After 20 years, you can play the legendary Halo 2 demo from E3 2003 for yourself, and very soon

The legendary Halo 2 demo from E3 2003 made a strong impression on players, but it never made it into the release build of Bungie’s shooter. On the 20th anniversary of the project, developers from Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) will fix this.

Image Source: Halo Studios

Xbox Game Studios and Halo Studios will release a level from the Halo 2 demo at E3 2003 as a free modification for Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC, it has become known.

The demo will appear in the Steam Workshop on November 9 – the 20th anniversary of Halo 2. Whether the release will take place outside of Valve – in the Microsoft Store and / or on Xbox consoles – is unclear at this stage.

A look at one of the demo levels in development

Plans for the release of an E3 demo of Halo at 343 Industries were revealed in the summer of 2022. Together with the Digsite modding team, the studio managed to restore the original scripts and files, but a new problem arose.

The demo was created on a now defunct version of the Halo engine, so the materials turned out to be incompatible with current builds of Halo 2 – because of this, as part of the restoration, the level had to be assembled and rebuilt several times.

Recording the original demo

The 9-minute demo showed how Master Chief fought his way through Covenant forces in the Outskirts and Metropolis levels, and also used new mechanics, including two-handed shooting and the ability to knock out an enemy from behind the wheel of a vehicle.

«The response to the E3 demo was overwhelming. Almost every Halo fan remembers that demo and where they were when they first became dazzled by its brilliance,” says head of PR Brian Jarrard.