Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

 (also referred to as Halo: Anniversary, and/or Halo: CEA) is a first-person shooter video game set in the Halo Universe and is a remake of 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo: CEA was announced at Microsoft's E3 2011 press conference, along with Halo 4.

343 Industries, in collaboration with Saber Interactive, have announced that November 15, 2011 is the crrent release date - 10 Years after the release of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, hence, the anniversary prefix. The game will feature 7 classic multiplayer maps, support for Xbox Live multiplayer matchmaking, a complete visual overhaul, achievements, terminals, and the ability to play co-op campaign over Xbox Live.

Some other additions to the game will be achievements, Terminals, and other hidden easter egg type goodies. Finally, it also has been announced that the game will include the ability to play co-op campaign over Xbox Live. The campaign will run on the original engine, whereas multiplayer will be powered by the Reach engine. It is currently in debate whether multiplayer and campaign will ship on the same disk, or the full Reach multiplayer will appear on a second disk with the seven new maps, similar to Halo 3: ODST.

Campaign
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary's campaign will be a remaster of Halo: Combat Evolved. The Master Chief will evacuate the Pillar of Autumn, Land on Installation 04, Battle an onslaught of Covenant forces, and discover a terrible species known as the Flood, and save the galaxy, preventing the decimation of all sentient lifeforms.

Multiplayer
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary will support cooperative campaign and competitive multiplayer modes. The campaign mode will use a remastered version of the original Halo: Combat Evolved-engine. The multiplayer mode will use the Halo: Reach engine.

Multiplayer Maps
Seven maps will be updated and re-released utilizing the Reach engine. Announced multiplayer maps in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary include:


 * Battle Creek
 * Hang 'Em High
 * Damnation

Firefight Maps
An unknown Firefight map has been announced. This map may feature the Flood, the infectious species that made its debut in the debut Halo game, Halo: Combat Evolved, and has never been seen in any Firefight map.

Development
343 Industries is utilizing the original Halo: Combat Evolved engine and the Halo: Reach engine to make the original Halo: Combat Evolved look and feel like a game created in 2011. They will be keeping some of the audio and replacing other parts entirely with faithful "re-orchestrations" of the original recordings.

Engine
The campaign will run on the original engine, whereas multiplayer will be powered by the Reach engine. 343 Industries will be graphically revamping the entire game and the level design in the campaign will be enhanced. This means that everything will be more detailed and include more assets to fill in the blank space that Halo: CE left behind. In addition, in 343's ViDoc on Halo: Anniversary, they stated that the player will have the option to switch between old graphics and revamped graphics with the push of a button. However, the developers will not be sacrificing the original feel of the graphics. Halo: Anniversary is simply adding an additional layer of graphics on top of the original game graphics, hence being able to switch between the old and revamped graphics, and thus keeping the original gameplay and physics of the intact.

Audio
Halo: Anniversary retains some of the original audio from Halo: Combat Evolved, though it will be remastered to sound cleaner, allowing it to work seamlessly in 5.1 surround sound. The music has been changed from Martin O'Donnell's original soundtrack and replaced with brand new "re-orchestration" from Skywalker Orchestra.

Trivia

 * Infinity, Death Island and Timberland are all rumored to make a return in Halo Anniversary's multiplayer.
 * The game will ship with the seven new maps on disc and a code to download them to the Xbox 360's HDD to be played using the Halo Reach game disc.
 * In an interview with Gamespot, Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios, Phil Spencer, confirmed that Halo: Anniversary will ship with Kinect support. The extent of its Kinect functionality, however, has not yet been elaborated on.
 * As mentioned during the announcement of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary at E3 2011, the game will feature the original graphics and remastered graphics layered over the original and the player will have the option to transition between both graphical layers. It is not yet known how often the player may transition the graphical layers and if it is possible to during cutscenes.