Remasters aren't a new thing in the gaming industry. With so many classic games from previous decades, video game remakes and remasters give older gamers a chance to relive the past while providing new players the opportunity to play some of the titles they may have missed. The Halo series has received remastered editions of the Master Chief's adventures over the years. And, recently, one fan noticed a peculiar difference between Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and the original game.
While Halo: Combat Evolved revolutionized the FPS genre, the game was released back in 2001 for the original Xbox. While the original version of the game is still playable, the developers believed that the title could use a new coat of paint. As a result, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was released roughly 10 years after the iconic first version of the game. While the game updated the visuals to include more detailed textures and better lighting, the remaster seems to have omitted one staple of the original version of the shooter.
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In a post on Reddit, a user known as haztech99 made an interesting discovery while playing through Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. One interesting feature of the game is that players have the opportunity to change the game's graphics from the remastered version back to those found in 2001's Halo: CE. After reaching a specific area of the game, haztech99 decided to switch the game's graphics to the lower detailed visuals of the original. While the crisp textures of the remaster were gone, one interesting feature had been added: blood. Splattered across the corridor were the bright colors of blood from those that died in battle. To the gamer's surprise, the newer version of the game opted to tone down this visual element significantly.
This Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary post from haztech99 has struck a chord with many in the Halo community. With over 7,600 upvotes, many have weighed in on the topic of blood in the game. Numerous users commented that they liked the feature from the 2001 version of the game, while others recalled that continuing to strike the corpses of dead Elites would cause even more alien blood to scatter across the game's environments. Furthermore, some remember that a large amount of Covenant blood would even cause the game to lose frames on the original Xbox.
With Halo: CE Anniversary's lack of blood in mind, it will be interesting to see how the developers at 343 approach this element in the upcoming release of Halo Infinite. While the game hasn't received an official rating from the ESRB, Halo 5, the previous mainline game in the series, was rated T. If Infinite looks to land the same rating, the bright colors of Covenant blood probably will be toned down significantly compared to 2001's Halo: CE.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is available as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.