I am against Halo's future in Unreal Engine

[ZodiacThundaga]

Halo was always at the forefront of tech. CE helped usher in bump mapping and pixel shaders, and Reach, as antiquated as it was, had an early form of TAA that gave it a unique look. Not to mention the timelessness of Halo 3's graphics.
Unreal just takes away all the beauty. Halo won't ever be beautiful again.

[Aspen]

None of these things are Unreal exclusive features. All of them could be accomplished in just about any game engine that supports online connectivity in any form (which is pretty much all of the engines AAA studios use)

[Øtaku°]

Originally posted by rackz/marbu:

I see very good pints to move to UE5.
1- a proper map editor, no ♥♥♥♥ forge to stick tons off clipping terrain etc
2- a proper serverbrowser (hopefully no more complete ♥♥♥♥ fireteams
3- dedicated servers
4- better modding possibilitys like adding MORE vehicles, Guns (without copy and change existing weapon stats)
5- more functions generally
6- just look at Halo CE
7- physics

And havent you seen Halo´s new trailer?

While yes that does make sense, the issue is there 343i is Halo Studios and they have (like the rest of microsft) use mostly contractors. Those type of workers do not stick around long enough to make any meaningful work, they don't make the choice or call on what gets made / worked on. That comes from the permanent employees.

343i issue is that they lack understanding of Halo and a clear direction of what should be done with the IP. 343i have no real talent themselves, so the buy the talent needed, but they are still the ones making the decisions.

Going to UE for 343i/Halo Studios is just another shortcut for them to take. While UE is a good engine, it's not going to fix the amount of dissension and overall stupidity of the studio.

[UNITED STATES PATRIOT]

I saw the short video of Valhalla. Yea ya they call it a different name. It looked awesome! but.... if and when it is released I won't buy it for at least 6 months. I want to make sure it's not as screwed up as Halo Infinite. I just hope they keep to they basics like in Halo Combat Evolved. NUFF SAID!

[Misaki]

Originally posted by Charged Dreamer:

When was the last time Halo's graphics, visuals and gameplay was on par with multiplatform games? The answer lies somewhere around in 2007 (and we had Crysis and Half Life Episode 2 the same year!) I'm a longtime Halo fanboy but pretending Halo series was always at the forefront of tech is either a big lie or a delusion at best.

Halo series transitioned from being multiplatform with Halo CE and Halo 2 (2007 Windows Vista release) to a console exclusive with Halo 3 onwards from 2007. There was no way games would have looked as good as multiplatform games which started to use sophisticated lighting quality, reflection and textures and by 2010-2011 we started getting DX11 features on PC such as tessellation, SSR and HBAO+ which an X360 game wouldn't handle. The TAA used in Halo Reach was just kinda broken and looked extremely ugly.

Halo 4 released at the same year such as Far Cry 3, Max Payne 2, COD BO2 which arguably had better tech and graphical quality (even even Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 on PC a year prior to that!). Games at this point even added things such as PhysX.

Halo 5 just wouldn't be able to compete with The Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight, Just Cause 3, The Oder 1886, Assassin's Creed Syndicate on that basis. In addition to PhysX we had advanced hair quality settings, smoke and weather effects by this time with multiplat games releasing on PC hardware supporting native 4K at playable frame rates.

A game engine alone doesn't decide how the graphics are gonna look in the final version of the game. If you don't believe me go and look Halo Infinite E3 2018 Announcement trailer which also advertised Slipspace Engine vs the E3 2020 demo vs the Final game release. Funny thing TAA actually ruined this game and made the game look like a blurry mess smeared with vaseline.

this comparison of console games to their pc counterparts is not fair at all. Of course they will look better, they also costed a lot more. If you compare halo 4 to the xbox versions of these games, it wipes them out easy. Even today it still amazes me that it looks good. Is it a brand new game with rtx, 4k, etc? No, but theres more to it than that.

[󠀡󠀡]

btw I hope the next Halo will not have a crap Intro/outro on every single match!!! And finally return to Red vs Blue. Or atleast Red vs Blue with diffrent camo textures.

[Slap]

Originally posted by Øtaku°:

Originally posted by Slap:

define what you mean by "no talent". is this because they're using technology that is made to streamline everything

or because you have some personal bias for bungie (a company literally just as bad as 343, if we're to believe their current dirty laundry being aired).

No talent as in 343i have had more time then bungie with Halo and have only managed to run it into the ground.


The people that made Halo at bungie are no longer working there so I don't really care what the company does or dose not do. Destiny is a clown show, and it's been that way from the start of the first game.

But please keep trying to defend your big corpo daddy.

at what point was i defending them. please bold it and add to the reply.

you need to just move on if things don't meet your interest anymore. painful to hear, but that's life

[Slap]

Originally posted by acSiegemaster:

Originally posted by Slap:

if we want to talk about unreal engine 1, yes.,

it's about the maturity of the technology as well as the modern features and conveniences afforded by an actual modern engine like UE5. blam was infamously rewritten and restructured for the subsequent titles to the point it was a miracle the thing even ran on more than a prayer.

UE5 is based on UE4, which is based on UE3, which is based on UE2, which is based on UE1. It's not a new engine any more than Slipspace/Blam or Destiny 2/Blam is an old engine

it really isn't JUST the age of the engine. UE5 supports newer functionalities and overall more refined systems.

please stop hyperfixating on JUST age and acknowledge the other facets that make unreal engine a smarter choice.

[Øtaku°]

Originally posted by Slap:

Originally posted by Øtaku°:

No talent as in 343i have had more time then bungie with Halo and have only managed to run it into the ground.


The people that made Halo at bungie are no longer working there so I don't really care what the company does or dose not do. Destiny is a clown show, and it's been that way from the start of the first game.

But please keep trying to defend your big corpo daddy.

at what point was i defending them. please bold it and add to the reply.

you need to just move on if things don't meet your interest anymore. painful to hear, but that's life

The fact that you are the one that brought up bungie the studio in the first place, in some vain reddit tier attempt to defend the lack of talent at 343i.
You are really bad at gaslighting there bud.

[Øtaku°]

Originally posted by rackz/marbu:

btw I hope the next Halo will not have a crap Intro/outro on every single match!!! And finally return to Red vs Blue. Or atleast Red vs Blue with diffrent camo textures.

Yeah the red vs blue thing was yet another thing that didn't need to be changed but was. Hope it comes back.

[Healingnoises]

It would be ideal if the developers could master their current unique engine. But the fundamental issue is that the unhealthy mindset of the executives above these days sees all jobs as entirely replaceable. So nowhere near enough staff is being kept around long enough to develop familiarity with the engine.

So it's go with Unreal, or convince those above who who don't like or care about games that most of the employees in game development are less replaceable than other industries. Which do you think is more likely?

[Adzelf]

Whatever the ♥♥♥♥ produces a banger game is what im hoping for, Regardless of engine

[Wylie28]

Originally posted by Forge Master:

I'm tired of Devs using crappy Engines... if using Unreal streamlines stuff and allows them to have less constraints.. what's the downside?

Its an even worse engine? You think Halo is unoptimized now? You know what consistently runs worse? ANYTHING made with unreal.

[acSiegemaster]

Originally posted by Slap:

Originally posted by acSiegemaster:

UE5 is based on UE4, which is based on UE3, which is based on UE2, which is based on UE1. It's not a new engine any more than Slipspace/Blam or Destiny 2/Blam is an old engine

it really isn't JUST the age of the engine. UE5 supports newer functionalities and overall more refined systems.

please stop hyperfixating on JUST age and acknowledge the other facets that make unreal engine a smarter choice.

I mean, compared to predecessors, Slipspace supports "newer functionalities" and "overall more refined systems"

[Dankalicious]

I'm with you %100, but they would have to dissolve 343 and Bonnie Ross's mess completely for them to make a new halo game.

The T rated halo that's designed for megablox sales along with merchandise sales, is never going to be a good game unless the franchise is handed to somebody that is actually qualified.
UE5 not gonna save the mess that halo has become. No engine can save the franchise at this point.

Even in the trailer showing assets and concept art with dev commentary is just a deja vu of what they unveiled for Halo: Infinite all all those years ago. It's literally going to be a carbon copy of infinite just with UE5. Just like its Halo Studios and not 343 studios, because its just a last ditch attempt of re-branding Bonnie Ross's mess.

Remember what they said when infinite came out that it was a spiritual reboot and what were going to see for the next ten years. So the same policies/problems from before are still going to be just as bad as before, and they'll just outsource all the talent once again and will get another doo-doo game.

[Sifer2]

Originally posted by Healingnoises:

It would be ideal if the developers could master their current unique engine. But the fundamental issue is that the unhealthy mindset of the executives above these days sees all jobs as entirely replaceable. So nowhere near enough staff is being kept around long enough to develop familiarity with the engine.

So it's go with Unreal, or convince those above who who don't like or care about games that most of the employees in game development are less replaceable than other industries. Which do you think is more likely?

Sadly that's probably the main reason for the switch. If Microsoft wants to continue their insane policy of only hiring a developer for a 2 year contract then it makes supporting a unique in house engine almost impossible. The problem with using Unreal is the physics are going to be different. Hopefully who ever is in charge really tries to make it match Halo 3/Infinite as close as possible.