According to art director Justin Dinges' LinkedIn page, 343 Industries began work on a newHalogame in 2022, only a few months afterInfiniteshipped. We don’t know anything about it yet, but senior character system designer Ian Slutz’s page may give us some insight, as he is “Building player systems and assets in Unreal Engine 5”, pointing to a new direction for the series.
As reported byWccftech, this backs up reports from October of last year that 343 Industries is developing a new Halo campaign in UE5. According to Seasoned Gaming’s editor-in-chief Ainsley Bowden, “It is part of that restructuring that is building the next generation of Halo”.
The Halo engine is a very technical, engineering-focused engine. It’s super hard for creatives to work in. It’s super hard for a lot of creatives to work at one time. We did a ton of work, on Halo 4, on the engine, to get it to look… I think it looked amazing for being on the last generation on the last year of the platform (viaIGN).
Jeremy Penter (AKA YouTuber ACG) also claimed last October that Halo was switching to Unreal following the troubled stories of the Slipspace Engine. For context, Halo Infinite was supposed to be a launch title for the Xbox Series X/S, but was delayed from 2020 into December 2021. Despite being pushed back, it still launched with performance issues, andtwo-thirds of its contentreportedly had to be cut.
Between the various reports and Slutz’s LinkedIn, it looks increasingly likely that the next Halo game, whatever it may be, will be an Unreal Engine 5 title. But it’s not the only series to make the jump.
The Witcher 4 is being developed in UE5, as isTekken 8,Stalker 2,Ark 2,Tomb Raider,Dragon Quest 12,Kingdom Hearts 4,Killing Floor 3, theSilent Hill 2remake, andAvowed. The latter of which is an Obsidian Entertainment title, so Xbox is no stranger to Epic’s engine.
Microsoft is also expanding the world of Halo withan official tabletop gam
While details are starting to trickle out, the next Halo is likely a long way out yet. Development times have only gotten longer over the past decade, and this new project has been in development for just under two years.
