Halo 3 ODST is coming to MCC, plus free stuff.

I don't know if there's an Apology of the Year category this year, but I'd give it to this.

343 is remaking Halo 3: ODST at 60 fps, 1080p, all that good stuff. The full campaign for free if you've played MCC at all, plus you get a free month of Xbox Live Gold and a nameplate and an avatar! Ok, some of that is more exciting than the rest. Plus they're doing an anniversary remake of Relic,

Anyway, I've gotten dozens of hours out of MCC already and I'll get even more. Patrick gets his dream of the "best" Halo game, which is a weird opinion but ok! Seems like a decent way to make good.

Here's the full blog post from Bonnie Ross.

What about Reach?

I'd really like a PC version. I played through all of these games in a row earlier this year and I'd actually be happy to do it again, especially in a higher resolution and especially at a higher framerate, but I don't want to buy a console for it.

EDIT: Also, worth mentioning, out of all the Halo shooters I like ODST the least. I really like the idea of ODST but the levels in it are too short, the characters and story are meh, and the at-night open world didn't have all that much to do in it. It was really pretty 'n all and the soundtrack was better than ever but that doesn't mean that I was really doing all that much in it. This is why I said "what about Reach" above, I would rather have seen Reach added to this. But it's all inconsequential to me right now, I don't even have an Xbox One yet.

Holy shit. All is forgiven, 343.

I've been saying that all I wish the MCC would include (Other than functional multiplayer at launch) was the ODST campaign, so you win this time Microsoft.

This time.

Fuck yes. Now don't fuck up Halo 5 or its launch and we are cool.

Can they just fuck up a little bit more? I'd like Reach remastered if that's okay.

Lol yeah, I figure by the time I actually pick up an Xbox everything should ported at this rate.

Jeez. That's what I call an apology. Now I just need an Alexis and Drew livestreamed playthrough.

That's awesome!

That's more than I was expecting so not a bad apology.

I just want to know how Patrick actually predicted this. I never would have predicted this. It's pretty crazy.

Well that seems like a decent apology.

Good on them. Ubisoft and Microsoft are at least correcting their mistakes instead of just telling their audience "tough luck."

ODST and Reach should have been in the collection in the first place, what with them being the best Halo campaigns and all (even though they're not "Master chief" games) >____________>

That said, decent way to try and make up for the blunders.

Totally.

Well it's certainly something.

FUCKING AMAZING BREAK MORE GAMES

Agreed, ODST had some cool moments but its biggest achievement was Firefight. We spent dozens of hours there, but I only went through the campaign twice (with a few replayed levels here and there). Now, I have a hard time finishing some games once these days, but Halo games are always outliers. I can't take Patrick's opinion too seriously because his go-to reasoning is "that jazzy soundtrack!" And that open-ended hub area seems like the precursor to Destiny's "mission design," i.e. run to a place and shoot guys and touch a thing. That's... not a great legacy.

Reach, on the other hand, was a fantastic campaign with a heck of a multiplayer component. I'm pretty sure I named it my game of the year in 2010. (ok, I did. Read why!) I'd like to see an update, even though I've beaten the game a half dozen times.

Nevertheless, I still think this is a substantial, worthwhile thing for them to do.

Nice ... I will also joon the choir in please eff up bit more and include Reach :D ... but yeah right now an Xbone is not in my foreseeable future but I do want a Drew stream of all the games in majestic 1080p hi res wonderfulness.

aw yes, great game sucks no firefight. not so recently but Recently 5/5/2013(from achievement date) went back and finished Vidmaster Challenge: Endure and man that was real fun 4player coop. Will pay for Halo: Reach i mean why would they not port it as well. Every halo game available on the Xbox One!!

anyways that soundtrack is good.

Is it uh...is it going to work?

spring 2015 eta, it's just campaign they've already ported Halo 3 (Same Engine as ODST) and i played through that with no issues, so probably. I mean if they f up campaign Saber/Ruffian or whatever studio is doing the port is fing up.

I'd be excited if I cared about Halo single player, but I don't.

@bigjeffrey: One of my top video game OSTs, largely for this:

That's great news, and the MCC matchmaking has actually started to work relatively well. Getting ODST into the MCC is fantastic news and knowing almost nothing about game development I'd figure that it's a relatively easy port given that it uses the Halo 3 engine. I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to offer Reach as a 10-20 dollar DLC down the line, but it's a bigger game on a different engine so porting might take a while. And if ODST comes out in the spring it wouldn't leave much room before the release of Halo 5 to put Reach out. Then again maybe it could be a nice E3 surprise: "Hey you can go download Reach right now".

Ok. This will make it right as far as I'm concerned.

Damn, can't remember who said it on the podcast or Unprofessional Fridays, but they called it! Also I'm very jealous. ODST is the best Halo, and I really want to play 1 and 2 remastered too. Will have to pick this up if I ever get an X1.

Ah yeah, it was Patrick! Thanks!

I think this is a pretty bad thing in all honesty. I get why so many of you are trying to state why its great and all is forgiven, but think about how broken this game has been for this long since launch. I see them adding ODST , whenever they get around to it, and that causes the game to entirely break AGAIN. It's possible it won't happen, but with how this launch went, I'm not putting my faith in them not to fuck that up equally and make their game worse once more.

Obviously if none of this happens and it goes smooth, then yes, everyone who cares about it wins and good on 'em. I'm just not being that optimistic with something they've given no one a reason to be optimistic about.

That seems pretty crazy. Shame ODST isn't all that great (smokey jazz soundtrack doesn't make good game) but still

I'm going out on a limb here and say ODST and Reach were already planned. You don't announce games for shits and giggles. They're also saving that Reach announcement for a botched ODST release. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes with the promise of games that will release mid or end 2015.

ODST is a pretty good set of keys to jingle in front of their horrendous launch.

Relax guy, look over here!

@spraynardtatum: you rather they did nothing to help the situation while they *gasp!* also work at the same time to fix MCC's remaining issues? Good on them for providing a mea culpa that i honestly don't think they were required to do. Still think people blew this waaay out of proportion and are being a bit entitled about the whole situation. But hey, gamers and the internet in 2014.

ODST is a pretty great apology game. It doesn't make the situation any less inexcusable. I don't think it's fair to exchange money for a broken product. If you expect people to pay for your product it should work. Server load issues...that's fine and understandable for a few days but when it approaches a month than it's clear the game wasn't done cooking.

Entitled isn't a bad word unless you aren't entitled to anything and still expect something. I really don't think it's wise to blame the response as the issue. It isn't about gamers and the internet in 2014 any more than it's about releasing products that don't work as intended for real money in 2014. I'd say people are entitled to a working game as soon as they pay for it. What do you think someone is entitled to when they spend $60 on a product? Nothing?

I'm more excited for Anniversary Relic than anything else. I LOVE that map.

I still think in 2017 they're going to do Halo 3 Anniversary and ODST Anniversary at the same time.

That seems really cool, unless they rush that out the door like they did with the MCC. Hopefully it works out, though. I like the idea of eventually plugging ODST and Reach into the MCC, instead of making a separate collection.

@falconer: A 2017 release for Halo 3 Anniversary would make sense, because it would give 343 an extra year to work on a supposed Halo 6 for 2018 release. Then again Halo 3 already looks pretty fantastic in the Master Chief Collection, so a complete remake might be a waste of time for them and us.

A more likely way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Halo 3 would be to release it on PC.

I agree that this is a great "sorry" but the situation was not blown out of proportion, I bought the stupid thing to play Coop that didn't work and the MP stuff was 100% busted. I had one good game every match failed in some way.

Interesting how people expect this update to break the game again. I've had zero campaign issues from launch day. And hell, it was only the first week where matchmaking was completely busted, which led me to fall back on a bunch of single player. Since then it's just been connecting smoother and smoother each update. The launch was awful and the game seemed rushed, but it's in a far better state now.

When Patrick said this might happen, I dismissed it heavily. It's a huge thing to give away. Kind of glad he's right. Except I just bought it on ebay with Halo Wars.

I guess what I'm saying is Halo Wars HD confirmed.

So its free for people who played online during launch (Nov 11-Dec19). Well what about the people that bought it at launch and never bothered to try to play it online because it was basically broken?

This is a good apology from 343. It's still annoying that the MCC didn't work for so long (and continues to have problems), but ODST is a great game.

@elko84 said:

According to the FAQ, you don't have to have played an online match, just registered any kind of activity in the game on Xbox Live. In other words, you just need to have booted the game while connected to the Internet.

I don't see why they wouldn't give at least Halo 3 the full Anniversary treatment. Sure, it holds up a little better when compared to Halo CE and Halo 2, but you might as well round out the core trilogy, and arguably the best all around Halo game. Not to mention Blur already has character models and actors for everyone in H3, so there's a good chuck of the cinematic work already done.

ODST is the best Halo game. I am happy they're doing this.

Are you kidding me?? This is the exact scenario I mentioned on the news posts on this site when I was envisioning their apology if they really wanted it to have some conviction behind it, while at the same time saying it would never happen.

So huge respect for 343 for this, although honestly even more than ODST I just want the fucking MCC game to work.

I can't imagine they'll just let Reach stay marooned on an island. That has to be a paid-DLC addition for them in the near-ish future.

I'd rather companies just fix their broken games (or ship ones that aren't broken to begin with), rather than try to dispel people's frustration with shiny freebies. I mean, it's a nice gesture, but I can't help feel that companies are leaning more and more on the "give em free shit" technique. Judging by the response this tactic usually gets, I wouldn't be surprised to see it keep happening. I guess I just don't want developers/publishers to feel that all will be well if they throw in some free dlc or a game. Just fix the game in a timely manner.

@trilogy: you know how much the internet wants some sort of compensation when stuff like this happens? i'm imagining the anger and hatred slung their way would even be worse without freebies.

Microsoft will probably drop Reach six months prior to Halo 5 Guardians to get people hyped again for the fall release. So...no love for Halo Wars (I kid, I kid).

@ripelivejam: I know. I just wish people demanded better working games from the start, and faster. If broken games didn't take months to fix with nebulous patch release dates, or if they launched stable, people wouldn't be mad to begin with. I'm not naive enough to think that games are going to suddenly stop being released broken, but I also don't want companies thinking that a free dlc or game is the solution to keeping their players happy. It's been happening too frequently in the last couple of years.