It’s a new era for Halo, as developer 343 Industries announced at the conclusion of the 2024 Halo World Championships that not only are multiple new Halo projects in the works, but they will be developed (as long rumored) with Unreal Engine 5 instead of Halo Infinite’s Slipstream Engine. 343 Industries itself is also undergoing a major change, rebranding as Halo Studios.
Those multiple new Halo games aren’t coming anytime soon. An Xbox blog on the subject makes clear this announcement marks “the beginning of this new chapter, not the final stages.” But Halo Studios is being restructured in a way to make it so multiple projects can be in the works simultaneously, instead of the entire studio being focused on a single project like in the past.
That’s not to say Halo Studios didn’t have anything to show as part of its big announcement. To highlight what the move to Unreal Engine 5 will look like, Halo Studios has been working on a non-game called Project Foundry. Footage and images from Project Foundry show numerous Halo-esque locales, from the Pacific Northwest-inspired vistas that have become synonymous with Halo to a Flood infested world, all meant to show the power of the engine and what will be possible. It wouldn’t be a glimpse at the future of Halo without a look at the man in green himself, and Halo Studios showed that off too, with a highly-detailed look at a Halo: Combat Evolved-era Master Chief battling against an Elite made in Unreal Engine 5.
In the Xbox blog, Halo Studios art director Chris Matthews said Project Foundry isn’t a new game, but also isn’t just a tech demo. Instead, it’s being built “to the standards” of what would be needed for future Halo games, with content created for the project having the potential to actually be used for projects.
“Everything we’ve made is built to the kind of standards that we need to build for the future of our games,” Matthews said. “We were very intentional about not stepping into tech demo territory. We built things that we truly believe in, and the content that we’ve built–or at least a good percentage of it–could travel anywhere inside our games in the future if we so desire it.”
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Part of the reason behind the shift to Unreal Engine 5 is to better meet player demand. Halo Studios head Pierre Hintze said in the past, a significant portion of the studio was required to simply develop and upkeep the engines its Halo games ran on. That made 343 less able to deliver content at the pace players wanted. The move to Unreal will not only mean freeing up more of the studio to work on things unrelated to the engine itself, but also make the actual development pipeline faster, according to Halo Studios COO Elizabeth Van Wyck.
“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,” Van Wyck said. “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?”
While much of the talk about the move to Unreal Engine 5 and Project Foundry is the visuals, Halo Studios makes clear in the Xbox blog that it knows there is far more to Halo than what the games look like (though that is a big part of it too).
“The spirit of Halo is more than just the visuals,” Matthews said. “It’s the lore. It’s the physics. Playing as the Chief, you’re this huge tank of a soldier–it’s the way that he moves, feels. We’re all really obsessed about what our players love about Halo. We’re constantly listening to this feedback–and that’s at the core of any initiative like Foundry, or any intention that the studio has about how we move forwards.”
Halo Infinite, meanwhile, will still be maintained on its existing Slipspace Engine, with Halo Studios confirming that more Operations and updates to the game’s Forge mode are in the works. Even if a new Halo video game is likely still years away, there is technically a new Halo game on the horizon. A Halo tabletop wargame, Halo: Flashpoint, is available for preorder and releases October 25.