343 Industries reorganizes itself into Halo Studios and presents the future of the series based on Unreal Engine 5: a video diary announces the changes and shows something of the new games.
As the Halo World Championship 2024 kicks off, Microsoft has announced big changes for the series Halowith the transition of this to the new technological base provided by Unreal Engine 5 and the name change of 343 Industries in Halo Studioswith several games in development based on the series.
As reported in the video diary below, “we are entering a new era for Halo”, and some first glimpses can already be seen in the video in question, which illustrates some scenarios of a possible new chapter built in Unreal Engine 5, or in any case a prototype of what the potential of the series could be in this generational transition.
All new Halo projects will use Epic Games’ graphics engine, and 343 Industries has undergone a complete reorganization in Halo Studios, with the possibility of carrying out several games in development at the same time.
“If you analyze Halo, there were two very distinct chapters. Chapter 1 – Bungie. Chapter 2 – 343 Industries,” explained Pierre Hintze, head of the team. “Now, I believe the public wants more. So we will not only try to improve the efficiency of development, but to change the recipe of how we make Halo games. So, today we begin a new chapter“.
A new beginning for Halo
The Halo series will abandon the proprietary Slipspace Enginewhich had also required a large amount of time in its evolution and optimization, and will move to Unreal Engine 5, which should help reduce processing times on the engine itself and focus more on games.
The intention is to now have a technological base that allows one faster development, and more frequent publications of new content. As explained by Hintze, players’ consumption of content has changed and there is an expectation of more frequent releases, which requires a change in the technical management of games.
“The way we’ve made Halo games in the past doesn’t necessarily work well for how we want to make games in the future,” said COO Elizabeth van Wyck, “So part of the conversation we had was about how to help the team to focus on making games, rather than making tools and engines.”
“One of the main aspects we are interested in is the growth and expansion of our world, so that players have more possibilities to interact and experiment,” explained Chris Matthews, the studio’s art director. “Nanite and Lumen [le tecnologie di rendering e illuminazione di Unreal] they give us the opportunity to do this in a way the industry has never seen before. As artists, it’s incredibly exciting to do this work.”
Project Foundry
A first idea of how Halo will appear in the future, based on Unreal Engine 5, is Project Foundry: it is a sort of prototype, which we can see in glimpses in the video diary shown above.
Taking its name from the central forge that produces the Halo rings, it is not a new game but a sort of basis on which 343 Industries is experimenting with the new potential of the series on the Epic Games graphics engine, also working closely with the latter.
In addition to the graphic representation, obviously, it will also be of fundamental importance to transport the typical feeling of the shooter into this new form, and this is an element that Halo Studios has been working on for some time and on which it will have to focus a lot.
Halo Infinite will continue to be supported, the developers assure, so work on the Slipspace Engine will continue regarding this chapter, through further updates with Operations and other upcoming content, but at the same time the new Halo Studios is building the future of the series through various projects which will be based on Unreal Engine 5.
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