Passing the Halo: A Defiant Look at the Franchise’s Future

Halo changed forever last month with the release of the Defiant Map Pack, a collection of new battlefields for the latest entry in the sci-fi videogame series. In most respects, the virtual killing fields — which give millions of Halo: Reach players new terrain upon which to splatter each other’s corpses — seem identical to the downloadable expansion packs Microsoft released for previous editions of the landmark Xbox game. This was far more significant than your average expansion, though: It’s the first set of Halo levels produced without the input of Bungie Studios, the series’ creator. Defiant was developed by 343 Industries, a new Microsoft unit tasked with continuing the franchise, and the expansion was seen as a litmus test: Can the Xbox maker craft something that feels like Halo without the incredibly talented studio that birthed the series?...