While Halo Studios has already confirmed that it has an announcement slated for October 24’s Halo World Championship event, Master Chief’s voice actor, Steve Downes, has now also taken to social media to also tease that there is some big news coming. In his post, Downes also celebrated voice actor Jen Taylor’s work as in-game AI Cortana with a T-shirt, while also confirming that both of them will be at the HaloWC event.
“Repped for our girl, [Jen Taylor], in Chicago this past weekend,” wrote Downes. “Jen and I can’t wait to see you guys at the Halo World Championships in Seattle, October 24 & 25! PS: BIG NEWS A’COMIN!!”
Halo Studios had already confirmed that it will be celebrating the first anniversary of its rebrand from when it switched from being called 343 Industries at the upcoming event with a new announcement. The studio noted that it will be sharing more details about what it has been working on in the meantime, along with offering a “deep dive” panel.
“Back in June we let the community know that we’d be continuing the conversation from last year’s HaloWC and the ‘A New Dawn’ video and sharing more about what we’ve been working on,” wrote wrote the studio. “Like last year we’ll be on the Main Stage to talk about it but this year we’ve also got a ‘deep dive’ panel planned for the Community Stage that you won’t want to miss.”
The announcement is expected to be for a remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, which had first come out all the way back in 2001 on PC and the original Xbox. A report from earlier this month has indicated that the remake, being co-developed by a studio under the Virtuos banner, will be similar to what we saw with The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered. This means that the remake will reportedly use a “hybrid engine”, with new visuals and gameplay elements developed in Unreal Engine 5 or another modern game engine on top of the core game that will still use its original engine under the hood.
Other rumours from earlier this year have also indicated that the remake will strictly be for the campaign itself, with competitive multiplayer being completely absent. The same reports indicated that, along with a remake of the original Halo, Halo Studios is also working on a multiplayer project dubbed Ekur, which will be a battle royale game.
While the studio might be close to unveiling its next major release, it has also been seemingly going through some internal troubles. A rumour from last week has indicated that there are leadership issues at Halo Studios, which ultimately led to the departure of art director Glenn Israel. In a post announcing his departure from the studio, Israel wrote about only being able to reveal more details about his time at the company “in its entirety when it is absolutely safe to do so next year.”
If you want some Halo in your life in the meantime, you can check out the Halo 3: ODST weapons that were added to co-op shooter Helldivers 2 as part of a crossover Legendary Warbond.
