Halo: New Covenant Is The Halo 4 We Always Wanted

Published Oct 12, 2026, 7:00 PM EDT

Tom Wilson is a Gaming Features Writer at Screen Rant. Over the past five years, Tom has worked as the Editor-in-Chief at The Game Crater, as a Staff Writer for GamingIntel, a List Writer at TheGamer, and, of course, as a Senior Writer at ScreenRant. Tom has experience writing reviews, guides, news, and features, and has been responsible for teams of writers, training them and editing their work.

Tom graduated with a Masters in Multimedia Journalism, and has since gone on to build up his portfolio of games journalism work.

Halo 4 proved to be a somewhat divisive release, albeit not at launch. 343 Studios, now known as the truncated Halo Studios, produced a title that felt reminiscent of what came before it, a title that encapsulated the scope and scale of Halo without ever feeling as if it truly understood it. While it wasn't all bad, and it did garner both critical and commercial acclaim at launch, Halo 4 ultimately proved to be the disastrous blueprint that has plagued the last decade of Halo releases.

It is no surprise, then, that an attempt at offering an alternative to Halo 4 is in the works, a title that promises to both follow up on the narrative events of Halo 3 in a satisfying way while adhering to the gameplay style and fan-favorite features of Bungie's era of Halo. This project, titled Halo: New Covenant, promises what many of us have always dreamed of and largely delivers. It is absolutely the perfect game for those exhausted by 343's mistreatment of the IP or simply those looking for even more Halo content amidst a drought of mainline games.

Halo: New Covenant Is The Halo 3 Sequel We Deserve

What do you get when you have a deep reverence for Halo 3, a deeper hatred of Halo 4, and a penchant for modding? Well, you get Halo: New Covenant, the total conversion mod for Halo: ODST developed by the Halo NC team. Birthed out of a desire to see a return to Halo's golden era under the stewardship of Bungie, Halo NC proposed an entirely original narrative with custom-made campaign missions, a new soundtrack, voice acting, cinematics, and more, all of which would follow directly on from the epic conclusion of Halo 3.

In many ways, New Covenant delivers on that promise, proving to be one of the biggest Halo mods of all time, or, at the very least, one of the most ambitious. The currently available campaign missions certainly evoke the Bungie flair that propelled the series to meteoric levels of success and warranted such dedication from enthusiastic devotees. While riddled with the kind of mistakes one would expect from a fan-made passion project, there is a genuine air of quality with Halo: New Covenant, the likes of which put 343's big-budget efforts to shame.

Having already amassed five stars on its official Steam Workshop page, the mod has proven to be a smash hit, resonating with fans, such as myself, globally. It is no surprise, as, coupled with the recent news that Activision is now developing Halo, the appetite for more Halo games has been left unsatiated for far too long. Of course, the only downside to all of this is that Halo: New Covenant is a work in progress and, frankly, it has quite a way to go before it's complete, let alone the dream sequel we've all been hoping for.

Halo: New Covenant Has A Long Way To Go

There's a temptation to be somewhat skeptical about Halo: New Covenant, especially as the idea of a completely free follow-up to Halo 3 that's comparable to its style of gameplay and eschews the conventions of the official mainline follow-up feels almost too good to be true. Halo: New Covenant is not finished yet, with only three main missions having been completed at the time of writing (the first had to be significantly reworked after switching to Halo: ODST's engine), and so there is absolutely every possibility that somewhere down the line, Halo NC fails.

However, as tempting as it may be to shield oneself from a potential sense of disappointment, what Halo NC has thus far produced is so beyond expectations that it truly does feel as if Halo: New Covenant could be the new Halo game we've all been hoping for. Should you be able to overlook a little jank and accept its limited production values (which still seem far higher than much of what even Bungie was capable of two decades ago), then Halo: New Covenant has plenty to offer.

I hesitate to say that the original Halo 4 was made with no passion, as that would be grossly unfair. However, something in that game and its immediate follow-ups lacks the spark that made Halo so remarkable in the first place. It is nice to have found that spark again, even if it is in the most unlikely of places, and to see the dedication pouring out of Halo NC as it toils away at creating what is undoubtedly going to be the next best entry in the Halo series, even if it's a tad unofficial.

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