According to the newly rechristened Halo Studios, Halo is back, and this time, it’s more Halo than ever. And I mean, of course it is. As one of Xbox’s most iconic tentpoles, it is not – and likely never will be – allowed to die. But in a just world, the series would already be six feet under, with a Grunt dancing on its grave.
After the initially-promising misfire that was Halo Infinite, Microsoft is overhauling its approach to the series with a new engine, Unreal Engine 5, and a studio reorganization that will allow for work on multiple projects at once. This follows layoffs of almost 100 people from what was then called 343 Industries just last year. Now, based on the language used in multiple posts and a video about Halo Studios, Microsoft is clearly looking to hire.
“There’s another in-built benefit – Unreal is familiar to huge parts of the wider gaming industry,” wrote Xbox Wire in its post about Halo’s future. “Where developers would have to spend time learning how to use Slipspace when joining 343, Halo Studios’ adoption of the industry-leading engine makes it a far smoother process to bring in new talent (and the studio is indeed hiring for its new projects now).”
The switch to Unreal is almost certainly a good call for the series, as reports have repeatedly pegged the creaky Slipspace engine as a source of innumerable issues, robbing Infinite of its momentum with a glacial update schedule. To show off what’s possible in the new engine, Halo Studios created Project Foundry, which it says is “neither a game nor a tech demo,” but which is very much rooted in classic Halo iconography. There’s the “Pacific Northwest” landscape that calls back to Halo 1’s earliest moments; “Coldlands,” which references the series’ long history of snow levels; and “Blightlands,” an alien world that has been consumed by the parasitic Flood enemy faction that Master Chief and his many frenemies can never quite seem to get rid of.
It all looks suitably impressive, which is, again, the point: "The original Halo franchise was a graphics showcase,” lead FX artist Daniel Henley said in Halo Studios’ video. “It was best-in-class. That's what Halo was when it first was released, and that's what Halo needs to be again."
The most annoying people on the internet have already begun doomsaying over the presence of queer and non-white game developers in said video, which is a great way to forever exile yourself both from your local Arby’s and into a tribe of bleating manbabies who will never love you as much as they hate themselves. This is, to be clear, an incredibly stupid reason to fear for the future of Halo.
My reasoning is much simpler: Halo, as an idea, has run its course.
Graphics are not the first thing that grabbed me about the original Halo, and I don’t think I’m alone in that regard. Yeah, the game looked good, but more importantly, it plunged me headlong into a vast universe of intrigue. Why was The Covenant hell-bent on extinguishing humanity? What were the Forerunners? Where did The Flood come from? What was the purpose of this gargantuan ring? What happened to the other Spartans? Why was Master Chief the only man for the job?
The game’s in-media-res approach to storytelling and worldbuilding made my imagination run wild. I played the first game’s campaign more times than I can count. I saw Master Chief’s story through to what seemed to be its conclusion in Halo 3. I spent my high school money and free time reading official Halo books. In college, I tore through the underappreciated Halo ODST, as well as Halo Reach, Bungie’s beloved series swan song. Even by that point, though, I began to feel like Halo was growing a little long in the tooth. Many of the above questions about the series’ universe had been answered. Reach’s levels felt more like a greatest hits collection than anything truly novel. After that, I drifted from the series.
Halo 4 attempted something of a reset, featuring a new setting, weapons, and enemies. I feel like it at least had the right idea as far as freshening up the universe goes, but it failed to stick the landing. Halo 5 added a secondary protagonist to the story, Locke, and put its own spin on multiplayer, but it was a narrative mess. This to say nothing of spinoffs like the Halo Wars games, real-time strategy affairs that hewed closer to Bungie’s original vision for Halo than even Halo 1 itself but which lacked the needed depth to stand on their own. Halo was lost in the wilderness.
Halo Infinite was supposed to be a course correction, a return to form with an open-ish world that was nonetheless extremely reminiscent of Bungie’s level-based Halo games in terms of visuals, weapons, and enemies. To a degree, it succeeded, but its campaign ended abruptly and unsatisfyingly, and multiplayer – while punchy and fun – quickly grew stale. Do I think more frequent updates could have helped on that side of things? Sure. But I’m not sure Halo Infinite would have blossomed into the live-service-adjacent pseudo-platform Microsoft was hoping it would become, something Halo was never designed to be. The series’ systems and core gameplay loop were first established in the early 2000s; they weren’t meant to sustain an entire ecosystem.
For better or worse, Halo cannot leave those things behind. They are Halo. Nor can it entirely abandon Master Chief, The Covenant, The Flood, The Forerunners, The Spartans, or any of its many other proper nouns. These are its best-known quantities, and when they even sort of take a backseat, as we saw with Halo 4 and 5, fans begin to long for greener, more Pacific-Northwest-inspired pastures.
Microsoft will never let Halo die, and that strikes me as tragic in its own way. The best stories have endings, something increasingly rare in this age of Marvel, Star Wars, and other franchise behemoths. And while there’s something beautifully bittersweet in a long goodbye, things get awkward if you wait around in the doorway for too long. Slowly but surely, everyone comes to realize that you’re dragging your feet not because there’s something real left in that moment, but because you’re afraid to move on.
