What does Halo’s engine change to Unreal mean?

Earlier this week, 343 Industries — named after the Halo series’ 343 Guilty Spark character — made two major announcements. One, a marketing and cultural announcement, was that they were changing the studio’s name to Halo Studios to better represent the larger portfolio of Halo products that they are currently working on. While it was a new name, it represented more closely tying themselves to the series as they see its history and future. The other announcement, by contrast, was a cut from the past to look ahead: rather than use the Slipstream engine, which was created by 343 for 2021’s Halo Infinite, the studio was shifting to Unreal Engine for future Halo projects.

That announcement has different implications for the series. While 343 obviously does not want to get in a lengthy discussion in the press about this change, as it would inherently become a technical discussion that diminishes their work on Slipstream, it does beg the question of why change engines at all? Gamesbeat reached out to multiple developers to ask why they would embrace Unreal and the way it inches the industry to a more engine-agnostic future.