One of the original Halo creators might be working on the franchise again

Various signs suggest as much.
Text: Jonas Mäki
Published 2024-04-12

There has been quite a lot reporting on Marcus Lehto recently. He was the art director for Halo: Combat Evolved and heavily contributed to creating one of the most iconic video game characters of all-time (Master Chief)and kept the role until Halo: Reach, when he instead became creative director.

But after that, he left Bungie and started the studio V1 Interactive, which unfortunately had to close after releasing their only game Disintegration. This led to Lehto moving to EA's new Battlefield-studio Ridgeline Games, but he only stayed there for two years, before he decided to leave and was openly critical about his former employer afterwards.

So, what is he doing now? Well, that we do not know for sure, but on X, he writes that he is working with Unreal Engine 5 (once again possibly also criticism towards EA's Frostbite engine), stating:

"Really love being back in @UnrealEngine after about 3 years. Dusting off my skills and acclimating to all the new awesome stuff in UE5. So good."

Unfortunately, this doesn't give us any clues about what he is doing now... or does it? As the content creator Rebs Gaming is noting, there have been a lot of rumours about the next Halo being developed with Unreal Engine 5. In itself it is a very vague connection, but Lehto himself has been on a liking spree on X posts about all these rumours and collects some evidence for it.

We could absolutely imagine that Lehto himself would like to return to the franchise he helped to start, and also that 343 Industries would like to get his Halo knowledge onboard. Pure speculation of course, and we'll probably hear more official news about Lehto's new employer fairly soon, but don't be surprised if he is working with Halo again.

<social>https://twitter.com/Mr_Rebs_/status/1778505724080906258</social>

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