Future Halo games will be developed using the Unreal engine. The news comes after more than a year of rumors regarding the switch. It happened after an overhaul of 343 Industries’s leadership, and layoffs among other things. The name of the studio has now been changed to Halo Studio which is part of the change of engine announcement. The change was made in hopes of starting a new chapter in the Halo series.
This move is the first step in Halo Studio’s transition of structure, different processes, technology, and culture of the studio. The Halo Studios head Pierre Hintze explains it as “We’re not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games,”
The studio will move from Slipspace Engine to Unreal. Slipspace Engine became difficult to use and strains development. Slipspace Engine requires dedicated staff and parts of it are close to 25 years old.
As per Halo Studios art director Chris Matthews “One of the primary things we’re interested in is growing and expanding our world so players have more to interact with and more to experience,” he further continues “Nanite and Lumen [Unreal’s rendering and lighting technologies] offer us an opportunity to do that in a way that the industry hasn’t seen before. As artists, it’s incredibly exciting to do that work.”
Project Foundry
There are no release dates or announcements regarding future Halo games but the team is working on some stuff of Halo on Unreal Engine. The project is known as Project Foundry it is explained as “neither a game nor a tech demo,”. It is considered as a tool for research, training, and development tool. These small projects also act as a basis for the change that the studio is facing in how they build Halo games.
Project Foundry will be developed as if it were a game ready for shipping so players will see parts of it appearing in the future Halo project. As per the head of the studio Pierre Hintze, “It’s fair to say that our intent is that the majority of what we showcased in Foundry is expected to be in projects which we are building, or future projects,”
Project Foundry contains detailed landscapes and biomes along with foliage which makes us rethink how we see Halo games. Halo Studio will continue to work on different Halo games while it continues to support Halo Infinite through Slipspace Engine. Pierre Hintze explains it “We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite,” He further continues “[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”
Halo games on the Unreal engine is a great idea since Halo Infinite lacks a lot of what other next-gen Xbox games were offering.
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