The Halo series marks its 20th anniversary this year, and with the upcoming release of Halo Infinite, fans of the series have a lot to celebrate. As part of that celebration and as a tease for the upcoming game in the Halo series, Xbox has released a video showing the evolution of one of its most iconic characters, Master Chief.
Halo: Combat Evolved, the first game in the series, released in 2001 on the original Xbox, receiving high praise from critics and changed the FPS genre. Over the last 20 years, a Halo game has been a flagship release for each Xbox console generation, and with each new entry, both the game and its protagonist continued to evolve.
The video released on the official Xbox YouTube channel is only 23 seconds long but is still nostalgic. The video shows snippets of Master Chief from across all the Halo games as he and the world around him develop with each graphical upgrade. A few memorable moments can also be glimpsed, such as Master Chief and The Arbiter fighting back-to-back in Halo 2 and different interactions with Chief and Cortana. Overall, the video, albeit brief and strangely cut at the end, is a burst of nostalgia for fans waiting for more information on Halo Infinite.
The recent rumor regarding Halo Infinite's delay was quickly debunked, so the game is set to release by the end of 2021, and both fans and Xbox hope that it will cap off the 20th anniversary with a bang. This game is set to end the 343 trilogy that began with Halo 4 while also trying to recapture the essence of Halo's Silent Cartographer levels. However, while many fans are excited, the game's success is far from certain as some fans still have concerns.
At the 2020 Xbox Games Showcase, Halo Infinite's debut gameplay trailer was criticized and mocked as fans felt the graphics did not look very modern. It is important to remember that this trailer was made a year and a half before the game's planned release and that the graphics should be better by the time Halo Infinite goes gold. Still, as far as first impressions, the trailer could have been much better.
All that being said, Halo is an incredible franchise and deserves to celebrate its 20th anniversary. While the video of Master Chief through the ages may be short, his impact on the world of video games has been huge, and he rightfully deserves to be one of video game's iconic characters.
Halo Infinite is planned to release on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in Fall 2021.