343 Becomes Halo

It seems strange to think, but Halo really slipped from status as a mountain of videogames to something more like a hillock. When I started writing this I thought I might put down something like ‘younger games fans might not realize’, but that seems to understate just how steep Halo’s fall has been. It really wasn’t all that long ago that Halo was a first-order sort of game; a system seller, but now it’s an afterthought. Well, now Microsoft is making motions to correct the decline and point Halo in an upwards trajectory.

Signalling this attempt to re-establish Halo, the big symbolic shift is the change of Halo Infinite developer 343 Studios being renamed as Halo Studios. On top of that (and more importantly), the studio is going to be shifting development from their proprietary engine to Unreal Engine 5. You might not immediately recognize why that matters, but one of the reasons that have been given for the problems that 343 experiences while developing Halo Infinite was working on the Slipspace engine, the one used to develop Halo Infinite. With the move to Unreal, Halo Studios can focus their efforts more fully on future Halo games, and less on Engine development; and in theory, that means more time make those better.

All this news and more was part of a presentation for the ‘new dawn’ that Halo is undergoing, and you can watch that presentation below.

Playing videogames, writing about videogames, considering videogames—that about sums it up. Videogames are the one hobby that I’ve kept since I was only little, zapping ducks on the NES or knocking out MR. X. And when I’m not enjoying classics from the bit generation of games or checking out those earliest of polygons, I’m probably playing something from today’s age of modern gaming: if I’m not complaining about it. Something I’m doing at the moment? I started dipping my toes in the vast sea of Kemco JRPGs.