Halo Reach

Halo Reach's box art

Halo Reach is the fourth instalment of the Halo game series and a prequel to Halo 1. It was created by Bungie and initially released on the Xbox 360 in 2010 by publisher/owner Microsoft. In 2019 the game was re-released as a part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on the Xbox One and Microsoft Windows.

Like other games in the series Halo Reach uses Bungie's proprietary Blam! with a multitude of upgrades over the Halo 3 version of the engine.

Xbox (Bungie, September 2010)

This is the classic first release of Halo Reach for the Xbox 360.

Modding

There are several tools and mods for the base game or external programs that users can grab to enhance their experience. Examples include:

  • Assembly - A cache editing tool for various titles in the Halo series. Users can use this tool to make permanent edits to cache files and poke changes in real time. While not traditional workflow for map creation, it is a powerful tool that can be used to create interesting experiences.
  • TagTool - A cache editing tool designed to allow porting of tag data between different versions and builds of the Blam engine, as well as importing brand new content.

Like all Halo games tags play a large role in modding.

MCC (PC and Xbox One, 343 Industries, 2019-Current day)

Halo: The Master Chief collection (MCC) is actively maintained by 343 Industries for both PC and Xbox One. It brings the Halo series under a single Game as a Service, including unified matchmaking and progression experiences. The PC port uses Unreal Engine as a menu and input layer over the respective engines of each included Halo game.

In 2019, Halo Reach was re-released for Xbox One and Microsoft Windows as part of the Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Often called Reach MCC by the community.

Modding

There are several tools and mods for the base game or external programs that users can grab to enhance their experience. Examples include:

  • Halo Reach Editing Kit - The official editing suite released for the MCC version of Halo Reach largely based on internal tools developed by Bungie and later used by 343 Industries and Saber Interactive. Some changes were made to make the tools more user friendly and stable, as well as to support importing content from modern 3D modeling software.
  • Halo Asset Blender Development Toolset - A collection of tools for Blender that can be used to export the intermediate files used by the Halo Reach Editing Kit.
  • Assembly - A cache editing tool for various titles in the Halo series. Users can use this tool to make permanent edits to cache files and poke changes in real time. While not traditional workflow for map creation, it is a powerful tool that can be used to create interesting experiences.
  • TagTool - A cache editing tool designed to allow porting of tag data between different versions and builds of the Blam engine, as well as importing brand new content.