Halo’s iconic Brutes have been recreated in Unreal Engine 4 by a Bungie character artist

The Halo series is home to many different types of foes for Master Chief and his allies to encounter on the battlefield, ranging from the fearsome Covenant Elites to terrifying Flood Combat Forms and everything between. One of the deadlier aliens that players will come across are the Brutes, which often tower over other Covenant species with their huge stature and hulking body shape. Over the years, both the previous Halo developer Bungie and the current Halo development studio 343 Industries have created multiple different iterations of this fearsome mammalian beast.

Recently, Lexington Dath, a character artist working at Bungie on Destiny 2, decided to create his own version of Halo’s Brutes in Unreal Engine 4, complete with completely original body designs, models, textures, and even animations for the Brutes’ fur. Make sure you check out the video below for a complete look at everything Dath made for the project.

I think these Brutes look fantastic, and in some ways, I even prefer them to the official iterations of the Brutes that we’ve seen come and go over the years. I really love how distinctly weird and alien these Brutes feel, almost as if they’re a cross between rhinos and primates. Dath notes in his Twitter thread on the project that his goal was “to make it clearly Mammalian, but also clearly not from Earth,” and I think he accomplished this spectacularly.

I’m also a huge fan of the armor sets he created for the Brutes, too, as they look very reminiscent of the Brutes seen in Halo 2 and Halo 2: Anniversary — my favorites. For HD stills of the Brutes from multiple different angles, make sure you check out Dath’s ArtStation page for the project.

What do you think of Dath’s take on the Brutes? Would you like seeing them in an official Halo game? Let me know. Also, I highly recommend having a look at all of Dath’s work on his ArtStation portfolio, as he’s done some fantastic projects based on the Elites and the Grunts, too.

If you’re interested in checking out how the Brutes have officially appeared throughout the series, make sure to check out Halo: The Master Chief Collection. It’s available now for $40 on Xbox and PC, and is easily one of the best Xbox One shooters available, so you should absolutely pick it up if you haven’t already. Also, it’s a great game to play while waiting for Halo Infinite to arrive in Fall 2021.