Canceled Halo VR project “Reverie” revealed by insider

An industry insider has revealed that 343 Industries were keen on a “Halo Infinite Virtual Reality project called Reverie” and only technical difficulties with VR prevented them from officially beginning its development.

Halo Infinite represented the next big entry in the sci-fi shooter franchise following Halo 5: Guardians. The game has been well-received with plaudits handed out to another stellar campaign and the decision to make the online multiplayer free-to-play.

But it appears that 343 Industries were not content with just another mainline Halo game with a campaign and multiplayer. The company was excited by the idea of Halo VR in 2017, with a primitive fanmade VR building the foundation for this potential.

Halo VR game canceled due to “hard challenges”

Industry insider Rebs Gaming is a source for all gaming news and the Twitter user recently discussed how serious 343 Industries was about the idea of Halo VR: “Halo Infinite Virtual Reality project called Reverie that 343 considered creating in 2017 but didn’t due to hard challenges with VR and limited VR users. However, there were a few companies 343 interviewed that had an extreme amount of promise.”

The Tweet also came with several screenshots further highlighting the Reverie concept and how it might have worked.

The whole concept originated when Twitter user Nibre, now an Engineer for 343 Industries working on Halo The Master Chief Collection, posted footage of a fully functioning Halo VR game they’d been working on.

Rebs gaming provided further clarity on the history of the canceled game: “In response to my post about the canceled Halo VR project, here’s our only look at what Halo VR would look like. This was created by Nibre_ who was hired by 343 as a Halo MCC engineer after he posted this in 2019.”

On one hand, it’s really cool to see what one of the most popular first-person shooter franchises of this millennium would’ve looked like in full virtual reality, but it’s also frustrating that this exciting possibility was canned

Given how many people still loved VR, there’s every chance that 343 Industries could revisit the project in the future as players continue to enjoy Halo Infinite, especially with Season 3 in the pipeline.