Over 25 years of Halo content has leaked online, including playable builds from before the iconic first-person shooters series joined Xbox – or was even an FPS.
The leaked content appears to have originated from a Halo Studios collaboration with fan modders, which aimed to restore cut content from past Halo titles, including the Halo 2 E3 2003 demo released last month.
The mod team Digsite had been working with 343 since last summer – allegedly for no pay – to restore content, including multiplayer maps originally developed for the PC port of Halo Combat Evolved, and cut content from classic Halo games.
Perhaps most significantly, the long-lost Macworld demo from 1999 was planned to be restored for Halo: The Master Chief collection. Prior to landing on Microsoft‘s first Xbox, Halo was at one point planned to be a third-person exclusive for Mac.
Well, all the Halo Digsite stuff leaked.
FAQ:
-I nor any of the recent Digsite departures did this
-Personally don't care if modders use anything here how they see fit, MS might not agree
-Some is old WIP (i.e. H2E3 work is at least 6 months old) so check official releases first pic.twitter.com/4XbMKa2JMj
The original Halo reveal beta as a third person game has been leaked online!
I remember watching that elaborate trailer on a PC Gamer disc way back.
They all launch as basic .exe files with no extra work needed on modern systems.
Link to download in reply! pic.twitter.com/0EnsEbUcCG
However, this week’s leak has made the 1999 demo fully playable on PC, along with nearly 100 GB of other files containing unfinished and cut content from the original Halo games developed by Bungie.
On Thursday, a former member of the Digsite mod team confirmed the legitimacy of the leaked content, but claimed that none of its current or former members were responsible.
“I nor any of the recent Digsite departures did this,” they wrote. “For reference btw, myself and the recent departures actually didn’t have access to some of these files like the
Mac
Bungie
Certain Affinity
Xbox Game Studios (Microsoft)
Andy Robinson