Brian Jarrard, the community director of Bungie admitted to MTV that ‘Halo 3′ was definitely considered with master chief before ‘Halo: Reach.’ It is sure that Bungie’s last game on Halo franchise ‘Halo:Reach’ is going to give players a new universe look out and the events in ‘Halo: Reach’ are before ‘Halo: Combat Evolved.’ According to Jarrard, ‘Halo 4′ starring Master Chief, was definitely considered.

“Even before the idea to build a game based around Reach came about, a lot of other concepts were explored, up to and including a proper ‘Halo 4,’ where Master Chief was going to wake up from cryo-sleep and we were going to tell that story.”

Jarrard went on to explain that the idea never made it out of pre-production, saying, “it just wasn’t as interesting to the team to just pick up where that left off and all the baggage that came with it.”

Source: MTV