Another round of Halo: The Master Chief Collection testing—or "flighting," as developer 343 Industries calls it—got underway earlier this week, and with those wheels now spinning in earnest the studio has posted an update on what it's doing, how it's going, and what PC players can expect when Halo: Reach, the first part of the Master Chief Collection, finally goes live.
After recapping the content and schedule of the current round of testing, the update goes into detail about how crossplay and cross-platform progression will work in Halo: Reach. Crossplay between the Steam and Windows 10 versions of the game will be supported, but crossplay between PC and Xbox will not. Campaign progress will be shared across platforms, with some limitations: Mission and playlist completions will be retained and shared across all platforms, but mid-mission checkpoints and partial playlist completions will not. Stats tracking, like leaderboards, medals, and achievements, are shared, while Reach customization and PlayerID unlocks are "special cases": They're retained in your Xbox Live profile, but you might have to re-equip them on new platforms.
It's a little confusing, so 343 made a chart:
The update also has a preliminary rundown of the minimum system requirements for Halo Reach on Steam. 343 said that it's still in the process of testing integrated graphics options and will share more detailed specs down the road, and warned that the requirements for the Windows Store version will be "slightly different" than those of Steam.
The PC version of Halo: Reach will also support adjustable FOV, windowed mode with adjustable resolution and aspect ratio, V-sync, HUD anchoring (I don't know what that is), and a framerate limiter as an "experimental" setting.
Halo: Reach on PC still doesn't have a release date, but when last we looked it was expected to be out by the end of 2019. The schedule for the remaining play sessions in the current round of testing is below.
October 31, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT
- Social: 4v4
- Competitive: Team Hardcore
- Firefight: Arcade
November 1, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT
- Social: 2v2
- Competitive: Invasion
- Firefight: Arcade
November 2, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT
- Social: 4v4
- Competitive: Team Hardcore
- Firefight: Arcade
November 3, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT
- Social: 8v8
- Competitive: Team Hardcore
- Firefight: Heroic
November 4, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT
- Social: 4v4
- Competitive: Team Hardcore
- Firefight: Arcade
November 5, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT
- Social: 8v8
- Competitive: Team Hardcore
- Firefight: Heroic
