Unreal Engine 5 has been revolutionising game design, and we've just seen a new, and unexpected example. 343 Industries, now renamed as Halo Studios, has announced that it's moving from its proprietary engine Slipspace to Unreal to work on multiple new Halo games.
A video released ahead of the 2024 Halo World Championship provides a glimpse of what's been described as a "new dawn" for the military science fiction video game series. We're told that we can expect more games, more quickly.
The visuals in the video shared by Halo Studios show landscapes that might seem familiar: dramatic Pacific Northwest-inspired landscape with Forerunner architecture. We also see the Master Chief and a Banshee. But the visuals are all new.
In an article on the Xbox blog, COO Elizabeth van Wyck suggests that a big part of the decision to change was due to how quickly players now expect content, noting that the studio will now be able to set up multiple teams to work on different games at the same time.
But Unreal Engine 5 is expected to bring other benefits too. “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," Studio Art Director Chris Matthews says.
The studio will also benefit from the fact that Unreal is now so familiar in the wider gaming industry. That means less of a learning curve for new developers when they join.
“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,” Van Wyck adds. “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 starting point has been dubbed Project Foundry: not a game or a tech demo but an exploration of what’s possible with Unreal Engine and a "training tool for how to get there".
“When we decided to do Foundry, it wasn’t, at that point, in our plan,” says 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.”
The glimpse we've been given so far looks promising, suggesting new games will be faithful to the franchise while also offering something new and alien. We're told that a new Halo game is far from imminent, however. For now, Halo Infinite will still be supported through the Slipspace Engine and players can expect more Operations, and updates to Forge mode. Nevertheless, I'll be excited to see what comes next now that 343 Industries is restructuring and putting its focus entirely on Halo.
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