Newly-rebranded Halo Studios kicks off the iconic FPS series' next era with multiple games in development: "Chapter 1 - Bungie. Chapter 2 - 343 Industries"
Oct. 7, 2024A switch to Unreal Engine 5 should speed up development on the next Halo
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
343 Industrieshas rebranded simply as Halo Studios to kickstart a “new chapter” in the iconic series' long history, which includes multiple games in development.
“If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters,” studio head Pierre Hintze, who took over afterHalo Infinite’s wonky launch, explains in anXbox Wire blog. “Chapter 1 –Bungie. Chapter 2 – 343 Industries. Now, I think we have an audience which is hungry for more. So we’re not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe ofhowwe make Halo games. So, we start a new chapter today.”
Halo Studios also unveiled some jazzy footage of the mysterious Project Foundry, showing multiple biomes that would feel right at home on a classic Halo ring, from forests stretching to the clouds to areas infected by the Flood’s spores. Master Chief and some elites also debut their updated, but still very classic, designs in the video below.
Project Foundry is a slightly unconventional announcement, especially since it’s been almost three years since Halo Infinite launched, but Halo Studios is clear that everything being built right now is expected to find its way into a future Halo game of some sort.
“Everything we’ve made is built to the kind of standards that we need to build for the future of our games,” studio art director Chris Matthews says. “We were very intentional about not stepping into tech demo territory. We built things that we truly believe in, and the content that we’ve built – or at least a good percentage of it – could travel anywhere inside our games in the future if we so desire it.” Hintze goes one step further to say that everything we see in Foundry is “expected to be in projects we are building, or future projects.”
Previous reports claimed the studio was working on"some form" of Halo: Combat Evolved remasterand, with how old-school the character models look now, that wouldn’t be surprising. The other Halo games are anyone’s guess, though the studio claims switching to Unreal Engine 5 should speed up development significantly since it no longer has to double up as a tech company and a game development studio. It can just focus on one.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Reminisce with some of thebest Halo games of all time.
Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that’s vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he’ll soon forget.
The Halo 2 Arbiter mission that Bungie scrapped 21 years ago has been officially restored as a playable Master Chief Collection mod
Xbox boss Phil Spencer says there are “no red lines” preventing Microsoft games releasing on PlayStation, but it’s too early to make decisions about Halo on PS5
Everybody loves Jeff the Land Shark, Marvel Rivals' standout star, except the people who have to play against him
