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Halo and Tatanka rumoured to be switching to Unreal Engine

cormack12

cormack12

Gold Member
ew_it_stinks-450x328.gif
 
Wandering Leopard

Wandering Leopard

Member
Assuming this is true (I make it a habit not believe random people on Twitter/social media), what happens with Infinite being a game that they update for 10 years.
 
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nominedomine

nominedomine

Banned
Topher said:
Got good reviews. Sold relatively well. And I don't know who else at Microsoft knows more about Unreal so....
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Halo Infinite had better reviews than any The Coalition ever made and I doubt we have detailed info of how well either game sold. Gears 5 multiplayer died faster than Halo Infinite's.
 
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Bernkastel

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
By the way this rumor came from youtuber Sean W and Jez still can't pinpoint whether its true
Dr. Samuel Hayden said:
Listening to Jez on the XB2 show now. Here's a bunch of notes:

- Guarantees he doesn't think we'll see Ross at Microsoft again, or Activision.
- Implies they didn't part on particularly good terms.
- There IS a family medical emergency, but it wasn't entirely about that.
- Has heard there's a chance she may make her own studio (oh boy...)
- Tatanka's been in development since 2018 or 2019.
- It was being developed on Slipspace.
- Both Infinite and Tatanka were supposed to be connected (progression, Forge etc). Switching engines may screw that up.
- Hasn't been able to lock down the rumors but says it would make sense, but a lot of this is speculation.
- Slipspace has bad dev tools.
- Brings up the lead Slipspace guy leaving, but weirdly no one has acknowledged it, says it's strange and thinks it may be evidence of a switch.
- Thinks if they did change engines they may still be able to connect Infinite and Tatanka.
- Says switching engines would be a massive amount of sunk cost... but MS could eat it.
- And says it may be for the best.
- Tatanka was supposed to be battle royale lite and a game non-Halo fans could access, meant to be a trend chase (sigh...)
- Switching engines would likely delay it severely.
- Tatanka originally was going to launch around Jan 2022 before the pandemic happened.
- Thinks Forge may get monetized (oh boy x2...)
- Weirdly he says he actually got hints Tatanka may have been developed on Unreal from the start, but it's still unclear.
- For The Endless, has no info but thinks it'll be part of Infinite, it being separate would be "an admission of defeat" because Infinite was meant to be an ongoing thing. But it hasn't panned out as they expected, Ross is gone and things are shifting. Could change direction, maybe Ross was preventing it, maybe MS is reconsidering things, have to wait and see.
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So Tatanka in 2023 would mean that they didn't switch engines(or it was always in Unreal Engine). Tatanka being delayed would mean that they did switch engines.
 
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KyoZz

KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
Unless Slipspace is so bad it can't be salvaged I don't see this happening.
They build the Slipspace engine so I'm sure they can tweak it to better fit their next productions.
Yet crazy things happened so we'll see.
 
B

Beechos

Member
Represent. said:
Good. Because whatever the fuck engine was used for Halo Infinite the ugliest in the industry.


halo-infinite-brute-Cropped.jpg


LMAO.

I literally lol everytime I see this guy, Halo deserves better
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While im no fan of 343 by any means i feel this is more of a ms decision for this art style more than anything else. Most ms games have this cartoony avatar looking art style for their characters and games. Maybe simplelized graphics like this allows them to push and market their games for 4k/60fps or whatever but yeah its a joke.

If this engine switch is the case it further amplifies the ineptitude of 343. If you dont want to shut them down have them make kinect games exclusively.
 
Sorne

Sorne

Member
I am still VERY skeptical of these rumours. You don't just change engine for a franchise that's 20+ years old and have been using that (pretty much) same engine since then. It's a huuge undertaking and if it's true, Halo will probably never feel and play like Halo again.
 
TheThreadsThatBindUs

TheThreadsThatBindUs

Member
if tatanka truly has changed engine to unreal, it would be utterly insane given how long its been in dev. would move far beyond the original scope, which was to integrate your progression from halo infinite. dont see how they could do that on separate engines? maybe they can? idk
--- Jez
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Jez, you're totally clueless. You'd think these tech journalists would educate themselves on even just the basics of software and game development before making ignorant statements like this.

There's no technical impediment to a game on a different engine reading player progress from a save file.

It's the equivalent of being able to open a .doc file made in MS Word in Open Office.

It's not a game engine (i.e. game development environment) thing, it's specifically a game code thing.
 
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Bernkastel

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
A problem I have with this rumour is that it's entirely from the youtuber Sean W, who is as reliable as Nick from XboxEra. Jez seems to deny the part about new Halo game entirely and Halo itself switching to Unreal Engine, but about the Certain Affinity project he is not sure. As for ACG, I like his reviews but I wouldn't trust his rumours
This entire shit needs some confirmation from someone credible who is not Sean W or riding on another popular rumour.
 
Timberwolf25

Timberwolf25

Member
So after all the work they've done to get Forge releaseable next month, people think they're going to drop the slipspace engine. Isn't the new Forge and slipspace tied to each other in Infinite?
For a BR game, I can see using a new engine. It can have both engines if the BR is treated complletely separately.

But I guess whatever stuff you earn, if you earn anything, would not carry over to the main game.
 
Mr.ODST

Mr.ODST

Member
Im embedded into the Halo Esports community and I know the core issues with the gameplay systems themselves (lag, biggest one is desync, progression system and more) none of them have been fixed atall, maybe switching to Unreal will mean the process of fixing etc will be quicker.

Everything from updates and more to Halo Infinite has been ridiculously slow, 100% its because they are having struggles implementing it on slipspace

I like the move tbh, scrap infinite and just rebuild it on Unreal
 
O

ozz ex machina

Member
Mr.ODST said:
Im embedded into the Halo Esports community and I know the core issues with the gameplay systems themselves (lag, biggest one is desync, progression system and more) none of them have been fixed atall, maybe switching to Unreal will mean the process of fixing etc will be quicker.

Everything from updates and more to Halo Infinite has been ridiculously slow, 100% its because they are having struggles implementing it on slipspace

I like the move tbh, scrap infinite and just rebuild it on Unreal
Click to expand...

It would be kind of insane if they literally remake infinite in unreal. But absolutely could be for the best of the game and the competitive scene if it acts as a "relaunch" for infinite. My worry of that is it could be years away and the scene is struggling already.
 
ZehDon

ZehDon

Gold Member
KyoZz said:
Unless Slipspace is so bad it can't be salvaged I don't see this happening.
They build the Slipspace engine so I'm sure they can tweak it to better fit their next productions.
Yet crazy things happened so we'll see.
Click to expand...
On that note, one of 343i's engine guys did a talk at GDC, which went in depth on a single frame in Halo Infinite. He highlighted that Halo 5 moving to 60FPS from the prior 30FPS target required some serious engine-level hacks because Halo's engine was hard-coded for that 30FPS target. They worked to fool parts of the system into running that way. Now, he didn't cover it in the talk, however, as we saw with Halo 5 out in the wild, this appears to have created issues in multiplayer, with some issues related to lag, desync, and missed shots still remaining to this day. It's also a heavy engine - graphically, it doesn't keep pace with other titles of its era because although it targets 60FPS, the corners that had to be cut to achieve that were immense. Call of Duty, for example, leaves it for dead.
Anyway, what surprised me was that when the talk moved on to Halo Infinite, the developer highlighted that they hacks they had to use to get arbitrary FPS targets, to support the PC platform, required revisiting their Halo 5 logic. Meaning, they're still hacking the same engine from Halo: Combat Evolved. There's no way in hell an engine with that about of legacy architecture is going to keep pace with properly maintained and purpose built engines.

We see the fruits of this work in Halo Infinite, advertising the engine strains: the game is plagued by worse lag, desync and missed shot issues in multiplayer than Halo 5. Like Halo 5, this is, apparently, unfixable. The game also still runs terribly - on my i9 RTX3090 gaming machine, I barely push 80-90 FPS in multi, while achieving 100FPS in other games that look a lot better while doing a lot more. And, from day 1, the community managers had to explain how the engine's UI limitations hampered their ability to fix the community's immediate concerns.

From the outside, I'd wager the "Slipspace engine" is just the Halo engine by another name, and it has clearly been an utter disaster. One so bad, sinking so much of Microsoft's financial, brand, and time investment, that 343i's CEO was booted and the engine's chief architect was dismissed. 343i has wasted, at this point, seven years on its engine. For that amount of time, 343i should've had an Unreal Engine competitor. Today, they can't even compete with Bungie's games from nearly twenty years ago.

Dropping Slipspace and investing the time into making Halo feel like Halo inside another engine is, honestly, the smartest move. I doubt 343i ever gets enough rope from Microsoft's manage to make a proprietary engine again. Unreal, Id Tech, fucking Unity: anything has to be better at this point.
 
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StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
If Unreal engine leads to better Halo games all the better. It's not like MS doesn't have the money to pay royalty fees to Epic.
 
JerryinSoCal

JerryinSoCal

Member
Topher said:
Gears 5 got good reviews. Sold relatively well. And I don't know who else at Microsoft knows more about Unreal so....
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It was number 7 its first month in npd and dropped out of the top 20 in its second, game pass has a lot to do with that obviously. I know you said "relatively well" but I would guess as far as unit sales it was probably the worst selling game in the franchise.

Not to derail the topic but their idea of "shaking things up" with gears was changing the main character again only this time we play as a female character with zero personality. The gameplay feels exactly the same, there is nothing unique about her. I don't know that the coalition has shown a whole lot either, they certainly aren't making things worse like 343 is but I don't think Gears has really gotten any better under them it's just more of the same. I'm talking only about the campaign though I never play gears MP. I do think 343 should have Halo taken away but not because of a lack of familiarity with Unreal, I'm sure they can bring in people who are familiar with that engine it's the most popular 3rd party engine in the industry.
 
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
JerryinSoCal said:
It was number 7 its first month in npd and dropped out of the top 20 in its second, game pass has a lot to do with that obviously. I know you said "relatively well" but I would guess as far as unit sales it was probably the worst selling game in the franchise.

Not to derail the topic but their idea of "shaking things up" with gears was changing the main character again only this time we play as a female character with zero personality. The gameplay feels exactly the same, there is nothing unique about her. I don't know that the coalition has shown a whole lot either, they certainly aren't making things worse like 343 is but I don't think Gears has really gotten any better under them it's just more of the same. I'm talking only about the campaign though I never play gears MP. I do think 343 should have Halo taken away but not because of a lack of familiarity with Unreal, I'm sure they can bring in people who are familiar with that engine it's the most popular 3rd party engine in the industry.
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Since Gears on 360 I played a decent amount, I've dabbled with 4 and 5. Aside from awesome visuals, the games feel the exact same with the same blocky cover to duck under.

The best innovation to Gears is probably Gears 3's Horde Mode.
 
Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch

Member
In all the Halos - ive been a theater addict. Taking thousands of screenshots and clips - zooming in, slowmotion action shots, the whole bit.
The crazy thing is, in all of the games that had a theater since Halo 3 to the brand new Infinite - you could tell the games use nearly the exact base character animations. Reloads, walking, crouching, everything. Its basically the same game all these years under the hood with a new coat of paint.

I would have thought things would have changed or updated after all these years - but its still the same game under the surface in many ways. As long as they can get the gameplay feel correct - maybe its time for a change.
 
Jinzo Prime

Jinzo Prime

Member
Big question, how is Forge going to work if they switch over to Unreal Engine? I mean, it could work if they are using Unreal just as a renderer with Blam Engine underneath, I guess. We know that the Master Chief Collection renders armor in menus in Unreal.
 
nominedomine

nominedomine

Banned
Sorne said:
I am still VERY skeptical of these rumours. You don't just change engine for a franchise that's 20+ years old and have been using that (pretty much) same engine since then. It's a huuge undertaking and if it's true, Halo will probably never feel and play like Halo again.
Click to expand...
You got to change it as some point just look at how ugly and jank Halo Infinite is.
 
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