Back in 2003, before Halo 2 launched, Bungie showcased a gameplay demo that featured Master Chief on Earth fighting aliens. This level, known online as Earth City, didn’t ship with the retail game in 2004, as it was a highly scripted demo created for E3. But now, 20 years later, you’ll soon be able to play this iconic piece of Halo history.
In 2018, 343 Industries (now known as Halo Studios) streamed the Earth City demo, and fans started to wonder if it would ever be released as an official DLC or mod. At the time, the devs weren’t sure if it was possible. But in 2022, it was announced that the Earth City demo (and other cut or lost content) would be playable via the Master Chief Collection on PC as part of a partnership between fan modders and the developers. And now, in a few days, we’ll get to play the Earth City E3 demo, thanks to the hard work of Halo fans and developers.
On November 4, Halo Studios and Xbox announced a series of updates coming to Halo: The Master Chief Collection as part of Halo 2‘s 20th anniversary. The big news is that on November 9, players on Steam will be able to finally play the highly-anticipated Halo 2 Earth City demo.
“The response to the demo at E3 [2003] was electric, and nearly every Halo fan remembers that demo and where they were when they were first blinded by its majesty,” said Halo community director Brian Jarrard. “Best of all, none of us ever would have expected that 20+ years later, a group of passionate community modders would bring this demo to life as a full-fledged mission.”
According to the blog post, many technical issues kept this demo “locked away for many years.” However, thanks to a lot of hard work by many people (including community modders), the original assets and files for the Earth City demo were recovered. But getting the old content working in newer versions of the Halo engine was very tricky.
The main community member who helped lead the charge for getting the Earth City demo finished and playable in the Master Chief Collection was Steven “General_101″ Garcia. According to the post, he was a “one-man army” and helped improve the demo’s art, scripts, and more. Then other modders, including Ludus, Neo Te Aika, Sean T, xScruffyDaSasquatchx, and Killzone, hopped in to finish up the level and make it play like the original E3 demo.
The remastered Halo 2 E3 Demo arrives November 9 as a free mod on Steam Workshop for PC players.
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