‘A straight port from console to PC just doesn’t cut it’
As teased in Monday’s Halo Insider update, 343 Industries has revealed some of the details for what the upcoming PC port of Halo: Master Chief Collection will play like. While the core gameplay will remain untouched, new control options, an overhauled UI, and a modern progression system similar to Halo: Reach will be standard across every game in the pack.
Tyler Davis, community support coordinator for 343, wrote, “Our philosophy is that a straight port from console to PC just doesn’t cut it. MCC needs to be authentic to Halo and the PC platform. The team has greater ambitions and we know PC gamers demand, and expect, more than that.” The input system and UI were major focus points for the team. The update teases fully remappable controls, touched up menus and text chat, very minimal input delay, and many other platform-specific features.
Integrating these features wasn’t easy for the team. Senior producer George Wright explained, “There are multiple game engines, even non-Halo specific engines, with their own differing programming styles, and contributions have been made by various dev teams over the years. This means that there’s a lot of complex content to analyze before we could properly get started.” Even with those issues, the team is happy to announce that the progression system from Reach will be integrated throughout the collection.
The rest of the Insider update is fairly lengthy, so you can get a real in-depth look at how Halo will end up being on PC. There isn’t any footage just yet, but a look at the settings menu and even some shots of testers playing LAN games can be seen. It seems that 343 and Microsoft are really taking this seriously, which will likely mean a smooth launch for whenever MCC does hit the platform.
MCC Development Update – April 2019 [Halo Waypoint]
