"Halo Infinite Was The Last Remnants Of The Old Recipe," Future Halo Projects From "Halo Studios" Will Be Unreal Engine 5

So long, 343 Industries. Honestly, I'm not all that surprised to see the company rebrand the studio at this point. Halo Infinite had its ups and downs, more downs lately but that's a different topic, and the studio itself had some rough accusations made regarding poor management and layoffs.

It isn't just a rebranding of the company though, as changing the name alone cannot hide that mark.

Halo Studios, the new name of the development team in charge of the franchise, is also casting aside the Slipspace Engine in favor of using Unreal Engine 5. Slipspace, while being developed by 343 itself, actually got quite a bit of the blame for the delay and subsequent content delivery issues with Halo Infinite. Turns out, trying to develop both the shooter and managing and upgrading an engine at the same time leads to additional complications.

Having initially started experimenting with UE5 in an internal project called "Foundry," Halo Studios created 3 different well-known Halo biomes in Epic's engine as a test. Those tests went well enough that all future Halo projects will now be developed in UE5. Honestly, it looks gorgeous. I know they're only "mock ups," but the team hopes to return Halo to the "best in class" visuals the franchise used to be known for in the past.

As part of the shift, Halo Studios also says the engine change should make it easier to recruit talent on their various projects. They hope that a shift in studio culture and how teams are organized will also make things more enticing to talent.

That said, they team isn't announcing much right now as there isn't much to actually announce, but they did think the engine shift was going to be hard to keep a secret. The video preview below paints a great forward-looking picture and there are positions available on the team if you're looking for work.