Since 343 Industries and Microsoft refuse to give Halo fans the kind of first-person shooter experience that they desire, modders from Article 2 Studios decided to do it for them. Enter Operation: Trebuchet and Operation: First Contact, total conversion mods for Bohemia Interactive’s Arma III.

The mod attempts to bring the experience of Halo to Arma, giving fans of the series a very grounded and realistic look at what the intergalactic sci-fi elements from Microsoft’s highly popular property would be like using realistic military protocol, commands, and tactics within Arma.

Operation: Trebuchet is a 3.4GB mod takes place before the Covenant war, pitting the UNSC against the human insurrection just before the war with the religious zealots took place. Instead of playing as the Spartan commandos, players will take on the roles of the UNSC marines, the armor division, and the air force across multiple maps based around the events depicted within Halo lore. You can check out the launch trailer for the awesome looking mod below.

As you can see, the vehicles, weapons, enemies, and marine classes all come from the various Halo games. The mod was created under Microsoft’s “Game Content Usage Rules” that borrows assets from the Xbox game for use within the Arma III engine.

To be honest, had they never said it was Arma III I never would have guessed.

The full mod adds the weapons, armor, classes, and vehicles from Halo to the game. You can actually download the Operation: Trebuchet mod right now from over on the Steam Workshop.

If you have any troubles with the mod there’s a compatibility patch you can download as well, which is also available on the Steam Workshop.

Now that Operation: Trebuchet is out there, the team also released Operation: First Contact, which pits the UNSC against the Covenant forces. It’s only 192MB, and it adds the Covenant assets to the game. You can also get your hands on that mod if you already have Operation: Trebuchet installed by downloading it from the Steam Workshop page.

You’ll need a working version of Arma III if you want to play both total conversion modifications. The game is currently 66% off during the Steam Winter Sale, so you can grab a digital copy for only $13.59 from the Steam store up until early January.