343 Industries is working with a team of modders known as Digsite, to restore old cut content from the original Halo: Combat Evolved that was released in 1999 and ported to PC in 2003 to Halo: Master Chief Collection.
This comes from a VGC article that linked to the PCGamesN article, 343 Industries has been working with the Digsite team for over a year at this point to restore old cut content from Halo: Combat Evolved. According to the Digsite team from the PCGamerN article, they found a lot of old archived stuff, “Of particular interest to us were design/production docs, Bungie feedback notes, tags, compiled maps, and source data for previously unseen multiplayer maps.”
Some of these highlights, like the unseen multiplayer map, ‘ Indoor’ were from the Gearbox Software Halo PC port in 2003. The maps assets were all made by Gearbox but never saw the light of day. The Doigsite team member, Ludus, said he felt it would be a shame to let them go to waste so he would remix them into a new map called ‘Underground.’ Other maps were found, but in a much rougher state, such as a map called ‘Dusk’ which was remade with inspiration to Call of Duty’s map ‘Rust’.
Another big surprise was the Macworld demo from 1999 was uncovered. Both VGC and PCGamerN said that the original Halo before Microsoft “was going to be a Mac-exclusive third-person game and a follow-up to Marathon – which is coming back.” Marathon is Bungie’s next big project, intended to revive the old series from the 90s, which was revealed at the PlayStation Showcase this past May. The mod team explains that the old Macworld demo is a large map, and due to the map’s design, it “took some work to get running in MCC. We’ve set it up as a sandbox to play in, explore, and repurpose for your own mods.”
The maps are not the only thing being restored. Weapons are being restored that were used in 3rd person, but you will be using them in 1st person. Vehicles are being recovered and restored as well as old ememy types from when Halo was an RTS shooter. Although this is only a fraction of what 343 and Digsite found so far, you can check out the Halo Waypoint website to see what else they dug up.