Halo co-creator says Campaign Evolved "looks and feels genuine": "It's gorgeous in a way I wish we could have built it originally back in 2001"

Halo: Campaign Evolved screenshot
(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Halo: Campaign Evolved was officially revealed last week, and it's got the community divided. It's the same story we've seen with numerous other recent remakes, as some fans love the new, high-fidelity look while others think it's lost the soul of the original. But those new visuals have one very important endorsement: the approval of Halo's co-creator, Marcus Lehto.

"My honest impression of seeing the new Halo Campaign Evolved is this," Lehto says in a tweet. "I absolutely love where this is going. The game looks and feels genuine. It's gorgeous in a way I wish we could have built it originally back in 2001. It warms my heart to see Halo CE like this."

Halo: Campaign Evolved | The Silent Cartographer – 13 Minute Gameplay Demo - YouTube Halo: Campaign Evolved | The Silent Cartographer – 13 Minute Gameplay Demo - YouTube
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Lehto served as art director on the first three Halo games and is credited as the co-creator of the franchise as a whole, having designed the Master Chief, the Warthog, and many of the other iconic elements that give the series its visual identity. (He also served as creative director on Reach.) If anyone knows how Halo should look, it's Lehto.

Of course, Lehto wasn't the only one who worked on the OG Halo, and designer Jaime Griesemer has been substantially less positive about Campaign Evolved, likening it to a "dance remix of a classic song that skips the intro and the bridge and just thumps the chorus over and over." In an era where we're seeing numerous approaches to remaking a classic, I guess there's no pleasing everyone.

Halo: Campaign Evolved hands-on: Is this Unreal Engine 5 remake a bizzaro world Combat Evolved or an "opportunity to pave the way for the future of Halo"?

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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