Halo Studios released Halo: Campaign Evolved this month, and the studio says the game begins a new chapter for the franchise. Chris Matthews said the team used Unreal Engine 5 to move faster and lower the technical barriers between artistic intent and in-engine execution.
Project Foundry was the bridge. Matthews said it helped the team test key workflows in a real development environment and set a new bar for the variety, richness, and visual ambition it wanted to bring to Halo.
Project Foundry And 5 pillars
During Project Foundry, the art team started from an empty Unreal project and built an entirely fresh content set. That work helped define the quality target for future production, which is why the release feels like a technical reset as much as a remake.
The team also worked through the Pacific Northwest, the Coldlands, and the Blightlands to solve problems in environments, materials, world-building, and atmosphere. Those studies fed into levels such as Halo and Assault on the Control Room in Halo: Campaign Evolved, and into the broader implementation of the Flood across the game.
Donnie Taylor on Slipspace
Donnie Taylor said Slipspace required a decent amount of tribal knowledge and multiple disciplines to accomplish complex ideas. He called Unreal a cleaner path for the art team, saying, "Empowering our creative team."
He added, "Slipspace (Halo Infinite’s engine) was quite powerful, but it required a decent amount of tribal knowledge and multiple disciplines to accomplish complex ideas." He said, "Unreal removed many of those barriers and allowed the team to focus less on the "how” and more on the “what.""
Halo and Combat Evolved
The friction in the story is simple: the team says it stayed grounded in the spirit of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, yet it built that vision with tools and workflows that were not possible before. That is the real business of this release, because the remake is also a proof that Halo Studios is changing how it makes Halo.
Matthews said Unreal gave the team a broader technical foundation through Nanite, Niagara, Lumen, and Mega Lights. The practical read is straightforward: Halo Studios is not just revisiting 2001, it is rebuilding the pipeline around a newer engine and a different way of working. What it has not yet laid out are the 5 key art pillars in full, and that is the last missing piece of the creative framework.
