New Halo Games: Project Foundry, Unreal Engine 5, When To Expect Them, And More

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New Halo Games: Project Foundry, Unreal Engine 5, When To Expect Them, And More

New Halo Games: Project Foundry, Unreal Engine 5, When To Expect Them, And More

Seemingly out of nowhere, Microsoft announced a major shakeup for its flagship Halo series in early October 2024. The series steward 343 Industries is changing names to Halo Studios, and multiple new games are in the works using Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. Microsoft also acknowledged some past struggles and pledged a brighter future for the series after Halo Infinite.

There were many announcements and details, and in this post we’re rounding up everything we know about the next Halo games in development, when to expect them, and more.

What are the new games?

In a blog post, Microsoft confirmed that Halo Studios–the new name for 343 Industries–is working on multiple new Halo games. What these games are, however, remains a mystery. It’s also unknown if Microsoft is developing all of these games internally or if it might partner with other studios. Microsoft’s Joe Skrebels said Halo Studios is “at the beginning of this new chapter, not the final stages.” As such, Skrebels said, “It’s fair to say that a new Halo game isn’t imminent.” In other words, get comfortable, because they won’t be announced soon.

For the time being, Microsoft will continue to support Halo Infinite with additional Operations and new updates to the Forge mode. All of this will take place as Halo Studios works on future projects.

As for the future games, Microsoft is staying quiet for now, but has so far shown off an experimental prototype called Project Foundry. This is not a new game, nor is a tech demo in the traditional sense, Microsoft said. Instead, it aims to be a “true reflection of what would be required for a new Halo game using Unreal, and a training tool for how to get there.” Microsoft said the effort that went into creating Foundry amounted to the “same rigor, process, and fidelity as a shipped game would be.”

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A work-in-progress image of Halo made in Unreal Engine 5

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Hintze said the “majority” of what was seen in the Project Foundry video is “expected” to be featured in Halo Studios’ future output. The Foundry demo showed off impressive biomes with waterfalls and mountains–it’s all very reminiscent of classic Halo.

What platforms are the new Halo games coming to?

It’s still very early days for the new Halo projects, and as such, Microsoft has not disclosed what platforms it is targeting for its next set of Halo titles. It’s expected, though, that future Halo games will release on Xbox consoles–including whatever next-generation Xbox system that Microsoft is working on now. It’s reasonable to expect that Microsoft would launch its new Halo games on PC as well. With Halo Studios now working with Unreal Engine 5, it might also be easier to bring the Halo series to PlayStation 5, but that’s nowhere near confirmed at this point. Microsoft is, however, bringing more of its Xbox games to PlayStation (and Switch), and there is an ongoing rumor of a Halo: Combat Evolved remaster coming to PS5. Again, though, nothing is locked down at this stage.

Tapping into Unreal and leaving Slipspace behind

One of the biggest announcements alongside the studio name change and the game announcements was that Halo Studios is shifting away from its proprietary game engine, Slipspace, in favor of Unreal Engine 5. Hintze said under the previous model, 343 needed an entire team of staffers to develop and upkeep Slipspace. Hintze said the expectations of gamers has changed–they want content faster. Slipspace led to bottlenecks, but working with Unreal Engine 5 should give the team a new level of speed and efficiency, he said.

Halo Studios COO Elizabeth van Wyck said, “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.”

Studio art director Chris Matthews said Slipspace was simply not modern enough for its goals. “Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,” he said. “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.”

Former Halo Infinite multiplayer designer Patrick Wren said on social media that developing Slipspace at the same time as making Halo Infinite was “incredibly difficult.” It was similar to “trying to build a boat and race it at the same time,” Wren said.

Switching to Unreal Engine has also brought up concerns among some that Halo’s trademark “feel” might be impacted. However, Van Wyck said the team believes Unreal Engine 5 will allow the team to 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.”

Still, until Microsoft reveals just what kinds of games it is building, fans will no doubt be understandably skeptical about the future after Halo Infinite failed to live up to the expectations of many.

Another benefit of shifting to Unreal Engine 5 is that Epic’s toolsuite is known to game developers across the industry. Whereas a new hire previously had to get up to speed with Slipspace, anyone joining the company now might already have years of experience with Unreal.

“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, [and] adapt to what we’re seeing our players want,” Van Wyck said. “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?”

Microsoft’s vision

Hintze said Halo has had two distinct chapters thus far–Chapter 1 was when Bungie–the creators of the series–led development. Chapter 2 was when 343 Industries took over and released games like Halo 4, Halo 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and Halo Infinite most recently. Now, Hintze said the Halo audience is “hungry for more” and the team is kicking off Chapter 3 that will aim to “improve the efficiency of development” and “change the recipe” of how Halo games are made. Hintze also alluded to how Microsoft made these major announcements in part to encourage people to come work for Halo Studios–it’s still early days.

“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,” Hintze said.

In a video documentary, Hintze showed some humility and acknowledged that the way 343 went about business in the past had issues and that fans can expect better things in the future.

“Halo Infinite was the last remnant of how we made Halo games in the past. That was our recipe. And what we’re doing right now is changing our recipe.”

The new team

Microsoft has installed a new executive leadership team to build the future of Halo. In the blog post, the company referred to “changes in culture, workflow, and how its teams are organized” to better help the team succeed. As mentioned above, Hintze and Van Wyck are now leading Halo Studios from the stop, with Matthews in the role of studio art director.

Matthews was previously the co-founder and studio art director at Ridgeline Games, the ill-fated EA studio that was working on a new Battlefield single-player experience before abruptly closing up shop. Marcus Lehto, the co-creator of the Halo universe and co-founder of Ridgeline, said Matthews is an “excellent choice” to help lead Halo Studios into the future. Halo Infinite’s game director, Chris Lee, left the project and sought other opportunities before the game was released.

What happens next?

Microsoft and Halo Studios have provided no details on when it might announce the next Halo games or even provide any further update on the goings-on at the studio. However, Hintze’s commentary about wanting to hold things back until the team has something real and proper to show suggests that it might be some time before anything more is released.

For now, it appears the rebranding of 343 Industries as Halo Studios and the announcement of the switch to Unreal Engine 5 is a means to help recruit staff to build on the vision. Showing off Project Foundry and talking about what’s to come in the future, meanwhile, might help achieve those goals and show longtime and lapsed fans that there is exciting Halo content on the horizon.

But again, for now it’s just words and visuals–fans will no doubt hope to see Halo Studios deliver something worth playing and getting excited about in the future.

“At the end of the day, if we build the games that our players want to play, that’s how we’ll be successful,” Van Wyck said. “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.”

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