Halo Infinite Is Not Switching To Unreal Engine, Future Projects Might Switch

Along with the still prevalent  horrible matchmaking  issues that are plaguing the players of Halo Infinite, there are other complaints from the community as well, such as the lack of content, especially maps. Previous Halo games had many iconic maps but Infinite seems to be lacking.

Halo Infinite’s Forge will come a long way in curing the game’s many things regarding the lack of content, as it will hand all the necessary tools into the hands of the players themselves.

And it does not seem like those issues will be going away anytime soon , coupled with the rumors floating around that Halo could be switching engines this far into development, which would certainly be disastrous.

This has kept the fans on edge, but perhaps they don’t need to be. This is according to Halo dataminer and reporter @BathrobeSpartan .

Major Takeaways:

• According to BathrobeSpartan, rumors regarding Halo Infinite ditching Slipspace for Unreal Engine are completely false.
• Rumors are either false information from the sources of content creators or from the content creators themselves.
• There is an internal team within 343 Industries that is contemplating using other engines for “new experiences” in the Halo series.

Halo Infinite had a very rocky start and things have not gotten much better ever since. There were many theories regarding the failure of Halo Infinite and what caused it to be delayed multiple times and yet still have so many issues upon launch.

Many thought the problem lay with one of the tools that Halo’s Slipspace Engine used, or rather a set of tools, dubbed Faber. Bloomberg also reported on the tool and the many developmental issues of Halo Infinite.

Now, BathrobeSpartan, using data they obtained from their own sources and through data mining, has brought forth new facts and spread them into two threads on Twitter.

The first thread concerns the viability of Slipspace and Faber and whether they truly are bad, while the second thread details BathrobeSpartan’s belief that Halo Infinite will not switch to Unreal Engine, and the reasoning for it.

We will summarize BathrobeSpartan’s findings and speculations in two sections as well. The first will concern the Slipspace Engine, Faber, and the real cause for the developmental issues, and the second section will be about BathrobeSPartan’s thoughts regarding the switch to Unreal Engine.

Slipspace VS The World

https://twitter.com/BathrobeSpartan/status/1579047935089987584?s=20&t=7OLXSPyR18ahemAqDvycyg

1. Slipspace And Faber Are Not Bad Or Unviable

• BathrobeSpartan states, according to their sources, both Slipspace and Faber are excellent tools and may even be superior to Unreal Engine and Unity.
• Faber is incredible and has many superior features or things it is better at such as optimized cutting of 3D levels and assets to support different platforms, and excellent procedural generation tools, among many other features.
• Faber has ” very good tools for building the world and experience, to manage the placement of elements, AIs or actions pre-defined by the Designers responsible for missions and sections in the campaign. “

2. The Problems Of Faber

• Despite its many features, it had its fair share of problems as well, according to BathrobeSpartan.
• Faber crashed several times a day, and when undoing an action, there was a 75% chance of the project crashing.
• If it crashed, loading assets could take hours, with people taking lunch breaks while assets were loaded. Artists would be extra careful so that they did not have to undo actions otherwise they would lose hours of work.
• Halo Infinite’s Forge may have been delayed due to Faber, among other factors. BathrobeSpartan says that the Pre-Fab system within Faber was very difficult to incorporate within Forge and required a lot of extra work, and this is why Forge was offbeat.

3. The Real Cause For Halo Infinite’s Problems

• BathrobeSpartan states that while all these problems with Faber existed during the game’s development, many have now been fixed and despite some issues still remaining, Faber and Slipspace are in great shape, with Faber stated to be much more faster and stable, by BathrobeSpartan’s sources.
• There are far few crashes now and the project quickly recovers, the real problem currently is with manpower.
• 343 Industries had many departures and this was worsened by a hiring freeze throughout Microsoft. As such, 343 Industries does not have the number of people a AAA live service game like Halo Infinite needs.
• Even during development, 343 Industries had to outsource a lot of work.

With this ends BathrobeSpartan’s first thread, and according to them, although issues did persist during the development of Halo Infinite, many of those problems with Faber and Slipspace have been fixed. According to their sources, the real issue that is still causing problems for 343 Indisutues is that they are not equipped with the manpower to handle Halo Infinite.

Halo And Slipspace

On va pouvoir maintenant continuer à dérouler notre enquête.

Après notre dernier fil de tweet, vous vous demandez toujours si #Halo va changer de moteur ? Ça tombe bien, c'est le sujet qu'on va traiter dans ce Thread 🧵

Un point en particulier a retenu notre attention ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/tHc5YMxDsl

— Bathrobe Spartan 🎧 Podcast Halo (@BathrobeCast) October 9, 2022

1. Slipspace Is Built For Halo

• BathrobeSpartan argues that Halo games have rich sandbox levels with extensive use of the physics engine.
• Every FPS has a certain style and legacy and according to BathrobeSpartan, Slipspace is not only optimized for Halo but was made for the particular needs of a typical Halo game as well.
• BathrobeSpartan compares this to the engine used by GameFreak for Pokemon, stating that while it is far from being the best engine in the market, it is adapted and optimized for the needs of a Pokemon game.

2. Forge, Faber, And Halo

• Thanks to the leaked Forge build and the many fantastic fan creations in Halo using Forge, such as a Jetpack , destructible environments , and even a new boss , people have come to realize just how advanced the Forge is in Halo Infinite. It is essentially an engine within Slipspace or essentially an Engine within an Engine.
• Many of Faber’s tools have been directly imported into Forge to provide advanced creation options, which would be  “nigh-impossible to replicate in any other engine” , at least not to at the same level as Slipspace, especially the physics, among others.
• Based on all this, BathrobeSpartan states that an engine switch, whether to Unreal Engine or any other engine will not happen, with their sources also supposedly stating that an engine switch is not on the cards, and they wondered how it was even a credible rumor .
• “It makes no sense, from a human, technical, and business point of view. Halo Infinite, at this point, as well as all content for the game, all future experiences for the title, are, and will be, designed through and for Slipspace.”

3. The Future, New Experiences

• Here is where the road of an engine switch splits into two roads. BathrobeSpartan states that during discussions with their sources, they came to know of a very small, internal team within 343 Industries that is working on “new experiences” for Halo.
• This includes the exploration, and the relevant research and development of different concepts and directions for future Halo media and projects, such as even VR or AR as an example by BathrobeSpartan.
• For these new experiences, the team is ruminating on the viability of Slipspace and possibly switching over to other engines such as Unreal or Unity, depending on the needs of the project and which engine would serve best for it.

4. The Rumors

• BathrobeSpartan then discusses the supposedly baseless and false rumors about Halo ditching Slipspace Engine and basically states that they are false.
• They believe that if these rumors were indeed fueled by information given to Halo content creators through sources, then there are two possibilities.
• BathrobeSpartan believes that one case is that these so-called sources either gave content creators bits of information and thus incomplete, or gave them very old information that is now too old to be relevant.
• The other possible case, BathrobeSpartan states, is that the supposed content creators reporting and fueling this rumor are distorting the words of their sources for the sake of fame and clicks while mixing in some true facts so as to not be labeled complete liars and to make the rumors more realistic and prone to being believed.

With this, the thread ends. It should be noted that all of this deduction on BathrobeSpartan’s part is based on their own research and through their own supposed sources. This however does bring to light many new facts, although we can not believe them with certainty.

With the upcoming Winter Update, currently slated to release on November 8, 2022, we may see at least some improvement. The Winter Update will supposedly add network co-op, Forge, and other things to the game.

Hopefully, Halo Infinite will recover and players will get to see the game attain the glory of online gameplay that is befitting a Halo title.