Halo 2 multiplayer maps are making a return for 20th anniversary

For the 20th anniversary of Halo 2, Xbox is releasing many of the game’s multiplayer maps in Halo Infinite on November 5.

Halo Studios (the new name for 343 Industries) announced Monday that the seven maps will be featured in a playlist called Delta Arena. The maps — Ascension, Boulevard, Canopy, Conjurer, Inquisitor, Serenity, and Beaver Canyon — have been recreated in Forge by community members, so they feature some nice visual upgrades, along with new names. For example, Beaver Canyon will be listed in the playlist as Beaver Creek. The developers have also tweaked the gameplay so it feels more like Halo 2, with higher jumps and friendly player collision, and added a new starting weapon: the MA5K Avenger.

“Considering all the subtle difference between Halo Infinite and Halo 2, a 1:1 recreation was never quite in the cards, but what we did come to was that of an amalgamation between the two, with settings that move like legacy Halo, but plays with elements of the modern sandbox,” Halo Infinite designer Evan Colson sad in an Xbox Wire post.

The blog post also reiterated a previous announcement that famous Halo 2 E3 2003 demo would be coming to Halo: The Master Chief Collection as a fully playable mod in the Steam Workshop.

The demo is best known for being an enormous hit when the vide0 for it debuted at the expo, but very little of it made it into the final release due to technological constraints. Similar obstacles also pertained to this new version of the demo, which was put together by modders thanks to Digsite archive assets. They also built tools that would allow the porting of those assets from use in an engine that doesn’t exist anymore. “Even the original executable is difficult to work with, as you need an Xbox developer kit to get it to boot, which is in increasingly short supply even within the studio,” senior franchise writer Kenneth Peters said.

Halo: Combat Evolved was iconic when it launched alongside the Xbox, and Halo 2 had a lot to live up to. Thankfully, it was very ambitious, utilizing Xbox Live for the first time for multiplayer and pushing the story forward to become one of the best Halo games ever released. You can currently play it in Halo: The Master Chief Collection.