343 Industries – now known as Halo Studios – announced “a new dawn” for Halo this week. What exactly does this mean? Good question. It is certainly not a new dawn from 343 Industries. It apparently means the “next chapter” for the series complete with a switch to Unreal Engine 5. If this gives you deja-vu, it is because 343 Industries and Xbox made similar promises with Halo Infinite, complete with an — you guessed it — engine switch. Previously, it was the Slipspace Engine, which 343 Industries spent untold millions creating for Halo Infinite, that was the future of the franchise. But like the legacy of 343 Industries, it is now being flushed down the drain.
Yet, Halo fans are supposed to believe a couple engines later, on the fourth attempt, 343 Industries is going to usher Halo into a new era? Doubtful. Some changes among leadership and an engine change is unlikely to salvage Halo, which is dying a slow, painful death.
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To various degrees, 343 Industries has been killing Halo since taking over the reigns of the series from Bungie. From Halo 4, through Halo 5, to Halo Infinite, the series is less relevant than ever. Under Bungie, it was not just the undisputed crown gem of Xbox, but one of the biggest series in gaming. This is just not true anymore.
Is Unreal Engine 5 going to save Master Chief? Of course not. It will make onboarding new employees and contractors easier, and being able to lean on Epic Games when it has engine questions and issues will improve development. But the problems clearly do not begin or end with the Slipspace Engine.
Halo 4 and Halo 5 did not run on Slipspace; they ran on an updated and modified version of the same engine, Blam, as every Halo game before it. Yet, they are nowhere near the quality or relevance of the games that came before them.
If there is any copium for Halo fans to inhale, it is the leadership changes. It is true that 343 Industries has some new faces in various leadership roles. Yet the same apparatus that opened the door to this current leadership opened the door for the previous leadership. Xbox has been shepherding the series the whole time. What is different now that all of a sudden Halo fans should trust Xbox has put the right people in the right positions when it has failed to do this for over a decade? It’s not like Xbox Game Studios, and the leadership above it, has proven to be excellent shepards of their studios. If anything, Matt Booty and co. have more often shown otherwise.
More than this, these new leads are not going to come in with magic dust that fixes everything it is sprinkled on. Despite the rebrand, this is still 343 Industries. Games of the size of a new Halo game do not succeed or fail on the competency of a few people, even if they are at the top.
For example, The Last of Us is bigger than Neil Druckmann, its creator and creative director. While the series may not be what it is without Druckmann, and while his future absence could have a negative impact on the series if he were to ever decide to leave, it doesn’t change the fact there are hundreds of people beneath him making the game. If you remove this team from underneath Druckmann, and replace it with a team with an inferior output, what is on the other side of is not The Last of Us Part 3. It would be something different, something not as good.
Likewise, there may be some new drivers behind the wheel at 343 Industries, but the engine, the steering, the suspension, the wheels, the seats, and everything else is still the same, then Halo will continue its pedal-to-the-metal path towards the edge of a cliff.
