Halo moves to Unreal Engine 5 in major series overhaul

The Halo franchise is going to look a bit different going forward, starting with developer 343 Industries itself. The company announced Sunday that it’s rebranding to Halo Studios to mark a whole “new approach” to development, along with multiple new Halo projects.

This is the second time in history that the Halo series will be developed under a different name. The first three Halo games was developed by Bungie, followed by 343 Industries, which was formed inside Microsoft after Bungie opted to go independent.

“If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters. Chapter 1 – Bungie. Chapter 2 – 343 Industries,” studio head Pierre Hintze said in an Xbox Wire post. “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.”

The first big change is to transition from using the proprietary Slipspace engine to Unreal Engine 5. Halo Infinite, the franchise’s last new mainline game, was made on the engine, but it required a lot of internal upkeep. It’s made from decades-old Bungie code, and according to Bloomberg, that partially led to Infinite‘s long development cycle, along with a dependance on contract workers, and a switch to remote work because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bloomberg reported early last year that the company would be switching over to Unreal after a series of disappointments. While Infinite had a positive launch, the edges started to show soon after. The multiplayer’s post-launch releases were received negatively by the fan base that cited overpriced cosmetics, slow progression, and thin updates, but game modes were also delayed due to problems with Slipspace. Basically, the switch to Unreal is a long time coming, and will allow the team to work on more projects.

“Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,” art director Chris Matthews said in the post. “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.”

“We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite,” Hintze said in the Halo Studios announcement. “[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”

Halo Studios has been working in Unreal with Project Foundry, which isn’t a new game but a demonstration of how the Epic Games engine can be used with the Halo series. The company showed off some example clips at the 2024 Halo World Championship on Sunday. As for the new Halo games in the works, we don’t have any information on them just yet.