Halo: The Master Chief Collection

"Your journey begins."

- Tagline

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is a bundle of Halo games starring MCPO John-117. The set includes Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 4 and, since Spring 2015, Halo 3: ODST, as well as the digital feature Halo: Nightfall and access to the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta. It was released exclusively for the Xbox One on November 11, 2014 for $59.99 (USD).

Features
The four games in the collection are all contained on a single disc and are accessible through a unified interface known as the "Master Menu". The menu allows players to directly play any mission in any of the four games straight from purchase, or arrange the levels from different games into their own custom playlists. Some playlists arranged by 343 Industries are readily available from launch. Examples of these include "Final Four", featuring the four final missions of each game, "Hogs" for levels featuring the Warthog, and "Flood" for missions featuring the eponymous parasite. Halo 2 Anniversary also features separate Arbiter and Master Chief playlists which allow players to complete the two protagonists' respective levels individually. The music and backgrounds in the Master Menu are sensitive to the game that is being browsed at the time, as well as specific modes of that particular game.

All four titles have been optimized for the Xbox One and run natively at 60 frames per second; Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 3 and Halo 4 support a resolution of 1920x1080, whereas the Halo 2 Anniversary campaign has a lower resolution of 1328x1080. Halo 3 and Halo 4 have received upgrades to their lighting systems. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has also received an update to its graphics toggle, which is now instantaneous similar to Halo 2 Anniversary. The Kinect features available in the original Combat Evolved Anniversary, however, are not supported in this version.

The collection features intro and outro cinematics for Halo 2 Anniversary created by Blur Studios, which was also responsible for remastering the cutscenes in Halo 2 Anniversary. These cinematics follow Agent Locke's search for the Master Chief after the events of Halo 4 and have narrative connections to Halo 5: Guardians. New terminals are featured in Halo 2 Anniversary; the original terminals of Halo 3, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 4 will be kept unchanged.

In addition to the control schemes of each individual game, The Master Chief Collection features several universal control setups to span all the games. However, Halo 3 ' s specific controls are not available as one of these options due to the difficulty of implementing them to function with the other games.

The collection features campaign scoring for each game and an option to have a HUD overlay tracking one's score in real time. Each level has its own leaderboard featuring various stats, including total score, fastest completion time, and the number of enemies killed. Players can designate friends listed on the leaderboards as "rivals", whose scores can then be measured against in the in-game real-time score tracker.

The Master Chief Collection is available for digital download on Xbox Live Marketplace. The download version also features the attached Halo: Nightfall and Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta access passes. The Halo Channel is integrated with The Master Chief Collection. Players can unlock features, such as skulls, for the campaign by completing challenges on the Halo Channel. Additionally, players can use the Halo Channel to view their friend's stats during ongoing games or seamlessly join their matches.

The Master Chief Collection will also include Halo 3: ODST for those who purchased the game since launch, as well as a remake version of Relic, one month of Xbox Live, an avatar award and an in-game nameplate in return for the loyal fans who had experienced many bugs and glitches since launch.

Co-op campaign
Both online and split-screen co-op campaign play are supported in all four games. The campaign co-op breakdown is as follows:
 * Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary – 2 players max, split-screen or online
 * Halo 2 Anniversary – 2 players max, split-screen or online
 * Halo 3 – 4 players max online, 2 players max split-screen
 * Halo 4 – 4 players max online, 2 players max split-screen

Multiplayer
Multiplayer is available for all four games — each running from their respective original engines — and is accessible via a unified matchmaking menu system. Players are put into a lobby, then asked to vote for a match from a random selection of over 100 maps from all games (depending on playlist), rather than have the population split into groups for different games. However, there are a number of playlists specific to each game. The collection uses a single unified multiplayer ranking system shared across the four games. Rank, stats or unlockable items such as armor permutations do not carry over from the previous games.

The Master Chief Collection ships with every multiplayer map ever packaged with Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4, as well as all downloadable content maps ever released (including the six maps from Halo PC as well as the two exclusive maps from Halo 2 Vista). In addition to the original maps of each game, the collection also contains six remastered maps from Halo 2: Ascension, Lockout, Zanzibar, Coagulation, Sanctuary, and Warlock.

Forge is featured in Halo 3 and Halo 4, as well the remastered multiplayer portion of Halo 2 Anniversary. Halo 2 Anniversary also features a new vehicle, the M274-M Gungoose.

The upcoming Halo 3: ODST update content will not include the Multiplayer mode, including Firefight.

Multiplayer maps
While originally reported by 343 Industries to contain 93 competitive multiplayer maps, The Master Chief Collection was later established to feature all maps from the four games, increasing the total number of multiplayer maps to over 100. With the complete campaigns of all four games, the collection contains 45 campaign missions, as well as Halo 4 ' s 50 Spartan Ops missions.

Unlockables
The collection contains its own series of achievements for each of the four games, with the collective Gamerpoints attainable totaling 4000. An additional 50 achievements worth 500 Gamerscore were added at launch. An option in the in-game achievements list allows players to jump directly into a game configured to be optimal for the completion a given achievement.

The collection features 37 skulls, most of which are exclusive to certain games. Some of the skulls are initially accessible only through pre-order bonuses but will be unlocked universally on December 12, 2014. One skull, Swarm, is unlocked by watching all episodes of Halo: Nightfall on the Halo Channel and completing all associated challenges.

The Master Chief Collection also features over 300 unlockable player customization options, including emblems, nameplates and avatars for use in game lobbies and player profile pages. There are various ways to unlock these items, although most are earned by completing achievements. Additional unlockable items include 15 terminal videos and a customizable clan tag. For every unlocked achievement, the player receives a high-resolution image from the remastered Halo 2 cinematics, concept art, level images, or a frame from a terminal. These images can be used for one's personal Xbox One background.

E3 2014 trailer
In their E3 2014 conference, Microsoft showed a pre-rendered trailer announcing the bundle.

The trailer features a remastered cutscene from the level Cairo Station from the Halo 2 campaign. The trailer shows John-117 dragging a Covenant antimatter charge through one of the hangar bays in Cairo Station to "return" the bomb to a. Arbiter Thel 'Vadam provides a voice-over for the trailer and it is revealed that an Office of Naval Intelligence agent, Jameson Locke, is searching for the Master Chief.

Terminal trailer
A short trailer originally debuted at the 343 Industries panel at RTX 2014. It showcases the animation used in the terminals for the Master Chief Collection, once again created by Sequence.

The trailer depicts a target profile report concerning Thel 'Vadam, compiled by Jameson Locke sometime after 2553. The report details 'Vadam's personal history from the start of the Human-Covenant War to the glassing of Reach and beyond. The report was later accessed by the Master Chief.

Halo 2 Anniversary cinematic trailer
A trailer that originally shown at the 343 Industries panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2014. It showcases the newly remastered Halo 2 cutscenes by Blur Studio.

Halo 2 Anniversary cinematic launch trailer
The second cinematic trailer for Halo 2 Anniversary showcases more of Blur Studio's new CGI cinematics as well as clips from the remastered Another Day at the Beach for the first time.

Remaking The Legend
A documentary chronicling 343 Industries' journey as they re-imagine Halo 2 for its ten-year anniversary.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection launch trailer
A trailer featuring footage of all four games.

Halo TV Ad We Will Rock You
A television commercial set to We Will Rock You by Queen.

Pre-order bonuses
Like Halo 4, pre-order bonuses for the bundle varies between retailers. So far, three of the bonuses are revealed to be skulls that modify campaign gameplay, namely those introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary.

Amazon offers the Piñata skull, GameStop offers the Bandana skull, Best Buy offers the Grunt Funeral Skull and the multiplayer map book. and ShopTo offers a new Skull called Bonded Pair. GAME UK has two exclusive "limited edition" offers: the first edition, titled "Limited Edition", has a steel bookcase, a multiplayer map book and a Grunt Funeral skull while the second edition, titled "MJOLNIR Edition", has all of the exclusive items of the previous edition with an ArtFX statue of the Master Chief ArtFX. The Master Chief ArtFX statue bundled with the MJOLNIR Edition is not exclusive however; the statue, made by Kotobukiya, will be released separately worldwide in Fall 2014.

Release and reception
Halo: The Master Chief Collection went gold on October 17, 2014. The collection takes up 45 gigabytes of disk space and includes a 15 GB content update at launch. The game launched in most countries worldwide on November 11, with delayed releases in Belgium (November 12), France (November 14) and Japan (November 13). Halo 4 ' s Spartan Ops component will be released via a content update in December.

The Master Chief Collection shipped with a significant amount of bugs, many of which had an impact on playability particularly in multiplayer. Among these flaws were atypically long matchmaking times, sporadic unattainability of achievements and glitches in the user interface. 343 Industries applied multiple patches to the title over the weeks after its release in an effort to fix these problems. On November 24, 2014, 343 Industries general manager Bonnie Ross issued a formal apology for the debacle, assuring that the studio would continue their work on amending the issues with the collection.