Is Halo preparing to switch to a new engine? That's what multiple rumours have stated over the past 24 hours-or-so, with a suggestion that the new battle royale-like project (known as "Tatanka") could utilise the new engine, potentially dropping years' worth of work on Halo Infinite's Slipspace Engine in the process.
YouTuber Sean W and ACG's Jeremy Penter have both been discussing this on social media, and now Windows Central has also chimed in - according to their "rumour mill" report, the information about a switch to a new engine is "certainly looking as though it could be true".
"It seems that indeed, Halo may be gearing up to switch to the Unreal Engine. Sean W's report was also corroborated by ACG's Jeremy Penter, as well as our own sources."
Windows Central says that it has "some tentative indication" that the change to Unreal Engine could extend across the entire future of the franchise beyond Tatanka, which it speculates could be a good thing - the outlet has reportedly spoken to former and current staff at 343 Industries who have blamed much of Halo Infinite's ongoing development problems with the "difficult" Slipspace Engine.
All of this should still be taken with a pinch of salt for now - hopefully we'll get some clarification pretty soon.
What are your thoughts on an engine switch for the Halo franchise? Let us know down below.
[source windowscentral.com, via twitter.com, youtube.com]
Comments 14
As a developer who's had to work with substandard technology / legacy junk before, I can definitely commiserate with 343i.
It doesn't matter how good you are if you're battling bad technology that makes everything take 5 times as long as it should.
While I really hope they can move the whole game to Unreal if they are, I understand it may end up just being the multiplayer and any new DLC and would understand - hopefully they can still keep the feel of the gameplay while improving some bits SlipSpace is bad at (vehicle controls and buttons when you're trying to pick something up can be particular problems I think) whatever they move over...
I really hope they move across. The only people that can compete with unreal engine should be the big boys like MS, but its clear their tech is holding them back.
If you switch to such a well used engine with so many modules available, your coders and asset creators can just use the best tools and get creative again. This would be fantastic news for Halo if its confirmed. Fingers crossed!
I'm a little surprised that they would choose UE5 over id tech, given that the latter is now an in-house engine and would be cheaper to use. It's also far more performant than UE5 is likely to be. Will they be able to produce the smooth 60fps Halo gameplay we've all gotten used to on UE5?
I always thought in house built engines from the ground up for a specific console and maybe game type, we’re meant to be the best for that console and game.
Hence why Sony Studios get out some of the best looking console games ever made etc.
Ugh Unreal Engine?
Yea that'll have me quit Infinite completely. Last thing Epic Games needs is more money in their pockets to push their anticonsumer practices.
@Dr_Luigi
Well sometimes we have scammers and hackers to thank for security updates.
Unfortunately that’s the way of world now and has been for ages.
Makes sense - UE5 is making game development a LOT easier in so many ways and the 'old' engines can't keep up. The open source nature too will help it evolve and you have a lot more experienced 'help' you can call on with more developers familiar with the engine.
If you don't know how to make your idea 'work' the way you want it too, there is bound to be some 'experts' within the company to advise and/or help. Its a bit more difficult if you have to work with a bespoke in-house engine that's 'evolved' over time and staffed now by people who inherited its 'core'.
It needed to switch engines and UE5 makes 'logical' sense with the expertise within MS who are familiar with and perhaps showing off fantastic results behind closed doors...
Competing with 'small teams' using UE5 will become 'tough' too because they have access to 'photorealistic' assets and all those animation touches as well as use Lumin and Nanite. They can benefit from the AAA devs who are evolving UE5 to do more and adding more and more assets to 'stock' libraries to 'create' with on any scale...
Big budget games will still need real actors and big set pieces that will probably separate the smaller team games who can't afford the MoCap and voice acting talent behind the characters.
When you can build an entire city, create some 'on rails' game-play sequence that cuts in from what seemed like a movie cut-scene, the physics and AI all completely 'Random' but natural, then drop you in this 'populated' city with pretty natural behaviour and let you roam anywhere in a few months (Matrix demo) with a 'very small team' building that entire City in 'weeks' - that sends a message to devs - which it was meant to...
If that's true then halo infinite really is dead lol
Also why are they blaming the difficult engine when they made it & most of the games budget probably went into it lol
Isn't it way too late at this point...? They're about to post Forge Mode built in slipspace. Campaign is built in slipspace. Two (going on three) seasons of multiplayer are in slipspace. This wouldn't make any sense.
@Xiovanni The slipspace engine isn't just a simple rename of the blam engine. There has been so many changes to the Slipspace engine... They aren't same anymore. It like saying the Tiger engine is just a rename of the Blam Engine.
@Xiovanni I heard that they'd built the engine from scratch never heard of blam engine but if they have just renamed an already built engine it just makes the final product worse where did all that money & years of development go lol
So just wait another 2 years for them to switch over? Season 4 in 2025 will be great!!!
Let's hope it allows split screen to be implemented
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