In the ongoing Halo timeline, The Banished is the Big Bad of the universe. A rogue collection of ex-Covenant forces betrayed by the original trilogy’s massive alien army, the cut-throat mercenary group is the first successful enemy since the end of Halo 3. 

Created after the existence of Halo 4’s divisive Forerunners and New Covenant and in the wake of Halo 5’s reviled The Created faction, The Banished were introduced in Creative Assembly’s RTS spin-off Halo Wars 2. However, Creative Assembly didn’t create the faction.

With the development of Halo Wars 2 starting in 2014, 343 Industries was already working to restore the tone of the franchise before Halo 5: Guardians sent the future of the franchise into a brick wall. As Halo 5 was silently pushed to 2015, the wheels were already spinning to right the wrong that fans had yet to see.

This was a multi-stage process. As the next mainline game, Halo Infinite, would take a significant amount of time to create, the series’ new main enemy would be introduced in a quicker-to-develop spin-off instead. Unfortunately, as COVID hit and numerous issues plagued Infinite’s development, the next mainline game would take much longer than expected to release, pushing the series into its darkest period ever.

Speaking on an upcoming episode of the FRVR Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more, Halo Wars 2 writer Dion Lay explains that 343 Industries created The Banished and its main players. While Creative Assembly still penned the game’s story, 343’s internal storytelling team – who work alongside authors on books and shape the series’ ongoing universe – created the main forces. 

“343, they wanted to do [it],” they explained. “They came with the idea of The Banished. Halo, obviously, their lore is amazing. 343, they always have a plan, so they came to us going, ‘We’ve got this idea of The Banished’, and the kind of motivation: they’ve been exploited, they’ve got a leader which is kind of heroic [so] you at least understand why he’s doing it.”

While Creative Assembly did write the majority of the game, the story was a heavy collaboration with CA working alongside 343’s former narrative designer Kevin Grace on specific story beats to push the direction of the Halo universe forward.

“Blur were making the cutscenes as we were making the game,” Lay explained. “Obviously, we have the script and so he’s [Kevin Grace] is like, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna be Atriox is going to fight three Spartans and beat them all’. And you’re like, ‘What? Spartans?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, and this is going to be big’, and it was a massive deal.”

As we know now, the story of Halo Wars 2 is essentially the backbone for Halo Infinite with The Banished used as a test bed to see whether or not that idea of a new Covenant force would work. Lay explains that the brief for the RTS was essentially to go back to the roots of Halo after the narrative nuking of Halo 5, and 343 led the charge to pretty much right its wrongs ahead of the next mainline game. 

“343 was like we want you to get back to [the roots]. I really loved Halo 4 as well because it was quite dark and then some of it was a bit more realistic, and they [343] wanted to bring some of the fun back, but they didn’t want to lose the thrill of action. That balance of Halo… because Halo is very much, on the top, the gameplay is really fun and you’re kind of super powerful and it’s quite funny, but then underneath the story is really dark and really complex and it does a really amazing job of balancing both things at the same time. So it was kind of ‘we want our tone a little bit lighter for Halo Wars 2.”

While The Banished are still the main player of the ongoing Halo universe, their time in the spotlight could already be wavering. 343’s newly-rebranded Halo Studios is working on full remake of Halo: Combat Evolved, which some claim to be a universal reset, but the studio is also reportedly working on a new mainline entry set after the events of Infinite as well.

More information about the future of Halo and the multiple upcoming projects will be revealed at the annual Halo Championship Series 2025 event in October.