo 3 supported significantly fewer medals than any of the other games (Halo: CE and Halo 2 had already received unified medal additions when MCC launched in 2014).

To mitigate this, we substantially increased the per-medal payout in Halo 3 when we introduced the progression system. This helped to even the playing field but was far from perfect, as it wasn’t uncommon to finish a Halo 3 match earning only one or two medals.

Back in 2019, we defined a list of medals we wanted to add to Halo 3. These included a variety of medals ranging from very common (easy) to very rare (difficult) and rewarding different kinds of playstyles. These medals would not only feed into the XP system, but also provide additional real-time feedback to players.

In the years since Halo 3 released (can you believe it’s going on 15 years?), there has been a trend towards games providing more and more feedback for things like kills, assists, and objective play (you can even observe this trend across the Halo titles within MCC). As a result of the changing times, new players may find the relative lack of feedback for these actions in Halo 3 confusing or unrewarding. Adding many of these medals required a lot of attention to detail, from defining specific precedence for overlapping medals, to subtle nuances in their criteria.

Whenever we add a feature to a legacy Halo engine in MCC, we strive to make it a natural extension of the engine’s systems. Adding these medals the right way required some detailed work across a fairly broad surface area. Because of this, our initial plans to add them got pushed out of 2019. We were excited to finally have time to implement these towards the end of 2021. It was a fun bit of archaeology to dig up some of the nuances of these medals from the games they were introduced in (which ranged from Reach to Halo 2: Anniversary) and to reconcile these details with how Halo 3’s medal systems work.

Over the course of implementing and playtesting these medals, we made a few emergent changes as well such as adding to our original list of medals to add and including the aforementioned “Original+” setting. At one point during a playtest, someone got a cheeky kill with a Fusion Coil which prompted us to include the Environmentalist medal which hadn’t otherwise been on our list.

Above, we mentioned that there was one case where the Original medal display setting didn’t live up to its name. To explain this, we need to explain the concept of precedence in more detail.

Some medals with overlapping criteria supersede one another. For example, defeating an opponent with a headshot will award the Headshot medal and not the generic Kill medal. Similarly, a Beatdown supersedes a Pummel, a Wheelman supersedes an Assist, and a Gravity Hammer Kill or Energy Sword Kill supersedes a Pummel.

In the original Halo 3 release, if you defeated an opponent with an Energy Sword, you would simply receive a Pummel (technically a Beatdown but these were renamed with the introduction of fancy assassinations in Halo: Reach) medal. In MCC, the Energy Sword Kill medal now takes precedence, but it’s only displayed in the Unified medal flasher.

As a result, players using the Original setting actually got less feedback than they did previously. This was not our intention, and we heard your feedback loud and clear. In the upcoming MCC update, you’ll see the legacy Pummel medal in the HUD when earning melee weapon kills exactly as you did before. Under the hood, these are still mapped to the Energy Sword Kill and Gravity Hammer Kill medals for the sake of the PGCR and XP rewards.

MENU À LA CARTE

With this CU, we’ve made a number of quality-of-life additions and improvements to our season—now “series”—UI. Grinding for and equipping cool cosmetics across MCC is something we want players to be able to do without too much hassle.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the improvements we’ve made...

New Options & Career screen: The Options & Career screen is the hub from which players access unlocks, customization, settings, and more. This screen hadn’t seen too many changes (excepting the addition of new sub-menus) since MCC’s original release in 2014, and it was due for an upgrade. We’ve rebuilt this screen from scratch with a new vertical layout, a preview panel providing contextual information about its sub-menus, and access to the roster. The Exchange is also now accessed from this screen, meaning that it’s available without backing all the way out to the main menu (which required leaving your squad if you were in one).

MCC’s new and improved Options & Career screen, a hub where players can access various menus for unlocking rewards, tracking progress, and customizing their experience.

Bulk unlocks: Unlocking items individually can be tedious, especially if you’ve got a lot of Spartan Points to spend. We’ve added two ways to expedite this process. You can now select a tier on any future page of a Series and unlock it and all preceding items in bulk. In MCC, you only need to unlock all tiers on the preceding page to get access to a given item, so the bulk unlock behavior will unlock only the bare minimum number of items to reach the target item. Alternatively, there is an Unlock All button to unlock the entire Series. In addition to this, we’ve made some backend optimizations which make unlocks (whether for a single item or in bulk) about 30% faster than before.

New bulk unlock functionality allows players to unlock a range of Series tiers (or even an entire Series) at once without manually unlocking each tier individually.

Series pinning: Now that there isn’t a “current” Series with new unlocks being added to the Exchange instead, we needed to make a few UI changes. First, the preview widget in the Main Menu will now display information about the Exchange by default as opposed to progress towards the current Series. Players can now choose to “pin” a Series of their choice to automatically land on it when opening the Catalog and to see its progress featured in this preview widget.
Customization menu improvements: There are a lot of unlockable items in MCC (roughly 2,000, in fact). Historically, if you found a locked item in the Customization menu that you were interested in, you’d have to scour the Season Overview (now “Catalog”), Exchange, and Challenge Hub to try to find where to unlock it. With this CU, we’ve categorized items by their unlock source to save you the trouble.

New customization menu categorization allows players to understand how and where to unlock items.

If you read the summary on the server incident we experienced back in April, you may recall that our ability to propagate our server-side fix out to users was hampered by a requirement for the MCC game client to be restarted in order to download new configuration data. This is true of all of the data in our Content Management System (such as matchmaking hopper config, message of the day, server pairing info, and more), or rather it was.

With the August CU, that limitation is a thing of the past. Whenever a new CMS change is pushed, players will receive it automatically without needing to relaunch. If matchmaking hoppers change (as they typically do each Wednesday at 10 AM Pacific), you’ll simply receive a notification that new data is available and be briefly popped out of matchmaking to retrieve it upon completion of your next match. This works seamlessly across squads and will solve those pesky cases where someone joins with incompatible data or where you can’t find a match because you’re on outdated data.

And so, that brings us to the end of this update on what’s coming in the August update for MCC.

We are targeting release on August 31 (next Wednesday) for this content update, which means you’ll be able to get hands-on with it very soon. We can’t wait to see what you make of all the new additions, tweaks, and improvements, so keep that feedback coming!

See you out there on the virtual battlefield!

Apr 11, 2022

Update on Halo: MCC

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - misplacedyank

We’ve got some unfinished business...

Last year, we announced that Halo: The Master Chief Collection would move away from seasonal updates following the release of Season 8: Mythic – but by no means were we done with this legacy project.

The Publishing Team at 343 Industries is dedicated to helping build and maintain the MCC, and over the last few years they have worked tirelessly to help fix pesky bugs, release new legacy-focused updates, bring the collection to PC, and deliver all-new content alongside fan-requested features.

With many of those goals accomplished, we have set to work on maintaining and wrapping up some of the plans we didn’t quite finish last year.

So, let’s dive right into the future of the MCC in 2022!

Today's Update

ODST Firefight – 'Floodfight'

In Halo 3: ODST, we’ve done more than just add the Flood to Firefight!

To support this fan-favorite mode, we’ve made numerous networking improvements which benefit Firefight across the board. We’ve also fixed several issues with enemies getting stuck or not seeking out the player properly.

Players can now use the VISR map to see enemy locations, even while waiting to respawn, in Firefight matchmaking. Players can now use the Energy Sword and Sentinel Beam in ODST for the first time ever, and can even spawn with these weapons in Fiesta Fight. We’ve also mixed new enemies (such as Elites and Flood) into the wave lineup for various Arcade variants in Firefight matchmaking.

A handful of these fixes and improvements have been imported back to Halo: Reach as well. For example, players can now trade weapons with allies (Covenant units in Firefight Versus, and the friendly Marines on the Installation 04 map) and evict them from vehicles to take over their seats in Firefight matchmaking.

The Flood in Halo 3: ODST have also received numerous upgrades over their counterparts in Halo 3.

First, players will notice that Flood are accompanied by dense fog which gives each Firefight mission a new and spooky ambiance. Players will see this fog dynamically fade in when a Flood wave spawns and fade back out when a regular Covenant wave spawns (in variants which mix Flood and Covenant enemies).

Flood can now occupy vehicles for the first time since Halo 2 and players will encounter (and potentially commandeer) these across multiple Firefight missions. Flood enemies now have a few new animations which allow them to pilot these vehicles, traverse the environment more effectively, and even wield support weapons like turrets.

In ODST, there are also three new types of Flood Combat Forms – the infected civilian, the infected ODST, and the infected Elite Major which sports red armor and energy shields.

The Flood can employ all their familiar strategies as well. Stalker Forms can climb on walls and deploy as Ranged Forms in unexpected locations, totally changing the way the classic Firefight missions play. Flood can also drop onto the map via dispersal pods.

Lastly, unlike the Master Chief, ODSTs can be infected and resurrected by the Flood. Beware, as you may have to fight your own resurrected allies – or even yourself!

The Flood may be more ferocious than ever, but thankfully you have a few new options to combat them as well. New “boons” are available across the Firefight missions to aid you against the undead onslaught. These boons include things like weapon racks containing assault rifles and battle rifles (neither of which were available in Firefight in the original Halo 3: ODST release).

On some maps, players will find Flamethrowers to fend off the Flood. On others, players will be assisted by allies. Marines and NMPD officers will help combat the Flood and can help you by manning vehicles and turrets. On night missions, allied Elites are delivered via insertion pods to aid you. If matchmaking isn’t your thing, these allies can help even the odds in solo Firefight and they can be enabled in any Firefight game variant, not only in Floodfight. Lastly, some Flood enemies will be generous enough to drop any grenades they may be carrying which you can then use to restock your inventory.

We can’t wait for everybody to jump into this expansive new addition to the legacy Firefight experience!

UI Improvements

We’ve made a number of UI presentation adjustments across MCC’s front end. In the customization menus, we’ve improved the presentation of the Firefight voice preview behavior for Halo: Reach and how items are previewed.

We’ve updated and redesigned numerous icons used throughout the menus, as well as fixed some performance issues which could occur in the main menu and the pause menu after returning from gameplay.

CGB Full Title Support and Quickmatch Flow

For the Custom Game Browser, we’ve added support for “Automatic” team changing which allows game hosts to avoid manual team changes in favor of automatically evening teams out when a new match begins.

This is available across all games, including Halo 2, Halo 2: Anniversary, and Halo 4, which are new to the Custom Game Browser with this update.

Forge and Mod Tools

We’ve made several changes to empower Forgers and modders as well!

In Halo: Reach, Halo 4, and Halo 2: Anniversary, we’ve added support for team-based kill volumes. Forgers can now set a kill or safe volume to a given team and the boundary will only affect players on that team. For example, you can now enclose an Invasion spawn location in a soft kill volume that makes it inaccessible to the opposing team. We’ve also fixed several legacy bugs across these three games which caused object colors to be lost on subsequent rounds or otherwise conflict with the object’s team.

In Reach, we’ve also added proper support for the Target Locator to reset on new rounds in multiplayer and to be synchronized properly across devices.

Modders may also notice that weather now synchronizes properly across devices in Reach as well.

Campaign Crossplay for Halo 3 and ODST

Players on PCs and Xbox consoles can now play these campaigns cooperatively online!

Note that while this feature has been tested internally, the team requires additional insight from real players with different networking setups. Please submit Bug Report tickets if you encounter any issues in-game and share your feedback on this feature on the Halo Waypoint forums or here on Steam.

Campaign Customization for Halo 4

Weapon customizations allows for players to use their skins when starting levels and when picking up weapons.

In Halo 4, campaign customization will work similarly to how it already works in Halo: CE and Halo 3. Whenever a player picks up a weapon, their selected skin will be applied to it. This skin will persist until the weapon is picked up by another player (at which point their skin will apply instead). This means that you can trade weapons with allied Marines and see them using your skins.

This contrasts with Halo 4 multiplayer and Spartan Ops where a weapon’s skin is immutable, allowing players to scavenge weapons from defeated opponents and use the weapon with the opponent’s skin (just like in the original version of Halo 4). In campaign, players will still play as Master Chief and will not see their custom armor, visor, or armor effects.

Speaking of Halo 4 multiplayer, we’ve made a few improvements to how weapon skins work there as well. Previously, skins were only available in game variants with loadouts enabled (though we made the upgrade in 2020 to allow skins to be applied to Map and Game loadouts, whereas they were only available for Custom loadouts in the original Halo 4 release). Now, skins are applied in all game variants. For example, spawning with a random weapon in Fiesta or acquiring a weapon in Escalation Slayer will now use your selected skin.

Halo 3 Medal Update

We’ve added support for 51 new multiplayer medals (full list in patch notes), as well as fixed issues with the existing Steaktacular and Triple Double medals. These medals are always tracked, but players have control over if and how they are displayed.

These additions range from kill medals, to style medals, to gametype-specific objective medals, and have allowed us to normalize medal XP across games and better support medal-based Challenges. Players can now enable the full Unified Medal Display setting to see all of these medals in the MCC HUD overlay in Halo 3.

For players who prefer the legacy medal style but want a bit more feedback in the killfeed, the “Original+” medal display setting can be enabled. This setting displays all legacy medals, plus three of the more common new ones (Headshot, Assist, and Supercombine), in Halo 3’s HUD. Purists can simply enable the “Original” medal display setting for the legacy experience.

Lastly, if the only reward you seek is the kill itself, players can now set the medal display setting to “Off” to see no medals whatsoever.

Adjustments to Tactical Exercises and Exchange Rotations

Monthly Challenges, now "Tactical Exercises," will grant points which you can spend in the Exchange to unlock new armor and customization items.

The current seasonal challenges will shift to a 28-day cadence and award XP and/or points that you can spend in existing tiers for previous Seasons or The Exchange to unlock new armor or customization items.

Skulltacular!

We will be adding many of the skulls that were previously exclusive to Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 2: Anniversary to some of the other games as well.

Note that some of these will be marked as ‘use at your own risk’ skulls with a red warning icon, the warning message will read: "You have turned on an experimental skull which may produce unexpected scenarios or hinder your ability to complete this mission. Experimental skulls may be disabled to return the game to a normal state."

Halo 2

Acrophobia – The Corps: Now issuing rifles AND wings...

Halo 3

Anger – Enemies fire their weapons faster and more frequently
Bandanna – Infinite ammo
Bonded Pair – Co-op skull: When one player dies, the other player gets a large damage boost that lasts a while
Boom – Increase explosion radius x2
Eye Patch – Auto aim features disabled for all weapons
Foreign – Players cannot pick up or use opposing factions’ weapons
Ghost – AI no longer flinch from attacks
Jacked – Players can only enter ground vehicles by boarding
Malfunction – Every time you respawn, a random element of your HUD is disabled
Master Blaster – Co-op skull: One player’s shields recharge to overshield level and can only melee while the second player has no shields and infinite ammo. Roles switch after a number of enemy kills
Pinata – Punching enemies makes them drop grenade
Recession – Every shot is worth twice the ammo
So... Angry... - Enraged Brutes explode like frag grenades if not dispatched within seconds. Base Brute score values are increased
Swarm – Hunters are much stronger. Base Hunter score values are increased.
That’s Just... Wrong – Increase enemy awareness of player
They Come Back – Flood Combat Forms spawned by Infection Forms reanimating a corpse are much more dangerous

Halo 3: ODST

All of the above except 'They Come Back'
Acrophobia

Looking Ahead

Last year, we set out to do a lot of things and completed the majority of them. As we went into the holidays and the beginning of this year, the team has worked on bug fixes for these new features and has been developing the remainder of what we've got slated for release.

Below is a list of key features and content the team has up its sleeve to release over the course of this year.

Mod Support – Remaining Games
Our goal is to support modding and Steam Workshop for every game in the MCC.

In CU58, we are adding support for Halo 3: ODST. During this year, our goal is to also add support for Halo: Reach, Halo 2: Anniversary MP, and Halo 4.

Remaining Customization Content
We still have some leftover armor and customization content that wasn’t in our previous seasonal releases, we will be endeavoring to bring these items to the MCC.

Campaign Collectibles – Remaining games
The code and content to support these “shootable” Moa collectibles in all remaining games (Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4) is complete.

The collectibles themselves have not been placed or configured for any of the games aside from Halo 3 yet, however. In Halo: CE and Halo 2, these will only appear in classic visuals. In ODST, these will receive the yellow outline when using VISR mode like the existing audio log collectibles.

Post-match Customization Screen – Remaining Games
This is a new category of post-match customization for multiplayer which allows players to set a pose for the post-game carnage report. This feature will support poses for both Spartans and Elites.

Accessibility Items
In the future, we are looking to include improved mission subtitle support across all games, controller remapping, and we are exploring additional campaign accessibility options.

ADDITIONAL ADJUSTMENTS

For this year as well, with our move away from MCC’s seasonal releases, we will be making some UI adjustments and changes to how things from the seasonal model appear in the game.

Along with these updates, we are working on a variety of customization improvements to simplify the UI as well as make a clear distinction between legacy and new content that are available to players in the game.

There will undoubtedly be some shifts to these plans over the course of the year as things change, but we will be sure to keep everyone apprised of the key bits and pieces that we are working on.

POST-FEATURE COMPLETE

Once we have wrapped up the updates throughout this year, the team will continue to engage with the community and find areas of opportunity to adjust as needed for MCC.

We have had an amazing journey updating these games and bringing them to PC, and so we greatly look forward to continuing to hold up our end of the bargain and delivering high-quality features to MCC through the rest of this year.

BEYOND SEASONS

As seasonal content updates are no longer the update model for the MCC, we are aiming to deliver multiple updates sprinkled throughout 2022. These are focused on delivering key features, quality-of-life updates, and bug fixes alongside the unreleased content from last year. Our aim is to balance our release windows at times where these do not conflict with ongoing updates to Halo Infinite.

As we move forward through the year, we will make sure we keep the community in the loop as we get closer to final timings on future updates and any potential realignment or content changes that are planned.

As always, thank you so much for stopping by!

The full list of patch notes can be found on the Halo Support site.

We will see you in the near future with our next major MCC update.

Nov 3, 2021

Celebrating 20 Years of Halo in the Master Chief Collection

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 343Andy

Nearly 20 years ago, we met the Master Chief for the very first time in Halo: Combat Evolved. With Cortana at his back, the Master Chief stepped foot onto the mysterious Installation 04 and ignited a fandom that would span generations. Since then, Halo: The Master Chief Collection has become our living legacy; celebrating the original Halo titles that have led us to this moment as we prepare to welcome the next generation of the franchise with Halo Infinite.

If you were watching our latest MCC Dev & Flighting Update, you might recognize the Grunt Plush! [To download this image at full res, [url=https://content.halocdn.com/media/Default/BlogPost/MCC20YearsContentBlog/gruntplush_back1-9a918f18feeb493583181ad9a9fd2bad.jpg]please click here[/url].]

As such, today we’re thrilled to announce some brand-new content coming to MCC to help celebrate 20 years of Halo! With today’s update there’s a fresh bevy of Halo-themed content for you to adorn your Spartans with, including:

The “Orion” Armor Set for Halo 2: Anniversary, first seen in the original 1999 Halo reveal
Weapon skins featuring an OG Xbox color scheme
Back Accessories suited for any Spartan’s loadout
A batch of brand-new Nameplates! Here's just a few examples:

And more!

So, whether you want to duke it out with the Duke, or you want to bring your very own Grunt Plush into battle, there’s plenty waiting for you.

Halo 20th Anniversary Content in MCC

With the release of the latest MCC Season, we took a chance to give you a rundown on how our content would be arriving from that point on – and, today is a first step in that very direction. Today, we’re excited to get content directly into your hands that would have usually had to be bundled up into a much bigger release.

Across MCC there will be a litany of new content to check out, including a brand-new armor set for Halo 2: Anniversary, another set along with some cool new pieces for Halo 3 featuring some of your favorite Xbox gear of yesteryear, a new Utility Item for Halo: Reach, along with nameplates and a few other pieces of flair that will help any Halo fan round out their kit. There will even be some nameplates you can earn by completing new weekly challenges.

Over the course of November, December, and into January we’ll be releasing Halo 20<sup>th</sup> Anniversary-themed content right in MCC’s Exchange for you to purchase with Season Points. Granted, we know the holiday season brings with it lots of travel, so we’re doing what we can to keep you covered:

First things first, please check out our full schedule below of exactly what’s releasing, and when.
And, if you miss any of these dates, we’ve got you covered. Everything below will return to the Exchange at a future date! You can rest easy knowing these aren’t one and done.

So, without further ado, here’s a rundown of what’s to come:

[To download this image at full res, [url=https://content.halocdn.com/media/Default/BlogPost/MCC20YearsContentBlog/tmcc20yearshalo_timeline_1_3840x2160-5d686afdfe054555a1a4218e25de346a.png]please click here[/url].]

[To download this image at full res, [url=https://content.halocdn.com/media/Default/BlogPost/MCC20YearsContentBlog/tmcc20yearshalo_timeline_2_3840x2160-f493478c4bb14602b79101ed644a69da.png]please click here[/url].]

And, for those of you that would prefer to copy and paste, here’s a written rundown of what’ll be available in the Exchange (and when), just for you:

November 3, 2021: “Orion” Armor Set (Helmet, Chest, Shoulders, Arms, Legs) for Halo 2: Anniversaryhttp://#_msocom_14
November 10, 2021: The Beast Back Accessory and Duke Shoulders for Halo 3
November 17, 2021: OG Xbox Assault Rifle Skin for Halo 3
November 24, 2021: Semi-Powered Infiltration “Mirage” Armor (Helmet, Chest, Shoulders, Arms, Legs) for Halo 3http://#_msocom_15
December 1, 2021: OG Xbox Battle Rifle Skin and Rucksack Back Accessory for Halo 3
December 8, 2021: Hydration Container Utility Item for Halo: Reach
December 15, 2021: Fronkbox Back Accessory, Duke Shoulders, and OG Xbox Sniper Rifle skin for Halo 3
December 22, 2021: Grunt Plush and X-Pack Back Accessories and the OG Xbox Magnum Skin for Halo 3
December 29, 2021: OG Xbox Shotgun and SPNKr Skin for Halo 3
January 5, 2022: The first return of the “Orion” armor set for Halo 2: Anniversaryhttp://#_msocom_17

So go forth, mark your calendars and pack your Series S for your next travel date, because your chance to dial up your Spartan’s look is going to level up even that much more. With huge thanks to throwbacks all the way back to the original 1999 reveal, to the Duke, to your very own Grunt Plush Back Accessory – there’s going to be a lot more opportunities to show just how versatile your style is.

Party like it's 1999 in Halo 2: Anniversary with the "Orion" set! [To download this image at full res, [url=https://content.halocdn.com/media/Default/BlogPost/MCC20YearsContentBlog/orion_ingame-83806683516841e79286c80f3030482c.png]please click here[/url].]

For a full rundown of everything that’s included in this update, be sure to check out our full Patch Notes right over here. And as always, if you need any help or find any issues within MCC, be sure to contact the Halo Support team over at http://aka.ms/HaloSupport.http://#_msocom_18

Thank You for 20 Years

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been together though this great journey together for 20 years now. Console generations, along with human generations have risen up right in front of us during that time. And whether you preferred to spend your time in BTB with friends, replaying campaigns to try your hand against legendary Jackal Snipers, or anything in between, it’s impossible to ignore just how much your feedback and friendship have meant to us.

Thank you, and we hope you enjoy! Putting together this content for MCC to celebrate 20 years of Halo has inspired us greatly, and we couldn’t be happier to get it into your hands. So whether you’re just diving into Halo for the very first time or you’re a veteran that’s been by Sierra-117’s side since the very beginning, we’re eternally thankful to have you here.

And, when you’re done exploring the new looks, be sure to let us know how your new Spartan looks! Send a Tweet our way when you get a chance.

-Andy