Draugoth
Gold Member
Can't wait to see the reactions once it gets announced for PS5
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Xbox announces that future Halo games will be developed on Unreal Engine 5
- Thread starter HeisenbergFX4
- Start date
Can't wait to see the reactions once it gets announced for PS5
mindfreak191
Member
Two things, welcome to stutter engine 5, and take what they're showing as a grain of salt, Infinite looked barely like the initial announcement trailer.
DanielG165
Member
Because it’s… Early? Work in progress at the bottom of the video should indicate such. No one should expect utmost polish here yet, as it’s egregiously clear that Halo on UE is in its infancy. All this is is an update from the studio on what the future of the franchise will look like, which is great. No longer will both devs and players alike have to deal with the absolute spaghetti code that was the Slipspace engine: a beast that barely works on its best day.
I’m personally really looking forward to this new direction. Whether the next game is that CE remake that’s been rumored for a while, or a continuation of Infinite’s story, I, as a Halo fan, am optimistic, if for nothing else than a new engine finally being the backbone to future projects. Whether or not the crazy physics and Halo feel is kept properly intact remains to be seen, but so far, from a visual standpoint, the footage shown so far looks absolutely incredible and packed to the gills with detail and density.
The next game will most certainly be a next gen title; I don’t expect them to have anything ready for S|X.
kingwingin
Member
Just give me CE, 2 and 3 remade on ps5 and I can die happy
ExtendEmbraceExtinguish
Member
Most likely because creation engine is great for Beth stuff only. Crates of cheese, ect.. all the crap ESO players can try. Unreal is the standard, non exotic, contract staff is comfortable aka hire & fire with a replacement covering the original worker. Also investment seems to make a difference in UE aka AA to AAA. Note I would consider Eastern European devs AAA if we were to do exchange rate of hours/staff amt to USA with cost of living creating a spread.
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Slipspace has nothing to do with BLAM, it was created from scratch for Infinite and was worked on for 10 years. It's an another huge L for MS Gaming tech department because they have what in-house tech? Forza Tech?
BLAM-based engine is alive and well in Destiny 2 though and the game is clearly suffering because of it.
Fuuuuuuuuck…
Listen, there’s nothing *wrong* with Unreal, but I can’t help but feel like games made with Unreal just wind up having loads of similar qualities.
Very concerning to see the entire industry leaning so hard on a single game engine. Nothing against Epic, either, but this can only push more games to bleed together.
Listen, there’s nothing *wrong* with Unreal, but I can’t help but feel like games made with Unreal just wind up having loads of similar qualities.
Very concerning to see the entire industry leaning so hard on a single game engine. Nothing against Epic, either, but this can only push more games to bleed together.
RodriGames40
Member
I get what you're trying to say with this, but that's complete CDProjekt (and who knows what else) erasure lmfao.
Last edited:
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
They getting people use to hearing the word "5" with Halo, so that way when they make they um...announcement, its a smoother transition for folks. lol
All lolz aside, they need to let this fucking series rest for a bit.
If they don't have any great ideas for the IP, let it fucking rest and move on to something else. This series has been an industry joke for several generations now.
All lolz aside, they need to let this fucking series rest for a bit.
If they don't have any great ideas for the IP, let it fucking rest and move on to something else. This series has been an industry joke for several generations now.
Last edited:
Codes 208
Member
Slipspace was such a fucking disappointment, the orignal teaser trailer looked amazing and then we ended up with…Craig.
Frankly its for the best they change to a more universal engine than spend how many extra years on a mediocre title with a barren launch like what happened with infinite
Last edited:
diffusionx
Gold Member
Halo is dead
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
This game isn't coming out anytime soon LOL!
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Yeah, I dread to see how their games will run on UE5. Hasn't been a great look for open world games thus far.
RodriGames40
Member
That's why they said they're hard at work improving the engine. UE5 has dramatically improved, I want to note that SH2 is a 5.1 game if you have that in mind.
ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Considering UE5 is a VRAM hog I can honestly wish all the MS studios luck with Series S not holding back X.
Or perhaps they will target PS5 Pro.
RodriGames40
Member
Not true in any of the examples so far. UE5 is so efficient at handling VRAM 8 GB GPUs aren't even a bottleneck for those games yet.
ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Boy do I have bridge to sell ya.
RodriGames40
Member
I'd rather believe the benchmarks as well as the games I literally own myself before anyone else. You can even run Hellblade 2 on an 8 GB RX 580 and never hit memory constraints, same case for Wukong and the just released SH2.
VAVA Mk2
Member
It wasn't a new engine. They did updates to the Blam engine and gave it a new name. Was still a technical dinosaur
ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Ah yes, game with corridors and two humans in a frame is surely scaling just like Halo.
Tha pointless discussion aside I'm pretty confident in former 343's abilites to somehow frag the tech things up.
RodriGames40
Member
The only pointless discussion here is assuming UE5 is a VRAM hog when there's not a single example that supports that claim. Also... Things have improved, some of you must have missed the threads discussing the recent optimizations.
Last edited:
VAVA Mk2
Member
All we can do is be cautiously optimistic and hope the name change is because Pierre doesn't want association with how bad the 343i brand become and wants to right all wrongs.
DeltaPolarBear
Member
Good point. Whatever machine the game is meant to run on, it certainly wouldn't be running on Series S. So by the time it comes out, if ever, we would know the future of Xbox.
bitbydeath
Member
Bethesda next.
ZehDon
Member
Great to hear. Slipspace was an entire generation behind the rest of the industry, and the drop in quality from its "in-engine demo" to the final product was so bad Microsoft decided to launch its console without a game rather than continue with it.
With that said, UE comes with its own hurdles - performance and console-specific image clarity being chief among them. I hope we're seeing the foundations of next generation titles here, rather than Xbox Series titles. UE5 Halo smeared with FSR2 and broken up with shader stutter isn't really something I want to see.
With that said, UE comes with its own hurdles - performance and console-specific image clarity being chief among them. I hope we're seeing the foundations of next generation titles here, rather than Xbox Series titles. UE5 Halo smeared with FSR2 and broken up with shader stutter isn't really something I want to see.
genesisblock
Member
This sounds less like a Halo promotion and more of an Unreal 5 showcase. You would think they work for Epic instead of Microsoft.
ZehDon
Member
Actually, 343i's CEO was fired, most of the core executive team is gone, the team leads were made redundant, they've changed tech stacks, they're staffing up, and the entire studio is now helmed by the man responsible for fixing The Master Chief Collection. Can they actually make a good Halo game? Who the fuck knows - but this really isn't Bonnie Ross with sunglasses and a trench coat.
Last edited:
Bumblebeetuna
Member
Still weird to me that they went from the best Halo (4, imho) to making easily the worst (5, imho).
Infinite core gameplay was amazing, it was just wrapped in a crappy package stuck in development hell. Also the story was complete nonsense. I have high hopes for the next one.
gokurho
Member
Ahead of the final match at today’s 2024 Halo World Championship, we saw an unexpected video. It depicted landscapes you might expect from the Halo series – Forerunner architecture jutting from dramatic landscapes inspired by the Pacific Northwest, gorgeous fields of ice, even a vista blighted and consumed by The Flood. We of course saw glimpses of the Master Chief, and his iconic enemies, even a Banshee arcing past the camera. But what we saw wasn’t a look back – this was something entirely new.
We’re entering a new dawn for Halo. Those new visuals were created using Unreal Engine 5 – and we learned that all future Halo projects will use the engine, and that multiple new games using it are in development. Alongside the engine change, the studio is seeing changes in culture, workflow, and how its teams are organized. To match that new approach, franchise stewards 343 Industries are changing their name – Halo Studios is here.
Studio Head Pierre Hintze defines this less like a clean break, and more like the turning of a page:
“If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters. Chapter 1 – Bungie. Chapter 2 – 343 Industries. Now, I think we have an audience which is hungry for more. So we’re not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games. So, we start a new chapter today.”
The First Step
Switching from the studio’s proprietary Slipspace Engine to Unreal is a key part of that change. Previously, 343 Industries needed a large portion of its staff simply to develop and upkeep the engine its games ran on. “We believe that the consumption habits of gamers have changed – the expectations of how fast their content is available,” says Hintze. “On Halo Infinite, we were developing a tech stack that was supposed to set us up for the future, and games at the same time.”
As gaming evolves, and players increasingly point out how long it takes to see new games from their favorite series, the team at Halo Studios felt the need to react. As COO Elizabeth van Wyck puts it:
“The way we made Halo games before doesn’t necessarily work as well for the way we want to make games for the future. So part of the conversation we had was about how we help the team focus on making games, versus making the tools and the engines.”
Alongside the wider changes to how the studio is set up (which you can read more about below), adopting Unreal means Halo Studios is more able to create games with a focus that can satisfy fans – even setting up multiple teams to create different games simultaneously. But Unreal also comes with in-built benefits that would have taken years of work to replicate with Slipspace:
“Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,” explains Studio Art Director, Chris Matthews. “Although 343 were developing it continuously, there are aspects of Unreal that Epic has been developing for some time, which are unavailable to us in Slipspace – and would have taken huge amounts of time and resources to try and replicate.
“One of the primary things we’re interested in is growing and expanding our world so players have more to interact with and more to experience. Nanite and Lumen [Unreal’s rendering and lighting technologies] offer us an opportunity to do that in a way that the industry hasn’t seen before. As artists, it’s incredibly exciting to do that work.”
There’s another in-built benefit – Unreal is familiar to huge parts of the wider gaming industry. Where developers would have to spend time learning how to use Slipspace when joining 343, Halo Studios’ adoption of the industry-leading engine makes it a far smoother process to bring in new talent (and the studio is indeed hiring for its new projects now):
“It’s not just about how long it takes to bring a game to market, but how long it takes for us to update the game, bring new content to players, adapt to what we’re seeing our players want,” says Van Wyck. “Part of that is [in how we build the game], but another part is the recruiting. How long does it take to ramp somebody up to be able to actually create assets that show up in your game?”
With the move to Unreal, the on-ramp is shorter, the experience is there, and the series can grow far more quickly and organically than ever before.
Forging Ahead
Of course, Halo Studios needed to be confident in the switch to Unreal – this isn’t a decision taken lightly. The team had to be sure that the first Halo games to come out of a non-Slipspace engine would look, feel, and sound right. The team began experimenting, and it resulted in a research project known as Project Foundry – the source for all the new clips we saw today.
“When we decided to do Foundry, it wasn’t, at that point, in our plan,” says Van Wyck. “But we needed to pause and – ‘validate’ is not the right word, but educate and understand what our capability is, and assess it, so we actually know we’re on the right path.
“We’ve intentionally been really quiet up to this point, but I think [today] is about just sharing where we are, what our priorities are as a studio, and where the team is. We’re really proud of what came out of Foundry.”
So what does Foundry represent? The team is clear that this is not a new game – but nor is it a traditional tech demo. It isn’t just an exploration of what’s possible with this engine – it’s a true reflection of what would be required for a new Halo game using Unreal, and a training tool for how to get there. Foundry has been made with the same rigor, process, and fidelity as a shipped game would be.
“Where this type of work’s been done historically, across the industry, it can contain a lot of smoke and mirrors,” explains Matthews. “It sometimes leads players down paths where they believe it’s going to be one thing, and then something else happens. The ethos of Foundry is vigorously the opposite of that.
“Everything we’ve made is built to the kind of standards that we need to build for the future of our games. We were very intentional about not stepping into tech demo territory. We built things that we truly believe in, and the content that we’ve built – or at least a good percentage of it – could travel anywhere inside our games in the future if we so desire it.”
Hintze goes further: “It’s fair to say that our intent is that the majority of what we showcased in Foundry is expected to be in projects which we are building, or future projects.”
And what we’ve seen of Foundry promises incredible things. Named after the Foundry within Halo’s lore – the central forge of the megastructure used to create the Halo Rings themselves – the project saw the team set out to create three distinct biomes in the style of Halo. The goal was, as Matthews puts it, to make something old, something new, and something truly alien.
For something old, we see a biome inspired by the Pacific Northwest – a staple of the series – but in dramatic new form. Waterfalls crash over mountains, a running creek becomes the site of a tableau pitching the Chief against two Covenant Elites, and the team pushed Unreal to include as much foliage as technically possible.
For something new, we see the Coldlands location, a region locked in a deep freeze, with snowdrifts covering plateaus, and ice reflecting what’s above and refracting what’s below. And for something alien, we see the Blightlands, a brand new take on a Halo location – a world consumed by the parasitic Flood. The express purpose of the Blightlands was to see how this new-look Halo team could push the world itself farther than previous Halo games – the results speak for themselves.
Even the familiar looks new in Foundry. The Chief’s armor has been modelled with extreme care, down to individual panels on his combat gloves. An Elite’s energy sword now feels less like a solid object and more reflective of the name – a crackling swoosh of dangerous energy. The aim wasn’t just to push the studio, but the engine itself – Foundry is designed to do things that we haven’t seen in games using Unreal across the industry, Halo began its life as a graphical showcase for the original Xbox – the goal is to make that so again.
Halo Studios has worked closely with Unreal’s creators, Epic Games, to ensure they can reach that lofty goal.
“Halo is such an incredible franchise and it’s awesome to see Halo Studios already pushing the boundaries of Unreal Engine 5,” said Bill Clifford, Vice President and General Manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games. “We’re honored to support the Halo team in realizing their creative visions through Unreal Engine. Project Foundry’s work demonstrates how they can bring Halo to life with beautifully detailed, uncompromised worlds.”
Of course, the soul of Halo isn’t just in how it looks, but how it feels – the intrinsic dance of its combat, the thud of the weapons, and the sense that you’re inhabiting the Master Chief’s armor. While Foundry may be a primarily visual project, Halo Studios is deeply invested in retaining the essence of what players love about Halo:
“I think it’s pretty well known that [switching engine] has been a topic that the studio has thought about for a long, long time,” says Van Wyck. “[The release of] Unreal Engine 5 was when we felt like we could make Halo games that respect and reflect the true soul of Halo while also being able to build games that can deliver on the scale and ambition of content that players want.”
“The spirit of Halo is more than just the visuals,” agrees Matthews. “It’s the lore. It’s the physics. Playing as the Chief, you’re this huge tank of a soldier – it’s the way that he moves, he feels. We’re all really obsessed about what our players love about Halo. We’re constantly listening to this feedback – and that’s at the core of any initiative like Foundry, or any intention that the studio has about how we move forwards.”
“We’re thinking about the intangibles,” Hintze adds. “The interaction with the Master Chief, or your Spartan, or the enemies. We are very careful about the decisions we’re making in that space – down to the precision and authenticity of the weapons, the authenticity of the animations. There are a list of nuances which we use to verify that we’re on track.”
Beyond the Visor
So, let’s talk about what’s coming beyond Foundry. As you might expect, the team isn’t talking about exactly what those new games will be right now – we’re at the beginning of this new chapter, not the final stages, and it’s fair to say that a new Halo game isn’t imminent. Halo Infinite will still be supported through the Slipspace Engine – you can expect more Operations, and updates to its Forge mode. In esports, Year 4 of the Halo Championship Series, using Halo Infinite, has just been announced. But in the background, the next steps for Halo will be taken.
The quietness is by design. Hintze makes clear that the priority right now is on doing the work, not simply talking about it:
“One of the things I really wanted to get away from was the continued teasing out of possibilities and ‘must-haves’. We should do more and say less. For me, I really think it is important that we continue the posture which we have right now when it comes to our franchise – the level of humility, the level of servitude towards Halo fans.
“We should talk about things when we have things to talk about, at scale. Today, it’s the first step – we’re showing Foundry because it feels right to do so – we want to explain our plans to Halo fans, and attract new, passionate developers to our team. The next step will be talking about the games themselves.”
What is clear is that, yes, it’s Halo games – plural – in development right now. Where Halo Infinite saw practically the entire studio focused on a single, evolving project, Halo Studios has recalibrated:
“We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite,” says Hintze. “[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”
A major part of this shift has been in reorganizing the structure of Halo Studios as a whole, in order to give development teams what they need to make something new.
“At the end of the day, if we build the games that our players want to play, that’s how we’ll be successful,” explains Van Wyck. “That’s what should motivate what we build. That’s also what this structure has done – we want the people that are day-in-day-out making the games to be the ones to make the decisions on the games.”
The team will also be seeking more input from outside the studio on those decisions:
“We’re seeking earlier and earlier, wider and wider feedback from our players,” she continues. “We started that with The Master Chief Collection, and carried that on with Halo Infinite, and we want to do it even more for our next projects. At the end of the day, it’s not just how do we evaluate, it’s how do our players evaluate it?”
343 Industries was founded to create Halo games but the impression I get is that, in its new incarnation as Halo Studios, the studio has been retooled to put the focus entirely on that goal – without distraction, without impediment, to create better games with players’ hopes and wishes at the heart of the endeavor.
“You asked why we consider this as a new chapter,” says Hintze. “We want a singular focus. Everyone is in this place is here to make the best possible Halo games.”
The best graphics ever
March Climber
Member
rapid32.5
Member
The game will cause heart attacks in UE5 and MP.
Last edited:
LordOfChaos
Member
Incredible that they spent 6 years between Halo games making the Slipspace engine, only to abandon it after one entry with no single player DLC
Over and over again they keep messing up with Halo, but I keep wishing for them to produce something good. The end of Infinite, though it was yet another game that just unceremoniously dumped the last games lore and started over, was getting into some interesting stuff, now I wonder if they won't just start over with yet another new thing again.
Over and over again they keep messing up with Halo, but I keep wishing for them to produce something good. The end of Infinite, though it was yet another game that just unceremoniously dumped the last games lore and started over, was getting into some interesting stuff, now I wonder if they won't just start over with yet another new thing again.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Few things:
Safe bet is it’s a halo 1 remake. The video states multiple projects but it seems pretty clear this will be the first.
Second, I care but not at the same time.
Which brings me to 3… 343i sucks, Bungie is long gone, and so it’s just remnants and new blood making these new games. Which brings me more towards point 2 that I don’t care… it’ll likely suck ass.
But fuck do I want a good halo game again.
Safe bet is it’s a halo 1 remake. The video states multiple projects but it seems pretty clear this will be the first.
Second, I care but not at the same time.
Which brings me to 3… 343i sucks, Bungie is long gone, and so it’s just remnants and new blood making these new games. Which brings me more towards point 2 that I don’t care… it’ll likely suck ass.
But fuck do I want a good halo game again.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Looks amazing. This is a great choice to give devs freedom to just make a game instead of fucking around with engine building which was clearly not their forte.
UE5 is the future. CD Project switching to it pretty much confirmed that. It's obvious from AC Shadows, Ghost of tsushima and Dragon Age that inhouse engines are a generation behind UE5.
UE5 is the future. CD Project switching to it pretty much confirmed that. It's obvious from AC Shadows, Ghost of tsushima and Dragon Age that inhouse engines are a generation behind UE5.
Balducci30
Member
Why do people hate halo so much lol - just looking for reasons to hate
Balducci30
Member
Looks over a generation better than infiniteLooks amazing. This is a great choice to give devs freedom to just make a game instead of fucking around with engine building which was clearly not their forte.
UE5 is the future. CD Project switching to it pretty much confirmed that. It's obvious from AC Shadows, Ghost of tsushima and Dragon Age that inhouse engines are a generation behind UE5.