Halo fans can finally celebrate the return of the franchise, as 343 Industries has announced that it is being rebranded to Halo Studios, and is also working on multiple new games using Unreal Engine 5. The announcement was made after the conclusion of the Halo World Championships on Sunday, October 6, and breathed new life into the Xbox and Halo fandom.
Previously known as 343 Industries, Halo Studios is currently working on more than one project and is ditching the good old Slipspace Engine which was used to create Halo Infinite back in December 2021. This announcement comes with a 7-minute long video that shows a project titled Project Foundry, which was created to show what a Halo game would look like if it was made using Unreal Engine 5. Although it doesn’t translate into actual gameplay from an upcoming Halo game, it will give fans an idea of what to expect.
It seems more and more developers are finding the streamlined processes of Unreal Engine 5 enticing enough to drop their own proprietary engines. 343 Industries had a hard time with its Slipspace Engine when making Halo Infinite, mainly because the base of the tools was from over two decades ago. The Red Engine used to create games like The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 was also dropped by CD Projekt Red in favor of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 for the upcoming Cyberpunk and Witcher games.
The Art Director at Halo Games, Chris Matthews, said in an interview that the Slipspace Engine has some components that are almost 25 years old, and some aspects of UE5 are new and have been worked on for a long time, that aren’t available in the old engine. Replicating those features in its proprietary engine would have taken a lot of time and resources.
Nothing else is known about the games that Halo Studios is working on, but the developer did state that this will result in more Halo games with fewer delays. The studio also pointed out that this is the beginning of a new chapter, so an announcement of a new title is still far away.
