Halo and developer 343 Industries are rebooting with some fundamental changes to the iconic franchise. All future Halo games will be powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, with several new projects currently in development, 343 Industries announced on Sunday. Marking a “new chapter” for the series, the new Microsoft-owned studio is also rebranding as Halo Studios, making sweeping changes to its operations.
Multiple Halo games in development
At the Halo World Championship, 343 unveiled new Halo footage rendered in Unreal Engine 5, showcasing three different environments and series protagonist Master Chief. According to 343, this footage is not from a Halo game in development, but is part of the “Foundry” project that will be the basis for future Halo games.
The studio confirmed that several Halo games built on Unreal Engine 5 are in development, but did not provide any time frames for those games. 343 last worked on Halo Infinite, which launched in 2021.
Halo environments rendered in Unreal Engine 5
Photo: Microsoft/Halo Studios
Switch to Unreal Engine 5
In addition to the changes coming to Halo, 343 announced a reorganization and name change to Halo Studios to reflect a fresh start for the franchise. With the move to Unreal Engine, the developer will focus more on creating games instead of spending time perfecting their own Slipspace Engine.
“With respect, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,” said Chris Matthews, the studio’s art director, in a post on Xbox Wire. “While 343 has been developing it continuously, there are aspects of Unreal that Epic has been developing for some time that are not available to us at Slipspace — and it would take a lot of time and resources to replicate them,” he added.
343, now Halo Studios, intends to reduce the development time of future projects. The developer said he had to dedicate a significant portion of his staff to developing and fine-tuning the Slipspace engine in previous projects. “In Halo Infinite, we were developing a technology stack that was supposed to prepare us for the future, and at the same time for games,” said studio head Pierre Ginze.
The developer is also reorganizing and expanding, creating multiple teams to work on different Halo games simultaneously. While the Project Foundry footage sets the tone for what’s to come, don’t expect a Halo game anytime soon. Hintze said the studio will talk about the games over time.
“We have to talk about things when we have things to talk about, at scale,” he said. “Today is the first step – we’re showing off the Foundry because we feel it’s necessary – we want to explain our plans to Halo fans and bring new, passionate developers to our team. The next step will be to talk about the games themselves.”