Halo Legacies Screenshot
Image: The Halo Legacies Dev team

For all its influence on the FPS genre as a whole, the Halo mod scene has always been surprisingly low-key, so it's cause to celebrate when one of the most experienced teams around announce a full-length fan-game. Halo Legacies might be the most ambitious mod project ever for Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC, and one that I'd normally be doubtful about the chances of ever seeing the light of day... were it not developed by the team behind SPV3, a complete reimagining of the original Halo running on a heavily enhanced version of the original PC port.

'Ambitious' feels like underselling Halo Legacies. The team describe it as an open-world game rivalling Halo Infinite in scale. A Metroid-inspired adventure set several months after Halo 3, and built on the bones of Halo: ODST. Set amidst human attempts to colonize the Halo rings, you play as a new-generation Spartan 4, dropped onto a ring-world to figure out why UNSC research teams went silent. But, as is required in all things Metroid-esque, your landing goes badly and your suit starts badly damaged, with many featured disabled until you can find replacement or upgrade parts for it around the world.

This is a field that no Halo modders have really tackled before, and even 343 only loosely handled in Halo Infinite. In their announcement dev-blog, the Legacy team talk about having to design dynamic encounters that spawn different enemies depending on which direction you attack objectives from. There'll be new weapons, new enemies (including never-before-seen creatures like Slugmen, Keelbugs, Drinols and Yonhet, creatures mentioned in the novels but never before seen in games) and new permanent upgrades you can get for your basic gear and suit, including a machete-and-shield combo for close combat.

Being a small team of modders (no matter how experienced) the Legacies team are looking for additional talent to help bring the project to completion. Interested and experienced Halo modders are invited to join their official Discord channel. As for us who just want to play the thing, subscribing to the team's YouTube channel is probably the best way to get updates as and when they happen. That, and you might want to bookmark the dev-blog page for more info.

There's no trailer or live footage yet for Halo Legacies, but take a peek at the final trailer for SPV3 below for an idea of what this team were capable of when working with unofficial, jury-rigged tools.