343 Industries is reportedly working on the next Halo game and it has been said the developer is using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 for it. Rumors about the next Halo game being in development began last spring when veteran Art/Game Director Justin Dinges (Halo: Infinite, Call of Duty: Black Ops DLC, Modern Warfare III) listed on his LinkedIn page that he’s also worked on an unannounced Halo game. It was then in October 2023 when Seasoned Gaming’s editor-in-chief, Ains, also revealed during a podcast that the next game was being worked on but, as part of a “restructuring” strategy, was being built using the popular game engine.
The restructuring that Ains is no doubt referring to relates to the layoffs Microsoft did last January when it cut roughly 10,000 staff, including 93 from 343 Industries. Ains added in the podcast that the soonest anyone should expect to see the rumored game would be at least a couple of years.
Ains (transcribed by WccfTech):
“The earliest I would expect to see another Halo single-player campaign outside of Firefight and stuff they’re doing in [Halo] Infinite is a couple of years. It’s going to be a while so doný hold your breath.”
The latest murmuring comes via social media where it was noticed that 343 Industries Senior Character Systems Designer Ian Slutz (Halo: Infinite) had at one point also listed on LinkedIn, as part of work done at 343 Industries, as having been building player and character assets in Unreal Engine 5. That post has since been edited and simply now lists Unreal Engine 5 as a skill. However, the original post, including a snapshot of coworker Justin Dinges, has been posted online.
(FYI) According to Justin Dinges's (Art Director) LinkedIn page, 343 has been working on the next unannounced Halo release since April 2022
— Idle Sloth💙💛 (@IdleSloth84_) January 9, 2024
Also, Ian Slutz (Senior Character System Designer) has been building player systems and assets in UE5
Sources:https://t.co/IczfsyieBj… pic.twitter.com/Wxwu1ui6Q6
Unreal Engine 5
Now while there is a good level of conjecture going on here with these rumors it would make sense, that despite layoffs and restructuring, Microsoft would not be abandoning its extremely popular Halo franchise and is moving forward with another game. After all, it has been a tentpole for its Xbox game consoles since their first launch.
It would also not be a stretch to believe that 343 Industries could be switching over to Unreal Engine 5 since many other AAA studios such as CD PROJEKT RED (The Witcher 1-3, Cyberpunk 2077), Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider), and Konami (METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER), have all been said to be using Epic Games’ engine rather than their own for their next franchise installments. In fact, a look through this list shows a virtual tsunami of games said to be in development using UE5, or have already been built with it and launched. At this point, it is becoming a rarity for AAA studios to use their own in-house engines anymore and those lists just continue to shrink.