What you need to know
- InfernoPlus — the creator of the wacky fan-favorite Cursed Halo mod for Halo: Combat Evolved — has released a new project for Halo 3 that's available to play now.
- The mod is essentially what you'd get if you mashed Halo and Sea of Thieves together, and features a custom-made campaign co-op mission in which you use a pirate ship to fight against the Covenant while searching for treasure.
- The level supports up to four players, and has a custom map, models, cannons to fire, scripted events, and more.
- The mod is exclusively for the Steam version of Halo 3 on Steam, which you can either get standalone or as part of the full Halo: The Master Chief Collection release. You can install it through the Steam Workshop; a link to it is provided in the text below.
Master Chief's adventures in all six of the Halo games he's starred in have taken him — and, consequently, the players filling his shoes — across a wide variety of different environments, including everything from Earth's lush rainforests and human-controlled colony planets to the artificial alien ringworlds that gives the series its name. But while plenty of land and air has been tread on the journey, barely any of it has taken place on or around the sea. Thanks to a hilarious new mod, though, that's no longer the case.
The mod — a project comically titled "Pimps at Sea" — is essentially what I've always imagined the end result would be if you smashed the flagship Xbox shooter and the pirate adventure game Sea of Thieves together. Built by YouTuber InfernoPlus for the PC version of Halo 3 available through Halo: The Master Chief Collection, it features a custom campaign mission in which up to four players defend a pirate ship and a small archipelago from invading Covenant forces. You can install it on the Steam Workshop here, with its source code available on InfernoPlus' Patreon for those that want to mess around with it.
This video (also viewable below) covers the mod in-depth, but the TL;DR of its plot and structure is that players and their UNSC Marine allies commandeer a Man-O-War, sailing it around several islands to search for treasure while fending off Covenant troops with its defenses. Armaments onboard include 20 custom-built cannons, a pair of mounted heavy machine guns, a Missile Pod turret for anti-air defense, two deployable "Boathogs," and four Mongoose ATVs you can drive out of chutes and onto pieces of land nearby. The ship also comes with several ropes you can use to reach its crow's nest or come back aboard if you fall into the water, complete with custom climbing animations.
Originally, the mod was conceptualized as a large-scale Big Team Battle-style PvP experience in which both teams had a vessel and would attempt to destroy their opponent's with clever sailing, broadsides, and boarding action. However, InfernoPlus came to realize that modelling multiple stages of destruction for the ships would be a monumental task, and also discovered a PvP-specific, physics-related desync problem that would have made the mode unplayable.
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From there, it was reimagined as a co-op campaign level, with InfernoPlus hoping to make it somewhat open-world with randomly generated elements and enemies that would swing from their own ships to try and board yours. Due to issues with both Covenant AI and the crafts themselves, though — even now, the ship's model and physics are so complex that InfernoPlus had to buy a more powerful PC just to stop the 3ds Max project constantly lagging — the mod had to be simplified by giving the vessel scripted sailing paths.
I was a bit sad to learn players can't control the ship, but whatever disappointment I felt was quickly forgotten when I saw that "Captain" Sergeant Johnson is behind its wheel, brought to life with some humorous top-tier voice acting from the talented TheVocalButcher. Marines "Dave" (Lucksoar) and "David" (voiced by InfernoPlus himself) have some comical custom dialogue, too, cementing the project's silliness.
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Ultimately, this mod looks absolutely hilarious, and I can't wait to play through it with my friends soon. Much like I was with InfernoPlus' Cursed Halo Again mod for Halo: Combat Evolved, I'm amazed by what's possible in Halo 3 — an Xbox 360 game that's now 17 years old. The fact this runs at all is an achievement in and of itself, and the fact it runs well is even more remarkable. Note that InfernoPlus uploaded a developer commentary-style video to his second channel that goes over many of the mod's nightmarish code strings and other types of technical info in extensive detail, so give that a watch if you're curious to learn more about how it was put together.
To set sail, you'll need Halo 3 on Steam, which you can either buy standalone for $9.99 or get as part of the full $39.99 Halo: The Master Chief Collection package. The Master Chief Collection stands tall as one of the best Xbox games and best PC games for fans of shooter games, as it includes Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4 (along with the remasters of the first two games) in one awesome bundle. Notably, it's also available on both Xbox and Windows PC via the Microsoft Store through Xbox Game Pass, though the Steam version that the mod requires is not.
