We recently learned that Microsoft gave development of its next Halo game to Activision, where “a new purpose-built team” – separate from the teams working on Call of Duty – has been created to oversee the franchise going forward. Now, in a report from well-known Halo and Xbox insider Rebs Gaming, a possible timeline about how the process progressed internally at Microsoft has started to take form. And the report suggests that Activision’s take on Xbox’s premiere sci-fi shooter will be a reboot of the series -one that possibly explores Master Chief’s origins.
“Activision originally proposed two separate games: a free to play multiplayer game and a campaign-only game,” Rebs Gaming said in the video. “I’m told Activision’s original idea for the campaign-only game prototype was a soft reboot that doesn’t follow Halo Infinite’s story but doesn’t retcon any previously established canon.” But Activision apparently mooted the idea of making two separate games – a multiplayer and single-player offering – instead opting to go for one package combining both elements, more in line with what we’ve seen from the Halo series to date.
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If you’re not a fan of the Halo novels, the closest we’ve come to a Master Chief origin story was in the slightly pants Halo Paramount Halo TV show, which was cancelled after two seasons. You have to wonder, if Activision does go back in time to show the ultra-fascist roots of Master Chief’s rebellion-crushing origins, will he also have sex in front of Cortana in the game? Probably not, ey.
Rebs also noted that teams at Sledgehammer Games have already “conceptualised and prototyped basic gameplay mechanics for both the proposed campaign and multiplayer projects”, and pitched ideas around player movement. This has apparently all taken place within the Infinity Ward Engine, proprietary tech that has been the backbone of Call of Duty games, in some way, as far back as Call of Duty 2 in 2005. The modern version of the engine was completely rebuilt in 2019 for Modern Warfare, and is a pretty solid bit of tech – thanks to how modern games look, we know it can handle path tracing and ray tracing very well. This means that Activision is potentially moving away from Unreal Engine 5 (used in Campaign Evolved) and that Halo Studios’ expensive, proprietary Slipstream engine is now completely dead.
In the report, Rebs suggested that the overall team that’ll take ownership of the new title may well be built “within Sledgehammer Games”, per the report. “Please keep in mind that Activision’s Halo project is in early development so things can change,” Rebs warned.. And yes, we should take all this news speculatively: the only thing Activision has confirmed for sure is that it will be developing the next Halo title.
Halo: Campaign Evolved launched to strong reviews recently – I thought it was a great, if not perfect, mulligan of a classic – though its sales seemed to lack the punch Xbox wanted (even if it did net $67 million in gross revenue within its first two weeks). But Halo is still a tentpole brand for Microsoft and Xbox. However, Xbox is still currently undergoing major reorganisation, with the recent Halo stewardship change resulting in major layoffs at Halo Studios, which has all but closed, and at other studios in the Xbox division.