Microsoft announced major news earlier this week - revealing the rebrand of 343 as 'Halo Studios' and that future Halo titles would be developed on Unreal Engine 5 going forward. Now, a new "exclusive" from 'Rebs Gaming' has reportedly shed light on the lead up to this big change and what might have been axed in the process.
Although it might not be a surprise, according to the YouTube channel's source (who is apparently a former employee of 343), the campaign team began developing an Infinite sequel in the studio's Slipspace game engine right after the launch of Halo Infinite.
These plans allegedly changed when new leadership came in September 2022, with a decision supposedly made then and there to swap to Unreal Engine for future Halo games - resulting in the apparent cancellation of Infinite's sequel project on Slipspace.
Although 'Infinite 2' is believed to have been axed on the in-house game engine, it's noted how this doesn't necessarily rule out a UE5 version. It's claimed the source doesn't personally know if a UE5 version of 'Infinite 2' is in the works, because they were laid off before then.
One other interesting bit of information talks about the possibility of the studio outsourcing "campaign content" - with this particular claim backed up by the fact Halo Studios hasn't formed a campaign team for "almost two years" since the original team was laid off.
It's also believed 'Halo Infinite 2' was being developed alongside the cancelled battle royale mode for Infinite - codenamed 'Project Tatanka', which was eventually rebranded as a new Unreal Engine project. Keep in mind, all of this is tagged as a rumour, and (again) - all we really know right now is that Halo Studios is working on "multiple" projects which are running on UE5.