A few hours ago, just before the 2024 Halo World Championship finals, 343 Industries announced multiple big news for the Halo franchise, starting with the studio’s name change. 343 Industries will be henceforth known simply as Halo Studios.
The other big news is that there are multiple games in development, all of which are being made with Unreal Engine 5. The rumors from a couple of years ago were true, then: the Slipspace Engine, created specifically for Halo Infinite, has already been abandoned.
The developers explained that it was too much to continuously support and grow their own stack while making content for the Halo games. With Unreal Engine 5, that’s not an issue anymore. Moreover, the Slipspace Engine simply lacked some things built into Epic’s game-making tool.
Studio Art Director Chris Matthews said:
Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old. Although 343 were developing it continuously, there are aspects of Unreal that Epic has been developing for some time, which are unavailable to us in Slipspace – and would have taken huge amounts of time and resources to try and replicate. 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. Nanite and Lumen 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.
To familiarize themselves with UE5, the team worked on a research project called The Foundry to see if they could replicate the feeling of Halo environments. In the video below, they show off three different biomes: the classic Pacific Northwest, something entirely alien, and a world infested by the Flood.
Halo is only the latest big franchise to switch from a proprietary engine to Unreal Engine 5, after Tomb Raider and The Witcher. Needless to say, Epic is pretty thrilled about the news. Bill Clifford, Vice President and General Manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games, stated:
Halo is such an incredible franchise and it’s awesome to see Halo Studios already pushing the boundaries of Unreal Engine 5. We’re honored to support the Halo team in realizing their creative visions through Unreal Engine. Project Foundry’s work demonstrates how they can bring Halo to life with beautifully detailed, uncompromised worlds.
Halo Studios is also hiring as they expand to accommodate development for multiple projects.
