The original Xbox owes a lot of its success to Halo, the sci-fi first person shooter from Bungie that offered a grand story campaign and fun, competitive multiplayer. Though the series is on its fourth main installment (with other side titles along the way), Halo 2 is widely considered the peak of the series' multiplayer due to its revolutionary online, efficient ranked matchmaking system.
Microsoft knows this and, while they haven't officially announced an anniversary edition of the game, spoke about what such a re-release would be like. Speaking to IGN, Microsoft Studios boss Phil Spencer said that the most important part of any Halo 2: Anniversary release would definitely be the multiplayer, because that's what the game is most known for doing so well.
"In this fictitious world where that game existed," he told them, smiling, "it's an easy answer: it has to be just the multiplayer experience that we all found in that first Halo 2 game. If you think about what happened in the franchise and what were the hallmark moments - when did duel wielding come in, when did another playable character that wasn't Master Chief come in?
"All the things that you and I know about the evolution of the franchise, if you're going to say one thing about Halo 2, you're going to talk about real multiplayer. I think you just have to nail that in just such a fundamentally core way.
"Frankly [we'd have to do it] probably better than we did with Halo 1 Anniversary. I thought the multiplayer in Halo 1 Anniversary was good, but Halo 1 never had multiplayer in the truest sense, so it always was going to be something different.
"If there were something called Halo 2 Anniversary," he said, certainly not going to any lengths to deny the project is in the works, "I think the multiplayer would have to be fantastic."
Halo 2 featured an extremely well-structured online ranking system for matchmaking, with improvement into the upper tier of levels very difficult- achieving a 50 meant you were truly among the best playing the game.
I followed the competitive Halo scene for a long time, and Halo 2 is still regarded by most pro players as the best in the series. Professional competitive play for Halo is sadly more or less nonexistent on a large scale due to Halo 4's infrastructure, but some are pinning their hopes on Halo 5 to bring the series back to competitive tournaments. 343 Studios brought on several pro players to balance the multiplayer and work on competitive settings. Halo was at one time MLG's flagship title, but it was moved to the wayside for games with larger audiences.
