Halo Studios has just introduced a new villain, and it likely won’t be the one to use it.
Halo franchise writer Alex Wakeford published a blog post after Halo: Campaign Evolved launched, and it closes with a tease of the Xalanyn, children of Abaddon. They are an advanced race of immortal beings, and the Forerunners imprisoned some of their members. Until now, this is the clearest picture of where Master Chief’s story was headed. Shortly before the post, it was announced that Activision is now in charge of the Halo series.
“THE ENDLESS EMERGE,” Wakeford said. “And finally, as is tradition, we’ll leave you with something that hopefully sparks your imagination and lets your canon curiosities run wild with endless questions.”
A sequel that won’t arrive
The tease suggests these mysterious overarching antagonists would have taken center stage in Halo 7, or whatever Halo Studios had planned to call its next Halo game before it was scrapped. Reports said that game was still years from release. Now it will probably never appear in that form.
The concept art looks excellent, which makes the news a little more painful. Halo has needed fresh enemies to fight for a long time. Instead, the series seems more likely to turn into Xbox's Call of Duty. (For the sake of argument, ignore the fact that Call of Duty is already Xbox’s Call of Duty.)
A post written for a future that no longer exists
Most of the blog post was written before the Xbox reshuffle, when Halo Studios still believed the franchise was its own, and it shows. Wakeford added a few notes afterward, and one of them reads grimly in hindsight. He had joked that readers would need to wait until next week to find out more about the Sacristan Order, and then he added: “This joke sure took on new dimensions after last week’s news.”
The post also tries to tie together a story that has been told across games, remakes, books and TV into a single canon. Lore enthusiasts will want to go through the full list of retcons and continuity clarifications on their own.
One standout is official art of the Primordial by Sam Wood. Wakeford described the Primordial as a creature with many names, including the Timeless One, the Primordial and eventually the Gravemind, the antagonist that appeared in Halo 2.
“This twisted progeny of the Precursors was executed by Bornstellar through the use of a timelock on Gyre 11, reducing its form to dust by subjecting it to the passage of millions of years in mere moments,” Wakeford said. “But the Primordial’s experiments had borne fruit. Having infected itself with the Flood, the consciousness of this strange being passed into the parasite’s hive mind where it is awakened whenever the Flood successfully form a compound intelligence.”
Two novels in limbo
The novels are also in an awkward position. Officially, at least, Troy Denning’s next book, Halo: Fireteam Noble, is still going ahead.
“Many have been asking whether this novel will still be releasing,” Wakeford said. “To this we can say that it is absolutely our intent to see this project cross the finish line. Troy has written a fantastic story and a good chunk of the editorial process has been conducted.”
However, an intention is not a release date. Halo: Burn the Road Home, by Halo Studios senior franchise writer Kenneth Peters, is also in development, and its future is just as unclear. No one has said whether preorders will be refunded if either book is cancelled.
The fallout keeps spreading
Halo: Campaign Evolved is Halo Studios’ last game in the series, and it launched worldwide on July 28, 2026. One review praised the “gunplay that revolutionized first-person console games” and said this makes it still “worth playing today.” The game was also a testbed for the studio’s switch to Unreal Engine. Halo Infinite, which ran on the proprietary Slipspace Engine, had a middling launch.
Halo isn’t the only project affected. Yesterday, staff at Ninja Theory announced layoffs connected to the Xbox reshuffle that closed the studio. Employees at The Coalition, the developer of Gears of War: E-Day, are also reportedly preparing for layoffs, even though the studio’s most recent game reviewed well.
That makes the Xalanyn Halo Studios’ farewell gift: immortal beings locked away by the Forerunners, now left in a blog post with nowhere else to go.