Halo: Reach Designer Reveals that Modern Warfare Series Were a ‘Huge’ Inspiration for Bungie

Halo: Reach designer Niles Sankey has revealed that the game was massively influenced by the first two Modern Warfare games.

On Twitter, Halo: Reach designer Niles Sankey responded to a post about the infamous nuke scene in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. He noted that the first two Modern Warfare games were a “huge” inspiration for the campaign of Bungie’s final Halo game.

He noted that, although Bungie felt Halo was doing things better than Call of Duty in areas like enemy AI and vehicles, Infinity Ward was beating them at other things, and it made sense to pull from their games.

“Many of the moments in Reach were inspired by the brilliant work of Infinity Ward, including the Nobel team squad interactions, and ‘Objective Survive’ was spiritually inspired by the Nuke sequence [in Call of Duty 4]. We just tried to push it one step further,” he said.

Modern Warfare 1 and 2 were huge influences on Halo Reach’s campaign.

The tonal execution in those games was (and still is) absolutely brilliant.

We knew that Halo did some things better (AI combat, vehicles, etc), but we also knew the MW games were beating us in other… https://t.co/6aKYa23sYu

— Niles Sankey (@NilesSankey) August 20, 2026

This news may come as a surprise to some fans, as Call of Duty and Halo were direct competitors in the mid-2000s, with Infinity Ward even going as far as developing a “Halo Killer.” During the development of Call of Duty 4, the studio quietly prototyped a sci-fi Call of Duty game known as “HK,” short for Halo Killer. The project featured aliens, advanced technology, and as the name suggests, was Infinity Ward’s idea of trying to directly dethrone Halo as the world’s biggest shooter franchise.

Ultimately, Call of Duty was able to get there before it ever went into the realm of sci-fi. The Modern Warfare series was a massive hit that put Call of Duty on an unprecedented level. Infinity Ward eventually made a sci-fi Call of Duty game with Infinite Warfare in 2016, but it was wildly different than what they had initially designed for HK. Infinite Warfare dropped the aliens in favor of human-on-human space battles, which led to one of the most acclaimed campaigns in the franchise. The rest of the game? Not so acclaimed.

As for Halo: Reach, it was the last game in the series developed by Bungie, but also arguably one of the studio’s best. It was a darker, more grounded take on the series with a very tragic story. Leaning on Modern Warfare’s dramatic storytelling beats to beef up Halo’s campaign was ultimately probably a smart move on Bungie’s part. 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 that happens remains to be seen.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.