Halo: Combat Evolved Original Developer Calls Remake a Chorus-Only Remix

Halo: Campaign Evolved finally showed up, and the first thing to catch heat wasn’t a new enemy, a new cutscene, or even the UI. It was a couple of rocks. Or rather, the lack of them. And yes, that actually matters.

The reveal: a glossy return to The Silent Cartographer

Halo Studios announced the project at HCS 2025 and rolled out a 13-minute gameplay walkthrough of The Silent Cartographer, the most endlessly replayed mission in Halo: Combat Evolved. It’s the beachhead-to-bunker-to-beachhead loop we all know — bright sand, alien hallways, and a Warthog begging to be sent off ramps.

The designer who built it is not thrilled

Jaime Griesemer, one of the original Halo: CE designers, watched the new demo and immediately pointed to what looks like a small tweak that reshapes an entire encounter. In the remake, the player drives a Warthog straight into a pair of Hunters — Halo’s hulking, mini-boss types — and deletes them in seconds. In the original, you weren’t supposed to do that.

"You aren’t supposed to be able to take the Warthog up to steamroll the Hunters. I intentionally placed rocks in the way so you had to fight them on foot. When you can just smash the crates out of the way it wrecks the encounters. But the worst part? They put trees in the landing area of the WooHoo Jump. Lame."

The rocks he’s talking about used to block the Hog’s path, forcing a tense on-foot fight. In the remake, those obstacles are now destructible, so you just nudge through and let the chaingun do the work. It speeds the mission up, but it also strips the set piece of its punch. Griesemer summed up the vibe shift pretty bluntly:

"It’s like the dance remix of a classic song that skips the intro and the bridge and just thumps the chorus over and over."

Also on his list: the famous beach ramp he calls the WooHoo Jump. In the demo, there are trees in the landing zone. It’s a small thing, but if you’ve ever lined up that jump, you get why seeing trees there feels like someone moved your furniture.

Another OG voice says: looks great

Not everyone from the old guard is grumpy about it. Halo co-creator and frequent art director Marcus Lehto liked what he saw from the new team and their world-building:

"Good to see the new and familiar faces building the Halo team" and "the explorations look fantastic."

What the remake is trying to be

Halo Studios is pitching Halo: Campaign Evolved as a faithful remake that’s literally built on top of some original code, but they’re also upfront about modernizing the campaign. The goal is to make missions work for four-player online co-op and smooth out some intensely 2001 design quirks — they specifically called out The Library for a tune-up. Hands-on coverage is already calling this an Unreal Engine 5 remake, which tracks with the visual overhaul.

• In the new Cartographer demo, the destructible obstacles let the Warthog reach the Hunters, flipping a designed-on-foot encounter into an easy vehicle stomp. That’s why the missing rocks matter.
• The WooHoo Jump’s landing zone now has trees, which undercuts a signature joyride moment from the original beach run.
• These tweaks appear to quicken the mission’s pacing — great for flow, less great if you loved the original’s deliberate build-up.
• The studio’s broader mandate: keep it faithful, but update layouts and scripting to support 4-player co-op and retire some early-2000s rough edges (especially in The Library).

So… better, worse, or just different?

That’s the real question, and we won’t have an answer until we can play the full package next year. On one hand, changing encounter geometry can absolutely break the careful rhythm that made CE sing. On the other, if the team is truly rebuilding with co-op and modern sensibilities in mind, some geometry was always going to move. Early impressions frame this as either a weird mirror of Combat Evolved or a chance to set up the future of Halo. The demo suggests both might be true — depending on which rocks you care about.