Recently it seems that Halo and 343 have been consistently in the news lately. First, after the layoffs affecting all of Microsoft and Xbox. But now it appears that more has come out about the possibility of Halo switching engines.
Coming from a report from Jason Schreier from Bloomberg there have been many moves made at the studio. One of the changes is that the studio and franchise may be potentially getting hit with a big reset button as it seems they may be starting from scratch.
However, most notable was the fact that 95 employees were let go. And some of those devs were working on prototypes of Halo in the unreal engine. Now, this would be a major shift as Halo Infinite was originally built for the Slipspace engine. This engine was seen as one of the major causes of Infinite’s initial delays. Costing nearly 500 million dollars and being a new flagship proprietary engine.
Among the devs that were let go, they were working on possible new story content for Halo. While 343 has actively stated that they are not working on any new story content. This seems like a major blow on two sides. One is the fact that there will be no new single-player content or additions to the story, not even like the Spartan-Ops missions back in Halo 4. And second, is the fact that they were using a non-in-house engine to make the prototypes. If this is a sign that Slipspace is no longer viable, then what does that bode for the engine?
With many other companies having their own in-house engines, EA with frostbite, Ubisoft with snowdrop, Sony with the Decima engine, and Capcom with the RE Engine, it seems that there is more push than ever to have a proprietary engine for the studios to use. However, the silver lining to this is that Xbox does have the Forza engine, and also owns the ID tech engine, after acquiring ID software.
For now, though, we will have to wait and see what 343’s future holds under the new leadership and if Slipspace will be a part of that. For now, Halo switching engines is a total mystery. Let us know down below if you think that 343 should drop the Slipspace engine, or stand by it.
-Jess (Bloodieknux)
Hey everyone hope you enjoyed my thoughts and breakdowns in the article above. You can keep up with my thoughts & shenanigans by following me on all my social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, & Youtube.
