Visually, Hired Gun has removed the game's three levels of texture fidelity that on the Xbox resulted in the frequently criticized popping effect particularly common in cutscenes. On the PC, only the game's highest resolution textures are used. In addition, certain textures such as bodily fluid splatters have been redone at higher resolution, and shader effects have been rewritten for the game's DirectX 9 engine. However, Hired Gun has not actually recreated the game's main textures and geometry at higher resolutions or polygon counts--a time-prohibitive hypothetical effort--meaning that, particularly during close-up shots in cutscenes, Halo 2 is still clearly behind the modern PC game graphical curve. Of course, it will run at any resolution supported by the player's video card, which in itself helps the game's visuals

Halo 2 on Vista will have a full complement of Xbox 360-like Achievements, most likely numbering around 40. As a result, this will mark the first time Achievements have come to the Halo franchise, and Clowes hinted that the Achievements that ship on Halo 2 Vista might provide clues as to what type of Achievements Bungie is planning for Halo 3 on Xbox 360. Some are obvious, such as beating the campaign under each difficultly level, while others have less straightforward goals, such as taking out a player of a significantly higher skill level on Windows Live.

All of the downloadable Halo 2 maps released over Xbox Live will be included on the Vista edition disc along with the standard set of maps. As far as whether any of the additional bonus video content from the Halo 2 Collector's Edition would be included, Clowes gave no comment but stated that there may be content-related anouncements of some kind in the near future.