Xbox and Halo are turning the franchise's first book into an audio drama to celebrate its 25th anniversary — featuring the "full cast" of Master Chief and Cortana's voice actors.

When you think about the legendary flagship Xbox franchise HelloI’m willing to bet a lot good money that the first thing that comes to mind for you is the blockbuster video games that helped make Microsoft’s gaming brand and consoles the main competition against similar games. Sony PlayStation and Nintendo.

What many people don’t realize is that the first piece of Halo media wasn’t a game, but a novel – author Eric Nylund’s book Halo: The Fall of Reach, released on October 30, 2001, two weeks before the November 15 release of the original Xbox and Halo: Combat Evolved games.

Fall of Reach serves as a prequel to the first game, exploring the origins of Master Chief John-117, the SPARTAN-II program that led to the creation of humanity’s Spartan super-soldiers, and his fall to the alien Covenant alliance that led to the discovery of the Evolved ring in Battle, his stronghold planet Reach.

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In many ways, I would argue that this is the foundation for the Halo series Bungie‘s original title – and in celebration of the franchise’s 25th anniversary, Xbox and Halo Studios they are adapting the legendary novel into an audio drama.

Steve Downs, Jen Taylor and Tim Dadabo will star in the audio drama adaptation of Halo: The Fall of Reach.

Steve Downs (Master Leader), Jen Taylor (Cortana, Dr. Halsey) and Tim Dadabo (343 Guilty Spark) will appear in the audio drama adaptation of Halo: The Fall of Reach. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

He announced the latest news new blog post On Thursday afternoon, it revealed that the project is being developed in conjunction with publishing group Simon & Schuster Audio. It will be a “full broadcast audio drama version” of The Fall of Reach, complete with several voice actors for some of Halo’s most prominent characters.

Currently, they officially include Steve Downs as Master Chief John-117 and both Cortana and Dr. Featuring Jen Taylor as Katherine Halsey, 343 Guilty Spark voice actor Tim Dadabo narrates the drama. Halo Studios says we can expect more casting news “in the coming months.”

The script of the audio drama will be based on the updated version of The Fall of Reach Halo: Master Chief Omnibusa collection of three classic Halo novels – Fall of Reach, Flood and First Strike – will be released in 2026.

Note that this may be a new adaptation of The Fall of Reach is now on pre-order for $29.99. According to the Simon & Schuster website, it is scheduled for release on November 10, 2026, although it has not been officially confirmed. It’s also listed with an 11-hour runtime, so I wouldn’t expect it to be a quick listen.

As someone who loves the Halo novels and has read them voraciously since childhood, it’s great to see The Fall of Reach getting a full-blown audio drama adaptation like this one. I look forward to listening to it when it comes out and expect it to be a great companion Halo: The campaign has evolved A remake of the first Halo game coming out on July 28th.