IGN recently did an interview with Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer during GDC last week in San Francisco, where he was asked what would be the most important feature to him in a hypothetical Halo 2 Anniversary release for the Xbox One.

He replied with

“In this fictitious world where that game existed… it’s an easy answer: it has to be just the multiplayer experience that we all found in that first Halo 2 game. If you think about what happened in the franchise and what were the hallmark moments – when did duel wielding come in, when did another playable character that [weren’t] Master Chief come in?

All the things that you and I know about the evolution of the franchise, if you’re going to say one thing about Halo 2, you’re going to talk about real multiplayer. I think you just have to nail that in just such a fundamentally core way. Frankly [we’d have to do it] probably better than we did with Halo 1 Anniversary. I thought the multiplayer in Halo 1 Anniversary was good, but Halo 1 never had multiplayer in the truest sense, so it always was going to be something different.”

Phil Spencer closed with

“If there were something called Halo 2 Anniversary… I think the multiplayer would have to be fantastic.”

This is definitely great to hear, provided that Halo 2 Anniversary is actually real. It sounds like they want to truly recreate the Halo 2 Multiplayer experience, something we didn’t see truly with Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary. Halo CEA’s campaign was great with the added ability to revert to the original graphics with a touch of a button on the fly – but many were disappointed that Halo Anniversary’s Multiplayer was just re-skinned overtop of Halo Reach, it just didn’t feel right for many and true to the original experience.

What are your thoughts? Did you enjoy Halo Anniversary? What would you like to see if Halo 2 Anniversary was real?