Well, hello there. It’s been a while since we hear any news about Halo and 343 Industries, and they dropped a big one at the final match of the 20244 Halo World Championship.
343 Industries, the development team that became the stewards of the Halo series after Bungie, is now rebranded as Halo Studios. And they are working on new projects all under the ubiquitous Unreal Engine 5.
The short video, featuring developer interviews, also teased a glimpse of the world of Halo in Unreal Engine 5. Behind the scenes, Halo Studios have been working on Project Foundry, something that’s more than a tech demo and to showcase how a Halo game would look in UE5, developed like t’s a proper Halo game development.
The rechristen of 343 Industries (a reference to Halo’s in game lore) to simply Halo Studios is supposed to be the start of “a new chapter”. In the words of Halo Studios head Pierre Hintze:
“If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters. Chapter 1 – Bungie. Chapter 2 – 343 Industries. Now, I think we have an audience which is hungry for more. So we’re not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games. So, we start a new chapter today.”
The switch to Unreal Engine 5 means that the developer formerly known as 343 is abandoning the Slipspace Engine, their in-house tech that powered Halo Infinite.
The switch to UE5 should see Halo Studios easily pool from a larger talent pool (the press release blog post links to a page of available jobs) and they can make content faster.
The Slipspace Engine was what supposed to power Halo Infinite for at least a decade, with no sequel planned as it continue to be updated. But looks like Halo Studios has not only changed game engines and changed their name, but changed their plan, all due to how gamers consume their games today.
“We believe that the consumption habits of gamers have changed – the expectations of how fast their content is available,” said Hintze in the press release. “On Halo Infinite, we were developing a tech stack that was supposed to set us up for the future, and games at the same time.”
“It’s not just about how long it takes to bring a game to market, but how long it takes for us to update the game, bring new content to players, adapt to what we’re seeing our players want,” said COO Elizabeth van Wyck. “Part of that is [in how we build the game], but another part is the recruiting. How long does it take to ramp somebody up to be able to actually create assets that show up in your game?”
Halo Studio has confirmed that multiple Halo projects are now currently in the works.
This isn’t the first time Master Chief is rendered in UE5, he has appeared in Epic Games’ own Fortnite. But we should see him in actual Halo games soon enough.