“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” ~ Marcel Proust


What world history looks like to a Halo fanboy, probably

With uncanny regularity, my Words of Wisdom series always interrupts the finale of the articles I’m working on *just* as they are wrapping up, though if we look at this coincidental incident through the lens of silver lining, rather than the impatience of arriving at the finish line, a certain level of suspense is thusly created, adding an air of excitement to just how I’ll wrap up my run of writing, and what kind of literary coup de grace I will utilize. My next sentiment isn’t as much of a trojan horse gloat in response to what I view as a quality of my work, more so a genuine reaction of surprise of the particulars behind my output, as every time I go back and review any series I’ve worked on, whether it be GoldenEye, MixTape, Super Meat Boy, or Mina The Hollower, I’m always utterly taken a back by what I end up focusing on in my scribing on the matter, and the journey of cognitive development that follow there after. Even this current series with Halo, still utterly shocked me with its through line of thoughtful prose, and the themes I ended up tackling. Okay, this ended up being a bit of a trojan horse gloat, but not without reason, and I don’t get many chances to celebrate small victories, so I will take any opportunity I can to give myself a pash on the back for good work. With that said, looking at the focuses of my Halo articles, I can understand why people may take issues with my rigidity in critique, in maintaining a certain level of harshness on what is such a classic gameplay formula, but the “retelling” of this title, as I’ve touched upon before, is a deeply flawed vessel of nostalgia, and one that is very much a victim of the series own success.



The corpus of my work is suppose to have a sense of interconnectedness, as I will reference axioms, theories, aphorisms, speculations, and paradigms I’ve stumbled upon or created in the years I’ve been writing on Active Time Event, even referencing articles I’ve written back in the ATE 1.0 days, where everything was just a little more raw and under cooked, but still worthy of inclusion. I don’t even mind linking to the site I was editor-in-chief/managing editor of back in the day, Gamersyndrome, but due to either a website redesign or a willing choice, they have taken my articles down, which means the only way to see what I wrote is to do a deep dive, and use the Wayback Machine to take a peak at any of my articles, like this one about Goat Simulator I did all the way back in 2014. Still, it only gives you a glimpse into a portion of what I wrote, as not all of what existed was preserved. A damn shame really, as more than 4 years of work and 100’s of articles later, it would be nice to have some kind of complete record of said time spent cultivating my word smithing. C’est la vie and so it goes, etc….



In any case, aside from providing a brief glimpse into my past, and a fun little jaunt down memory lane, more my point was that I enjoy being self-referential in keeping myself in check and not necessarily in the name of cheap laughs and quick shits and giggles. As an ardent fan of philosophy, I also like to take some pages of example out of the books of some of the towering titans of thought from days gone by, as some philosophers (like Nietzsche), write as though they’re assuming you’ve read absolutely everything they wrote. Obviously and realistically, this is probably not literally true to the T, but in the interest of time and respect for the reader, they attempt to avoid repeating themselves too much, while also trying to build on ideas in relation to past dictations. I like this style of metaphysical prose gardening, as it gives reference to the past in meaningful ways, while also creating a system of said accountability to ideas once held as true, and either may be no more, or at least now have more context in terms of exceptions to the rule.



I didn’t expect for this now debatably extraneous ramp up to my point to be so ladened with such excess, so apologies for spinning the wheels of bloated description so haphazardly in the mud of pedantry as I build up to my point, but all of this ties together with my final thoughts on Halo: Campaign Evolved (H:CEv), and whether or not I’ve been judging it fairly. I only put forth this sentiment, cause I recall an article I’ve referenced many times since I wrote it, and it’s called Gex, Hegel, And The Master/Slave Dichotomy. Wonderful little read I wrote last July, involving some thoughts about the first Gex game, mixed in with some philosophy involving the famously dense and infinitely hard to understand philosopher Hegel, who’s book the “Phenomenology of Spirit” I enjoy, in spite of its sandpaper like textured prose scattered throughout the pages. I bring this up, due to an aphorism I coined in the article, and it gives me a moment of pause in trying to understand if my own deconstructionism of Halo: Campaign Evolved should be taken to task in a different way:

“I bring this up, due to the general notion of “judging a game on its own premise”, so identifying what any given games mission statement of play is, and breaking down whether or not they succeed thusly within their own declared realm. This may in fact be contingent upon the platitude “comparison is the thief of joy”, in that in comparing one game to another, I’m doing so in bad faith, and therefore expecting something of a title it inherently is not. I think while those are fair points of assessment on some level, for a notion as simple as “If you expect Call of Duty of Halo, you’re doing them both an injustice”. A counter argument of course is that people do like shorthand, and it’s inevitable in a free market to compare product, and if there exists a big name in which to reference, and people most certainly will do so in having that go to standard in their head, they are essentially going to use it as the moment of truth in asking the question of a relative competitor: “does this do it better?“



Which sets the stage to finally ask what may come off as a queer question, though we can consider it more of a thought experiment to play with (you’ll see why), and its that hypothetical thought that currently vexes me: Is it fair to compare a remake with the original? I know that sounds like an extremely bizarre curiosity, but the remakes themselves end up having their own identity, in a sense, and there is a reason we do have a distinction between remake vs remaster; where as a remaster is literally just suppose to be tweaking some of the smaller elements like QoL (quality of life) additions, like adding “save anytime” to older titles, upscaling graphics, adding achievements etc,thing a remake is suppose to essentially be redoing the whole from the ground up, so changes in the base formula are to be expected. I suppose after that, it is a matter of realizing that a 2001 game redone for 2026, is definitely going to play differently, but isn’t that the point?



It’s possible I am attempting to articulate a point I haven’t fully grappled with, or perhaps I am drawing ire with the premise of each release against one another. In that regard, Halo 1’s mission statement was suppose to set the stage as the red carpet for a brand new console, and did so with flying colors, revolutionary even in its execution. Halo: Campaign Evolved’s perceived mission statement? A soft reboot for the series, as well as being a pseudo advertisement to draw attention to the value of Game Pass, and to show the world what Halo Studios is made of, by setting the standard for future Halo games moving forward, let’s call it “The Cortana Contingency” for easy reference.



Well, I would say, even if we are to accept my hypothesis of how judging a remake vs the original has an air of unfairness to it, where some essential form of identity is concerned, and thusly eliminate one of the most obvious downfalls of said title, making that point of contention a total irrelevancy. If we then only focus in on what I see as H:CEv’s “mission statement”, all those points I surmised and bundled together under the shorthand “The Cortana Contingency”? If we only consider that element of H:CEv as a fair metric for success…the game still fails to deliver upon its own premise, and fails to succeed in any meaningful way, unfortunately.



Let’s break it down now, shall we? If the game is suppose to be a soft reboot for the series, by starting from square one to wash away the sins of the “Reclaimer Trilogy” (Halo’s 4,5, and 6), quite sadly, it shows to me that they may not actually even understand where they went wrong, or at the bare minimum, fully understand the subject material they’re even dealing with, i.e: what fans want, as the reception to H:CEv has been an extraordinarily mixed bag, with very few resoundingly positive overall reactions to it, from what I’ve seen. If we look at the Game Pass angle, I cite a critique I already provided a couple of days ago, where we already have a much more complete Halo experience available through Game Pass with The Master Chief Collection, and due to it possessing a superior version of Halo 1, as that version has multiplayer, it fails on that front, too. If we then look to the idea of seeing how Halo Studios is going to “make big changes” in how they approach Halo, they did so with a tone deaf remake, where they didn’t really play it safe, by ad hocing in a bunch of disparate elements from other Halo games, completely dismantling and in the process threaten the very idea of authentic levels of nostalgia with muddied revisionism, but then also showed their ass again by not even including multiplayer, so we can’t even judge them on arguably what is the most important part of Halo to get right.



So, even in this weird attempt of playing devil’s advocacy with my thought experiment “The Cortana Contingency”, in going against my own harsh critiques, of dismissing the very notion of comparing Combat Evolved with Campaign evolved, and using totally separate but justified metrics in judging the game’s quality, in my most generously charitable description, the game just doesn’t get it, and inspires not an aught of good faith with its middling focuses and bare bones feature lacking offerings, especially where multiplayer is concerned. Honestly, when I was finishing up the game, and kind of shocked that they made so many changes to the warthog run on the last level The Maw, that was the moment I realized I should wait to let the experience settle in, before I just fly off the handle like some angry old man shouting at clouds about how “things just aren’t the same, cause back in my day…” kind of article. But even after two full weeks of playing the game, beating it a couple times through, scraping over what content that is available, and continual consideration of what’s on offer with a daily steady stream of thought in trying to find the saving grace of the title….on top of being an OG Halo fan…I just don’t think the juice was worth the squeeze.

In fact, after that altered final Warthog run, after the credits rolled, and I was sitting on the menu, listening to the Gregorian monk chants fill the room with the sounds of their powerful melody, while simultaneously feeling a sense of emptiness that there was no competitive multiplayer to speak of, and remembering still, this could be the first time PlayStation fans ever experience Halo, or even just a younger generation of kids with the Xbox series being exposed to it first time, the thought was “This release may have actually just been damaging to the Halo brand”, for all the reasons I have discussed thus far. With all of that consideration, and if true as I speculate, that it leaves behind a sour mood, further damaging the credentials of the Halo spirit in the process, the best decision they could have made for this game during development was cancel the project and just not release it. Salvage what you can, and tack it on to some other release as bonus content, cause as a stand alone game, this is kind of just a face palm of a remake.



Did I have fun with this game? Sure. Do I think it fails its own premise in what it needed to accomplish? Absolutely. Do I have confidence in the Halo name or Halo Studios moving forward? Not remotely…if nothing else, Microsoft should have given the development team more time and resources to accommodate for the inclusion of multiplayer. If that was somehow not possible, they should have brought in another studio to handle the implementation of said multiplayer, so this wouldn’t have launched as an incomplete injustice in the first place, and if this is the standard moving forward for the Halo franchise, I would say we need to go back, wipe the slate clean, and try again…but we literally just tried that, and it didn’t work.

So now what?

~Pashford