Halo Studios’ upcoming remake of Halo: Combat Evolved, the cleverly titled Campaign Evolved, could “look way better”, according to original trilogy artist Eddie Smith. Speaking on an upcoming episode of our FRVR Podcast, the Halo artist discussed the Unreal Engine 5 visuals of the upcoming remake.
Smith, who not only helped designed the look of Forerunner structures in the original Combat Evolved, but also redesigned Master Chief for Halo 2, explained that the upcoming remake doesn’t look “bad”, but could look much better.
“My critique of the game has been that they’re not pushing that engine enough,” the artist told us. “We can tell that UE5 is doing all that work. Y’all can make this game look way better than that. I’m not saying it looks bad—you’re making it on a much better engine than what the original CE had, so.”
Halo’s Forerunner designs have changed a lot over the course of its life. Combat Evolved’s alien buildings were dull and rustic, Halo 3’s were bronzed, and Halo 4 shifted to complex, shifting structures. Halo Infinite and the upcoming Campaign Evolved remake have opt for a polished metallic aesthetic.
For Smith, who designed the look of Combat Evolved’s Forerunner buildings, the shiny look isn’t a huge departure from the look of the original. However, it must also be met with the natural wear and tear that these structures would receive after eons of existence.
“You can have the Forerunners be some kind of otherworldly stainless steel, but it’s still got to be parts of it where nature is nature,” he said. “Nature is gonna nature no matter how advanced any sentient being is. Nature is always going to be more advanced or at least the will of nature is always going to beat you. So, you would still have the base of these Forerunner buildings stain or some kind of growth.”
One of the key assets that players point to for the upcoming Halo: Campaign Evolved is the iconic Forerunner beach structure. In the original, this structure is rusted with the beach’s tide wearing down the metal on the beach. In the new game, it’s completely pristine with no wear and tear, even as it connects to the ground.
Smith explains that these structures should “look like they’re coming out of the ground” and look like “they’ve been there for thousands of years”. Right now, the artist believes they “look like they were just placed there in an engine”, adding that “you would still have barnacles on those things”, which modern engines would be able to show.
“It has to be naturalistic to the eye,” Smith said. Forerunner structures, especially those on the beach, are subject to a “constantly changing environment that has very unforgivable weathering” which would require “OCD-level maintaining” to keep a pristine look. At the end of the day, it looks impressive, but it looks less grounded.
With that said, Smith doesn’t think the structures look bad, but they could do with added details. As we mentioned earlier, Forerunner designs have gone through multiple looks, and Campaign Evolved’s is closer to the original games than the era of Halo 4 and Halo 5. However, Smith doesn’t dislike those designs either.
“I looked at them as continuences of what we had already laid down,” the artist said. “When you have new artists working on something, you’re going to get their sensibilities and also their energy and what they want to add to it.”
Smith explains that they weren’t “surprised at the time” by the major aesthetic changes of Halo 4 and 5. “The style, a lot of times, is a byproduct of the artists and the creators working on it,” they said. “They have their own natural way of doing things. As much as we want to make these styles seem deliberate, like some lower choice, it’s not. It’s just different artists working on the same thing.
Right now, Smith is working on his own sci-fi universe in the form of Godspeed, an in-development novel that the artist will also be illustrating. The artist is also working on a second volume of Visual Atrium, the artist’s portfolio and history of work across Halo, Ryse: Son of Rome, Godspeed and more.
