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What Halo Moving to Unreal Engine Could Mean for the Franchise

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1 hour ago

October 10, 2024

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In about a month, Halo as a franchise will turn 23 years old and its latest title, Halo Infinite, will turn three years old. To celebrate these momentous anniversaries, 343 Industries, now called Halo Studios, announced several new developments and features for the franchise at the 2024 Halo World Championship.

Halo Infinite will soon debut its next Operation called Haloween from October 8 through November 5 alongside the permanent return of the game mode Survive the Undead in matchmaking. Additionally, Halo Infinite will soon incorporate a third-person option into its multiplayer, a first for the series. However, the biggest announcement from the Championship was that future Halo games will now be developed with the Unreal Engine 5.

Halo Developer 343 Industries Is Changing Its Name

Table of Contents

Halo developer 343 Industries announces a rebranding, while also confirming a move to Unreal Engine 5 for its upcoming games.

Halo’s Developmental History

For most of Halo’s history, its mainline game engines were primarily built and modified in-house by Bungie and 343 Industries. Starting in 1997, Halo’s Blam Engine began development and was the engine that launched with Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001. The Blam Engine would go on to power each mainline Halo game from Halo 2 to Halo 5: Guardians. Unlike other game engines such as Unreal, the Blam Engine was largely restricted to Bungie and Halo’s development, with a few exceptions including Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse and later Destiny and Destiny 2 with the modified Tiger Engine.

While Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians both used modified versions of the Blam Engine, the engine was well over 10 years old by Halo 5’s release and was beginning to show its age and limitations in later console generations. 343 Industries sought to rectify this use by constructing an entirely new engine that was still inspired by Blam’s code but would allow for more detailed environments and improved gameplay mechanics. This resulted in the creation of the Slipspace Engine, which powers Halo Infinite. However, the Slipspace Engine turned out to be difficult to learn for many developers, leading to developmental complications for Infinite before and after its official release in 2021.

Halo’s Future with Unreal Engine 5

At the end of the 2024 Halo World Championship, Halo Studios announced that future Halo games will now be powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 going forward instead of the Slipspace Engine. Halo’s Chief Operating Officer Elizabeth van Wyck clarified that the decision to switch from Slipspace to Unreal was to have Halo Studios “focus on making games, versus making the tools and the engines.” Essentially, since Unreal is easier to work with than Slipspace, Halo Studios will now be able to develop more projects and update games more effectively than ever before. Halo Studios has already confirmed that multiple Halo projects are in the works.

Editor-in-Chief of Xbox Wire Joe Skrebels additionally noted that the transition from Slipspace to Unreal will allow for more efficient hiring of employees, as most developers in the gaming industry are familiar with Unreal in some form. Despite this knowledge, Studio Art Director Chris Matthews sought to have Halo Studios test out developing Halo within Unreal through the initiative Project Foundry. Here, Halo Studios constructed three new environments in Halo’s art style, including a Halo ring with a Pacific Northwest-inspired landscape, a frozen area called the Coldlands, and a Flood-infested locale called the Blightlands. In terms of Unreal assets, Foundry showcased Master Chief in Mark 5 armor fighting Elites with Energy Swords and a classic Magnum pistol.

Future Halo Games Powered by Unreal

With Halo now being powered by the Unreal Engine, the series may soon see a resurgence of games the likes of which haven’t been seen since the late 2000s. Given developers’ widespread experience with Unreal, Halo Studios could now hire a multitude of professionals who can quickly work on multiple projects instead of having to wait over five years for the next entry. Some of these could be the expected Halo 7, the rumored Halo: Combat Evolved remake, or entirely new projects focused on other aspects of the Halo universe. Unreal could allow for more than three Halo games to release within a generation again, such as a new ODST-centered game, an Elite spin-off, a Flood horror game, and more.

The Unreal Engine 5 currently powers a variety of games, including but not limited to,
Black Myth: Wukong
,
Fortnite
,
RoboCop: Rogue City
,
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
, 2024’s
Silent Hill 2
,
Tekken 8
, and
The First Descendant
.