Halo: The Master Chief Collection includes Halo 2: Anniversary and remastered versions of Halo: Combat Evolved - Anniversary , Halo 3 and Halo 4 . This collection is the first to feature all campaign missions and multiplayer maps from Halo: Combat Evolved , Halo 2 , Halo 2 Vista , Halo 3 and Halo 4 , plus access to the live-action digital series Halo: Nightfall and the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta.
The collection features a unified user interface which allows users to jump between different games seamlessly. This enables multiplayer playlists that include maps from all five games, with unique multiplayer in Halo 2: Anniversary and the updated version of multiplayer in Halo 2 .
The collection introduces Campaign Playlists, which are lists of campaign missions along with other settings such as difficulty level, skull selections and scoring settings. Examples include Tanks Tanks Tanks (all missions where players control a tank), Me and My Hog (all missions with driving sections that feature warthogs), Speed Runner's Choice (a selection of missions for speed runners) and The Legendary Master Chief Saga (the entire campaign of all four games on LASO [Legendary difficulty with All Skulls On]).
Halo 2: Anniversary is a re-release of Halo 2 , intended to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the game. The anniversary edition comes with the same single-player campaign, allowing players to switch between the graphics engine used in the original and a newer one for more modern graphics at any point during the campaign.
The multiplayer portion of Halo 2: Anniversary is split into two sections. One features multiplayer from the original game unchanged, with updated graphics and performance, while the other has remastered graphics and new gameplay features introduced later in the series.
The remastered versions of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary , Halo 3 and Halo 4 run on adapted versions of their original engines, with everything remaining the same as when they were released except for improved performance. For the first time, Halo: Combat Evolved has online multiplayer through Xbox Live.
On 3rd December 2019, the multiplayer part of Halo: Reach was added for free to this release. The other parts needed to be purchased separately.