Halo's Long-Awaited Return Not at All What We Expected

Halo’s return is imminent, with a new game in the works using Unreal Engine 5 and rumour of some spin-off titles on the way too.

Halo Studios, formerly 343 Industries, hasn’t had the greatest track-record when it comes to Halo, though there have been a few saving graces like Halo: Infinite.

The main issue with the last few Halo games is they’ve been trying to be anything but Halo, which would be fine if it was a proper reboot rather than a supposed continuation of Bungie’s story.

With the next game said to be a reboot/remake of Halo: Combat Evolved it gives Halo Studios a bit more runway to land something truly special, but before we get there there’s something else on the way.

Apparently Halo: Online could be making an unexpected comeback. According to leaker Rebs Gamingthat there’s currently a "live service, long-term updating multiplayer game" in production with Halo Studios, which sounds an awful lot like what Halo: Online used to be.

The fan-made project attempted to blend the modern day look of Halo with the old-school feel of Halo. It didn’t have worldwide appeal as you could only play it in Russia, and while it was eventually shut down some elements of it were ported over to Halo: The Master Chief Collection, such as maps from the game.

While the title doesn’t seem to be coming back altogether this mystery project does sound like a spiritual successor, for better or worse.

Personally I’m a bit confused by the whole thing. If Halo Studios wanted a free-to-play multiplayer Halo game surely it should just look at Halo: Infinite… The game’s multiplayer is free-to-play on Xbox and PC and is still being updated with new content, all that’s missing is a port to PlayStation, something that’s more than possible considering Xbox has already shared several exclusives with Sony’s platform, like Gears Of War.

Surely it’d make more sense to just port Halo: Infinite across, but maybe the studio would rather launch a new game that puts all players on even-footing rather than match-up new players with high-level veterans.

It’s certainly a weird move, but then again the last few Halo games have been full of weird moves so I don’t know why we should expect anything less by this point…