343 cancelled a Halo VR game which got me thinking. Halo launched the Xbox. Can it do the same for VR?
In 2001 when Bill Gates and the Rock launched the first Xbox console the undeniable killer app was Halo: Combat Evolved. The early preview had wowed audiences so much that when Microsoft bought Bungie in the year 2000 the howls of anger from Apple fans were audible across the globe.
Halo went on to sell record numbers of games , and was largely felt to be responsible for granting Microsoft a foothold in the console gaming market.
Fast forward to 2022 and a new technology is on the cusp of gaining the kind of mainstream acceptance that games consoles did in the early 2000’s. I am talking of course about VR and, of course, the “metaverse”.
Can Halo do it again? Can it launch another hardware platform like it did all those years agao. Two things I saw recently make me think this is possible and that it will actually be good. One piece of news makes me doubt it. Let’s get in to it….
The first is the news, from Mr Rebs on twitter that 343 cancelled a Halo Infinite VR game in 2017 called “Reverie”. He provided some nice concept art and an explanation of why development was halted.
What is perhaps more interesting is the revelation further down the replies that says an engineer from a fan made mod for the MCC was hired by 343. It looks like they were a decent way in to this mod before the engineer, known as Nibre_ was hired away by 343. He goes on to state that one of the reasons for the cancellations on development was a lack of VR market but with the “success” of the meta quest2 and Sony on their second iteration of playstation VR perhaps the market has developed to a point where entering the VR space makes more sense.
Looking at this gameplay, which got some attention at the time, it’s clear to see that if development had continued then a full VR experience was possible back in 2019.
The second was this channel which demonstrates full play throughs of past Halo games and they do look promising. There have been loads of VR mods for Halo over the years so there is clearly interest from the community. We’ve seeen the final Warthog run from Halo 3 converted and various flood VR experiences too.
Dyortos plays through Halo Infinites gameplay and Ive got to say the gameplay looks fun. Up close and personal with the Brutes looks like a lot of fun for sure.
The multiplayer has also been ported to VR which doesnt look quite as good to me simply because aiming with your head is always going to be challenging and the pace of the game is faster.
Obviously we can’t tell from this footage what the experience will be like inside the headset but we should also remember these are fan made mods using hardware which should be considered “unsupported” so it looks promising and definitely possible for a full development studio to complete to a high standard.
The sticking point appears to be Microsofts, so far, tepid support of VR. There is no dedicated headset for the Xbox, little cohesive plan, even for Windows mixed reality, and the one VR / AR project which had launched was Holo Lens. This was primarliy aimed at the enterpise market but even this has been thrown in to dissarry by a number of engineers who have left for Meta and the recent departure of Alex Kipman who headed up that division.
Kipman left under something of a cloud after details of unprofessional behaviour at work surfaced.
Since Kipmans deaparture VR hardware has been handed off to Panos Panay at Microsoft who is far more consumer oriented than other Microsoft executives. He aspires to compete with Apple as much as possible and with so many rumours flying around regarding Apples own VR ambitions I am sure this is something he will be keen to compete with.
There is always hope of course and if Microsoft hopes to make a serious play for the “metaverse” they will need hardware to support it for the masses. The next 12 months is shaping up to be very interesting so watch this space.
Would a proper Halo VR experience make sense to you? Would you buy a headset to play it? Let me know in the comments.
Twice the bits 
Leave a comment