Introduction: The Halo gaming series is one of the biggest franchises in the world, but over the last several years, it has witnessed declining popularity. Despite its numerous offshoots, including a live-action TV show, the core gaming franchise had struggled to return to its glory days when Bungie developers were behind the helm. But now, Halo is preparing to enter a brand new chapter both with a rebranded studio behind it and with one of the most powerful game development tools on offer today – the Unreal Engine 5 by Epic Games. Fans of the series and the developers alike are placing a lot of faith in the same game engine as a means to restart and reinvigorate the famous first-person shooter gaming series, including taking it into some new directions.
Article: The names like Master Chief and Cortana have long ago become well-known to many generations of gamers. Thanks to the immense popularity of the Halo series, millions grew up across the world with these titles. The franchise, which generated a revenue of over six billion USD over the course of the years, is now a multimedia empire, including not just games, but animated films and TV shows, novels, comic books, toys and collectibles, and a live-action TV series. The impact of the Halo games was so huge that they single-handedly played a direct role in the expansion of the Xbox console. However, Halo games themselves have been struggling to keep up with the rest of the FPS landscape. While action and shooter games continued to evolve with things like battle royale modes, Halo seemed to be stuck in the early 2000s when it first came out. At the same time, Bungie Studios, which helped bring Halo to the global gaming limelight, decided to move out of the same franchise.
Nearly 15 years ago, back in 2010, the famous studio did their last game in this fictional series, called Halo: Reach. Games like Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardian followed, but the issues became more and more apparent, while the production cycles and studios involved became more convoluted. That brought in a period of little activity and mediocre releases, which many hope will be ending soon. The reason is the fact that the key studio behind the franchise right now, 343 Industries, is rebranding, but also taking the series in a new technical direction. The key element of that new direction will be the transition of upcoming Halo projects to Unreal Engine 5 from the gigantic Epic Games. The willingness to make changes is something that many in the gaming community are excited to see. But, on the other hand, a switch to Unreal Engine might see many projects get delayed or even canceled as the developers try to gauge how to fit Halo releases into the changing FPS landscape of the coming years.
Halo Infinite Woes
The news from 343 Industries, which will be renamed Halo Studios, comes nearly three years after the latest game in the series came out. It was Halo Infinite and it will be the last Halo game made with the Slipspace Engine, a proprietary tool that the developers used. However, the 2021 release included several extensions of its development, making the process more expensive than anticipated. To make things worse, the game itself landed mixed reviews and an unstable player base that was driven mainly by nostalgia. In turn, that meant that Halo Infinite was not able to bring in those essential new players or expand the series among younger gamers. This was the last signal that the franchise needed to make some bold choices and switch technologies, taking the Slipspace Engine out of the picture and replacing it with Unreal Engine 5, arguably the most comprehensive tool for creating AAA games currently on offer.
Rebranded Studio
A part of the evolution of Halo includes the changing of the main developer’s name. That means that 343 Industries is becoming Halo Studios and the outfit confirmed that it has several new Halo games in development. The studio presented several reasons why they are switching to Unreal Engine. First of all, the tool should allow them to create new projects faster and with less risk of big technical hurdles, being that they can count now on support from Epic Games engineers. Besides, Halo Studios plans to expand its team or even create additional in-house teams for specific Halo games. Working with Unreal Engine, an industry-level standard, will allow them to access a greater pool of talent and also onboard new developers in a faster and more efficient manner. Lastly, the pace of Unreal Engine changes and upgrades mean that Halo can be among the first to benefit from new versions that will come out in the future. That technological and tooling advantage could prove decisive for titles that aim for multiplayer or cross-platform gaming experiences. This is precisely what the Halo gaming series needs in the long run – flexible titles that keep the pillars of the Halo universe, but present them in appealing ways for the modern gaming market.
Project Foundry
Besides the changes to the development process for the upcoming games, Halo Studios is also starting its Project Foundry. This is an internal team that will be tasked with exploring the future potential of Unreal Engine and its present and upcoming capabilities. While many are skeptical about the studio’s latest demo and technical showcase – which did not feature any actual gameplay – others are pointing out that Project Foundry could be an even more important factor in rebranding the Halo series. The reason for this is that many industry experts believe that Foundry will actually focus on the potential of user-generated content (UGC) inside of the Halo ecosystem.
In that case, the incredible treasure trove of characters, weapons, vehicles, locations, and overall lore that Halo generated could become invaluable assets in other gaming spaces. For example, the collaboration with Epic Games on Unreal Engine could allow Halo Studios to publish games in the Fortnite Creative ecosystem. These would grant them instant access to tens of millions of new gamers, which could be then funneled into one of the new stand-alone Halo games now in development. Other possibilities like this could be discovered by the Foundry team and then relatively quickly exploited either through Unreal Engine or some of its offshoots like Unreal Editor for Fortnite. But, it is clear that in the coming years, the UGC space will be crucial for all franchises. Now, with Unreal Engine 5, Halo should be inside of the list of AAA titles that were willing to adapt to the same fact.
Author: Ivica Milaric, game designer and assistant professor of game design at the Novi Sada Academy of Arts, Republic of Serbia