343 Industries is no more, Halo moves to Unreal Engine 5

There has been a big shake-up behind the scenes at Microsoft for Halo. After the Slipstream engine proved to be a failure that hampered the development of Halo Infinite, future titles will be developed with Unreal Engine 5. On top of that, 343 Industries is now known as Halo Studios. 

The development troubles during the Halo Infinite cycle are well documented at this stage, with an over reliance on short-term contract workers and difficulties with the Slipstream Engine, which turned out to still be based on a lot of legacy code from the original Halo engine. In the year following Halo Infinite's release, 343 Industries was hit pretty hard by layoffs and departures.

Now, 343 Industries is rebuilding under its new name, Halo Studios. The team has been in pre-production on multiple Halo games, utilising Unreal Engine 5 rather than the old proprietary engine. CD Projekt Red had a similar pivot after difficulties getting their own engine up to speed during the development of Cyberpunk 2077. Now, future CDPR titles will be developed using Unreal Engine 5.

In the image below, we get our first look at Master Chief rendered using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5.

Alongside the announcement of Halo Studios, Microsoft also released a six minute teaser video showing off some of the early work on the future of Halo:

This wouldn't be Halo's first rodeo with Unreal Engine. In previous years, 343 Industries experimented many times with Unreal Engine and at one point, early Halo Infinite prototypes were being built on UE4, before the team moved over to Slipstream full-time, something that Microsoft now admits was a mistake.

However, some early fan reactions to the Master Chief teaser have been critical, with many saying he looks more like an action figure in his UE5 debut. With that said, I think it is worth noting that things are still in the early stages and there will no doubt be plenty of art changes as development on new Halo titles ramps up.

Speaking of ramping up, Halo Studios is now open for business and is actively hiring for a number of roles. Currently, there are multiple projects in the works, including Project Foundry, which is the foundation for building new Halo content, almost like a levelled-up version of Forge.

Epic Games head and founder, Tim Sweeney, has already openly expressed excitement about the news, saying that “Epic is honoured that the Halo Studios team has chosen our tools”. He also made his admiration for Halo quite clear, stating that the game “redefined console gaming in 2001, and over the generations has pushed the state of the art forward”.

KitGuru Says: Like many other Unreal Engine 5 titles, the new Halo screenshots look great in terms of graphical fidelity. As the ball gets rolling with these new games, I'm sure we'll see some art changes by the time a proper new game is officially ready to be shown. 

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