Halo Reach players have created a haunting mod that combines UNSC Spartans with Covenant infantry. The blend between the two simply doesn’t look right, and Halo’s outdated graphics in Reach only make the creation look weirder.
The release of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for PC means a lot to the Halo modding community. With previous games limited by the Xbox 360, modders never really showed their true potential in Bungie classics. To 343 Industries’ credit, the developer has done a fantastic job of providing the modding tools needed to breathe new life into the game, and the results speak for themselves. Possibly the most impressive mod yet, the Halo Reborn mod aims to bring everything from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 to the Halo 3 game engine in The Master Chief Collection.
Redditor GashnorOfficial’s clip is a nightmare. The Grunt-Spartan hybrid wobbles toward the camera, revealing its true form. It has completely spartan armor, with a ridiculously oversized helmet, but still maintains the short, stocky profile of an infantryman. Halo’s Spartans are often described throughout the franchise as killing machines, but it’s very difficult to take this particular machine seriously. Users have nothing to say about where the idea for the mod came from, so this seems like a cursed moment of inspiration.
According to GashnorOfficial, the mod is an assembly of Marcus Lehto’s Mark V Spartan armor mod, just scaled to fit Grunt as a variant of the existing game. Seeing these guys hanging around would definitely change the tone of the Halo-Reach campaign. The game is known for having one of the darkest FPS campaigns of all time, but the Spartan-Grunt hybrid is a bit of fun and doesn’t need to be taken seriously at all, even if it’s haunting.
Here’s hoping the Halo modding scene stays strong for years to come. 343 Industries seems to have fully embraced the idea that gamers should be able to create custom content for their games, and that’s a no-brainer. The benefits of games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 remaining active past their expiration date thanks to mods are obvious. Too many studios still turn down modders quickly, and they all leave a lot of money in the future by doing so. Halo fans don’t have to worry about suffering the same fate.
Halo Reach is currently available on Xbox 360, as well as through Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.