Halo’s Master Chief Gets An Unreal Makeover In New Tech Showcase

Gif: Halo Studios / Microsoft / Kotaku

Unreal Engine is so good at making games look hyper realistic that it’s become a meme for a certain style of uncanny fan video showing everything from The Legend of Zelda to The Simpsons remade with ultra detailed CGI effects. Well, now Halo’s Master Chief is getting that treatment for real, and the initial tease looks impressive.

Halo Infinite was made with a brand-new proprietary set of game development tools called Slipstream. The result was seemingly less than ideal. In addition to the game taking forever to come out, it also got lampooned by fans over how it looked in its initial reveal. A particularly flat and dead-looking Jiralhanae Berserker in the first gameplay trailer was named Craig by the internet and became a symbol of impending disappointment with the long awaited sequel.

“Halo Infinite was the last remnants of how we made Halo games in the past,” Pierre Hintze head of 343 Industries, now called Halo Studios, said in a video documentary showing fans their first glimpses of Master Chief’s Unreal Engine 5 makeover. The brief clips and images shared by the team are part of Project Foundry, an exploration of the franchise under this new tool set and a clear attempt to turn the page on a rocky past.

The snippets shown in the video include three biomes: the Pacific Northwest, the Coldlands, and the Blightlands, which gets its name from regions completely taken over by Halo’s cosmic infestation known as The Flood. They also provide samples of what Master Chief and Covenant Elites look like when recreated in the new engine, as well as series staples like energy weapons and the M6D Pistol. “Unreal affords us more opportunity than we’ve ever had in the past,” art director Chris Matthews said.

Microsoft hasn’t confirmed what the next Halo games will be under this new direction, but a reported remake of Halo: Combat Evolved might be one of them. It’s already been 10 years since Master Chief Collection, and that was only a remaster rather than a ground-up overhaul. If The Last Of Us Part 1 can get a next-gen remake, surely player’s first steps in the Halo universe can get a long-overdue makeover as well.