Since the recent lay-offs and project cancellations at Microsoft, tensions have been high at Halo Studios. However, the developer has revealed in the past that it has been working on several projects, one of them being a remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved. According to a new report by YouTuber Rebs Gaming, the Halo remake will only feature the single-player campaign, with competitive multiplayer absent.
In the video, which you can check out below, sources revealed there has been no sign of multiplayer development work done for Halo: Combat Evolved. These sources also alleged that an internal multiplayer project, codenamed Project Ekur and believed to be a battle royale game, has been getting updates roughly every six hours for a few days. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any word about a possible PS5 port for Halo Infinite.
It is worth noting that, while Halo Studios has teased an announcement that will seemingly be made during Halo World Championships, unconfirmed rumours are best taken with a grain of salt. The studio had teased an announcement for October earlier this month, where it would also celebrate the first full year that has passed since it was rebranded to Halo Studios from its earlier identity, 343 Industries.
“Last year at HaloWC, we premiered ‘A New Dawn’ where we talked about the switch to Unreal Engine, gave you a behind-the-scenes look at Project Foundry, and debuted our evolution to Halo Studios as we enter a new chapter for Halo,” wrote the studio, referring to its big rebrand last year. “For us, ‘A New Dawn’ was just the beginning – at this year’s HaloWC, we look forward to continuing the conversation.”
“Speculation is always fun, but if you want the official scoop on what Halo Studios has been working on, you won’t want to miss this year’s Halo World Championship. We really hope you’ll join us in Seattle this October!”
During its rebrand, Halo Studios had also confirmed that its next projects would be developed using Unreal Engine 5. According to studio head Pierre Hintze, “[switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”
While there has been tension at the studio owing to Microsoft letting go of more than 9,000 employees recently, tensions were reportedly quite high at Halo Studios even before that. Reports have indicated that there was quite a bit of stress faced at the studio because of work going on for multiple projects simultaneously, including developing more content for Halo Infinite.
“I don’t think anybody is really happy about the quality of the product right now,” said a developer. “There’s been a lot of tension and pep talks trying to rally folks to ship.”
In the meantime, Halo Infinite, available on PC and Xbox Series X/S, recently kicked off Operation: Reclaimer.
