343 Industries has been renamed to Halo Studios and multiple Halo games are currently in development using Unreal Engine 5, announced Studio Head Pierre Hintze.
“If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters,” said Hintze. “Chapter 1 – Bungie. Chapter 2 – 343 Industries. Now, I think we have an audience which is hungry for more. So we’re not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games. So, we start a new chapter today.”
Previous Halo games used the studio’s proprietary engine Slipspace Engine and the shift to Unreal Engine 5 is a key part of the change at the studio.
“We believe that the consumption habits of gamers have changed – the expectations of how fast their content is available,” said Hintze. “On Halo Infinite, we were developing a tech stack that was supposed to set us up for the future, and games at the same time.”
Halo Studios COO Elizabeth van Wyck added, “The way we made Halo games before doesn’t necessarily work as well for the way we want to make games for the future. So part of the conversation we had was about how we help the team focus on making games, versus making the tools and the engines.”
Halo Studios Art Director Chris Matthews stated that “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 [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.”
Another benefit to switching to Unreal Engine 5 is developers are far more familiar with that engine than Slipspace and new hires had to take the time to learn how to use Slipspace.
“It’s not just about how long it takes to bring a game to market, but how long it takes for us to update the game, bring new content to players, adapt to what we’re seeing our players want,” said Van Wyck. “Part of that is [in how we build the game], but another part is the recruiting. How long does it take to ramp somebody up to be able to actually create assets that show up in your game?”
The studio experimented with Unreal Engine 5 and came up with a research project called Project Foundry (view the video above for footage of this research). Project Foundry is not a new Halo game, but isn’t just a traditional tech demo. It is the studio exploring what is possible with the engine.
“When we decided to do Foundry, it wasn’t, at that point, in our plan,” said Van Wyck. “But we needed to pause and – ‘validate’ is not the right word, but educate and understand what our capability is, and assess it, so we actually know we’re on the right path.
“We’ve intentionally been really quiet up to this point, but I think [today] is about just sharing where we are, what our priorities are as a studio, and where the team is. We’re really proud of what came out of Foundry.”
Matthews added, “Where this type of work’s been done historically, across the industry, it can contain a lot of smoke and mirrors. It sometimes leads players down paths where they believe it’s going to be one thing, and then something else happens. The ethos of Foundry is vigorously the opposite of that.
“Everything we’ve made is built to the kind of standards that we need to build for the future of our games. We were very intentional about not stepping into tech demo territory. We built things that we truly believe in, and the content that we’ve built – or at least a good percentage of it – could travel anywhere inside our games in the future if we so desire it.”
Hintze stated, “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.”
Halo Studios has worked closely with Epic Games to ensure the team can reach their goals.
“Halo is such an incredible franchise and it’s awesome to see Halo Studios already pushing the boundaries of Unreal Engine 5,” said Vice President and General Manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games Bill Clifford. “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.”
The studio does want to ensure these future Halo games will still feel like Halo with the combat, weapons, vehicles, etc.
“I think it’s pretty well known that [switching engine] has been a topic that the studio has thought about for a long, long time,” said Van Wyck. “[The release of] Unreal Engine 5 was when we felt like we could make Halo games that respect and reflect the true soul of Halo while also being able to build games that can deliver on the scale and ambition of content that players want.”
Matthews added, “”The spirit of Halo is more than just the visuals. It’s the lore. It’s the physics. Playing as the Chief, you’re this huge tank of a soldier – it’s the way that he moves, he feels. We’re all really obsessed about what our players love about Halo. We’re constantly listening to this feedback – and that’s at the core of any initiative like Foundry, or any intention that the studio has about how we move forwards.”
Hintze stated, “We’re thinking about the intangibles. The interaction with the Master Chief, or your Spartan, or the enemies. We are very careful about the decisions we’re making in that space – down to the precision and authenticity of the weapons, the authenticity of the animations. There are a list of nuances which we use to verify that we’re on track.”
Halo Studios isn’t unveiling what the upcoming Halo games are right now and they are just in the beginning of this new chapter. A new Halo game isn’t imminent, and Halo Infinite will still be supported with more Operations and updates to Forge mode.
“One of the things I really wanted to get away from was the continued teasing out of possibilities and ‘must-haves,'” said Hintze. “We should do more and say less. For me, I really think it is important that we continue the posture which we have right now when it comes to our franchise – the level of humility, the level of servitude towards Halo fans.
“We should talk about things when we have things to talk about, at scale. Today, it’s the first step – we’re showing Foundry because it feels right to do so – we want to explain our plans to Halo fans, and attract new, passionate developers to our team. The next step will be talking about the games themselves.”
“We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite. [But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”
Leadership at Halo Studios has been reorganizing the structure at the developer in order give the teams what they need.
“At the end of the day, if we build the games that our players want to play, that’s how we’ll be successful,” said Van Wyck. “That’s what should motivate what we build. That’s also what this structure has done – we want the people that are day-in-day-out making the games to be the ones to make the decisions on the games.
“We’re seeking earlier and earlier, wider and wider feedback from our players. We started that with The Master Chief Collection, and carried that on with Halo Infinite, and we want to do it even more for our next projects. At the end of the day, it’s not just how do we evaluate, it’s how do our players evaluate it?”
Hintze concluded, “You asked why we consider this as a new chapter. We want a singular focus. Everyone is in this place is here to make the best possible Halo games.”
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.