343 Industries has apparently had internal discussions about a Halo: Anniversary-styled re-release of Halo 3 to celebrate the seminal shooter. In an interview with VideoGamer, Halo 5: Guardians concept art lead and Halo Infinite associate art director Darren Bacon revealed that discussions ultimately fell through because of the demands of development of Halo Infinite, leading to the studio having fewer resources.
In the interview, Bacon revealed that the discussions to celebrate Halo 3‘s 10th anniversary with a Halo 3: Anniversary release happened around 2017. For context, Halo 3 was released back in September 2007 exclusively for the Xbox 360. The game would eventually come to PC in the form of Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
“I recall, yeah, there was a desire, for the team to revisit it,” Bacon explained when asked about the existence of Halo 3: Anniversary. “I think that they were trying to align it with it with an anniversary of some sort of sort and wanting to have the resources. But that’s the thing… it’s always just a resource battle of where [and] where to put your focus. And there’s only so many things they can do.”
Bacon also spoke about the troubles that 343 Industries was facing at the time due to it being stretched thin from supporting Halo 5: Guardians with post-launch content, while also being in the early stages of development for Halo Infinite. According to him, these issues stemmed from 343 Industries’ use of contractors for its development teams.
“I think the issue is like around product cycles and the other issue, the real root cause, is not even really like game development,” explained Bacon. “I mean, the problem that like 343 runs into, or Halo Studios now, is that at 18-month cycle on a contract, oftentimes isn’t enough to make a product.”
“Bungie did it when I was there. They had project hires, essentially. So, you would come on for one or two years,” Bacon continued. “I think the same thing happened at Bungie that happened at 343: you bring on contractors to solve a problem and then the scope balloons.”
Bacon also spoke about how 343 Industries moving its work into Unreal Engine 5 moving forward could open up the studio to work on more projects at the same time. This could even include Halo 3: Anniversary. For context, the studio previously worked on its own internal engine, dubbed Slipspace Engine.
“It can take a lot of time to get a lot of time to get going for people [on Slipspace],” said Bacon. “There was a big initiative on Infinite to get a lot of documentation done just because there wasn’t a lot before… That’s the pros and cons of the Slipspace Engine vs Unreal. Yes, they did put a massive investment into Slipspace, but all of these issues are unavoidable when you have to work with locked head counts [and contractors]. Basically, Unreal becomes a really good option for you.”
While 343 Industries hasn’t offered much in the way of specifics, it had revealed back in October 2024 that it has multiple projects based on the Halo franchise in development. Currently, Halo Infinite, along with Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which includes Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Reach, Halo 3: ODST, Halo 4, and Halo 5: Guardians, are available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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