“A new dawn for Halo”: Microsoft Goes Big With Its Flagship Franchise in Last Ditch Hope to Stave off PlayStation
Halo is beginning a fresh chapter, with not only 343 Industries changing its name but also the team switching to a new engine to bring more content.
- Before the Halo World Championship ended, the announcement of the Halo series beginning a new chapter came.
- 343 Industries won't be the same anymore, as it is changing its name to give its most famous series a new start.
- The studio is also changing the game engine for the Halo series after loads of experiments.
Halo is entering “A New Dawn.” 343 Industries’ defining military science fiction video game series Halo is about to go through a complete transformation to provide players with more impressive games in the future. This shift is massive, and if it gets successful, it will probably turn the tables for Microsoft to win over Sony.
Prior to the finale of Halo World Championship 2024, 343 Industries came up with a bunch of announcements regarding the future of the Halo series, and the updates it shared clearly showed that the developer is ready to begin a fresh chapter with a new name, engine, and experiments.
Microsoft Is Preparing Something Big for Halo Fans in the Coming Years
The Halo franchise was out of the discussion for a while, especially since the TV show got canceled. Though some rumors have been circulating about the upcoming Halo games, nothing hyped fans until 343 Industries appeared to share some details with fans on October 6, 2024.
The official YouTube channel for Halo received a video of six minutes and 34 seconds, which revealed a bunch of new updates, including that 343 Industries is becoming Halo Studios.
The studio is changing its name to welcome the “New Dawn” for the series. The announcement further stated that multiple Halo games are under development.
In the video, multiple members have shared their thoughts, and according to studio head Pierre Hintze, they are trying to draw the attention of the group who wants more from the series. Therefore, the studio is working to “improve the efficiency of development” by shifting to Unreal Engine 5 from the Slipspace Engine, which was specifically created for the Halo games. As a reason, the Art Director revealed that the Slipspace Engine is 25 years old and,
“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.”
The sceneries that the YouTube video has shown proves his point, showcasing the clearer and improved version of the in-game world and gameplay elements.
Players are considering it a new beginning for the Halo series, which will be the primary weapon for Microsoft to prevent Sony’s domination.
The Halo Team Went Through Project Foundry to Decide on the Series’ Future
The Halo team didn’t decide on this engine switch randomly. As the video stated, it had an entire experimental process called Project Foundry to decide whether to make the shift or not. Project Foundry is neither a new game nor demo work for upcoming projects. It was an experimental project to explore what can be done in the games with Unreal Engine 5.
During this project, the team used different tools to check how far the upcoming Halo games could go. However, Hintze expressed that,
“It’s fair to say that our intent is that the majority of what we showcased in Foundry is expected to be in projects which we are building, or future projects.”
The experiments seem to be massively successful, and the developers expressed that after Project Foundry, the studio is sure to give players a lot of incredible content in future games.
When the next Halo installment will be released, developed with UE5, hasn’t yet been stated.
