Ever since mass layoffs at Halo maker 343 Industries, followers have questioned what the long run will maintain for the famed sci-fi shooter. It seems Microsoft nonetheless has huge plans for Grasp Chief, and so they contain a number of upcoming initiatives in addition to the franchise making the soar to Epic Video games’ Unreal Engine, the tech that powers Fortnite and a number of different Xbox first-party video games.
343 Industries revealed the information throughout the 2024 Halo World Championship, together with that the studio shall be referred to as Halo Studios going ahead. As an alternative of continuous to make use of its present Slipspace Engine, which was created from the bottom up for Halo Infinite, the franchise will abandon it for Unreal Engine 5. An effort referred to as “Undertaking Foundry” can be at present underway to construct a basis for coaching and greatest practices for creating Halo with the brand new tech.
A mini-video documentary that includes studio head Pierre Hintze, COO Elizabeth van Wyck, and studio artwork director Chris Matthews, amongst others, laid out the corporate’s imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Halo. It revealed that a number of new Halo video games are at present in growth, and Halo Studios is altering extra than simply its identify, with shifts to studio tradition, workflow, and staff group as nicely. One hope for making the soar to UE 5 is that recruitment will develop into simpler and growth extra streamlined when folks don’t should be taught from, and adapt to, a completely overseas proprietary engine on the fly.
Whereas Hintze referred to as this a brand new chapter for Halo, it’s arduous to not see it as a clear break from and rebuke of the latest previous. Halo Infinite went via a notoriously difficult growth cycle, together with lacking the launch window for Xbox Sequence X/S, and got here out the opposite aspect of that good however not nice. Lower than two years after it launched, then-343 Industries suffered a reported 95 layoffs amidst wider-scale cuts at Microsoft.
Shifting to Unreal Engine won’t repair a few of the deeper points at play in that messy manufacturing course of, however it does recommend Microsoft is pushing towards a a lot greater concentrate on inner co-development assets. The Coalition, which is making Gears of Warfare: E-Day, has all the time used Unreal Engine. A bunch of different Xbox recreation studios have additionally already made the soar, together with Obsidian (Avowed and Outer Worlds 2), InXile Leisure (Clockwork Revolutions), The Initiative (Excellent Darkish), and Compulsion Video games (South of Midnight).
Undead Labs’ State of Decay 3 can be utilizing UE5, which is seemingly at the least a part of why Obsidian Leisure has been capable of assist out with the tech for its open world. That’s simply a few of the co-development potential Microsoft teased earlier this yr as a part of its huge summer season showcase. Many of the fruits of this effort have but to be seen in motion, although. Avowed was beforehand set to reach this fall however was pushed to February 2025. There are additionally nonetheless notable studios inside Microsoft that aren’t utilizing Unreal, together with Playground Video games which is making Fable and virtually the entire groups from the Bethesda acquisition.
As for Halo, we nonetheless don’t know when these new video games shall be revealed or what they’re. Tom Warren at The Verge reported not too way back {that a} remake of Halo: Fight Developed is within the works. For the studio to transition the franchise to new tech, it might actually make sense to start with a beloved, recognized entity like the primary recreation and be taught from there. Halo Infinite’s free-to-play multiplayer, in the meantime, continues to get new updates, although with these new modifications in place it now not sounds just like the platform for the way forward for Halo that it was as soon as described as.