Halo: Reach Designer Reveals Modern Warfare Series Were ‘Huge’ Inspiration

Halo: Reach designer Niles Sankey has revealed that the sport was massively influenced by the primary two Trendy Warfare video games.

On Twitter, Halo: Attain designer Niles Sankey responded to a submit concerning the notorious nuke scene in Name of Obligation 4: Trendy Warfare. He famous that the primary two Trendy Warfare video games have been a “enormous” inspiration for the marketing campaign of Bungie’s remaining Halo recreation.

He famous that, though Bungie felt Halo was doing issues higher than Name of Obligation in areas like enemy AI and autos, Infinity Ward was beating them at different issues, and it made sense to drag from their video games.

“Lots of the moments in Attain have been impressed by the good work of Infinity Ward, together with the Nobel workforce squad interactions, and ‘Goal Survive’ was spiritually impressed by the Nuke sequence [in Call of Duty 4]. We simply tried to push it one step additional,” he mentioned.

Trendy Warfare 1 and a pair of have been enormous influences on Halo Attain’s marketing campaign.

The tonal execution in these video games was (and nonetheless is) completely good.

We knew that Halo did some issues higher (AI fight, autos, and so on), however we additionally knew the MW video games have been beating us in different… https://t.co/6aKYa23sYu

— Niles Sankey (@NilesSankey) August 20, 2026

This information could come as a shock to some followers, as Name of Obligation and Halo have been direct opponents within the mid-2000s, with Infinity Ward even going so far as growing a “Halo Killer.” Through the improvement of Name of Obligation 4, the studio quietly prototyped a sci-fi Name of Obligation recreation often known as “HK,” brief for Halo Killer. The mission featured aliens, superior know-how, and because the title suggests, was Infinity Ward’s concept of making an attempt to straight dethrone Halo because the world’s greatest shooter franchise.

Finally, Name of Obligation was capable of get there earlier than it ever went into the realm of sci-fi. The Trendy Warfare sequence was an enormous hit that put Name of Obligation on an unprecedented stage. Infinity Ward ultimately made a sci-fi Name of Obligation recreation with Infinite Warfare in 2016, but it surely was wildly completely different than what they’d initially designed for HK. Infinite Warfare dropped the aliens in favor of human-on-human house battles, which led to one of the crucial acclaimed campaigns within the franchise. The remainder of the sport? Not so acclaimed.

As for Halo: Attain, it was the final recreation within the sequence developed by Bungie, but additionally arguably one of many studio’s greatest. It was a darker, extra grounded tackle the sequence with a really tragic story. Leaning on Trendy Warfare’s dramatic storytelling beats to beef up Halo’s marketing campaign was in the end in all probability a wise transfer on Bungie’s half. Now, over 15 years later, the co-creator of Halo is asking for the series to embrace a darker and more grounded tone once again. Whether or not that occurs stays to be seen.