Was the Slipspace engine an actual issue, or was it the fact MS insisting on contractors revolving every 18mo so that no institutional knowledge is ever built?
This has got to be the reason for the regression in the character models between 5 and Infinite. The expectation that the entries in a franchise build on each other requires the people working on it learn from past mistakes.
@@wmoule I did. They mention it in so far that them moving to UE5 helps continue that policy... But if the policy didn't exist would they need UE5? Also, lack of institutional knowledge will remain an issue regardless of the engine. So maybe tech features improve, but game design will still struggle.
I miss the days when almost every game used its own dedicated graphics engine made in-house. It made games more unique, now we just get games that have the "unreal look" which carries over across all games that use unreal as the engine
@@IwinMahWayThe only reason the finals works so well is because it loads one map before the and there’s no game world to constantly load in and out, the entire map is loaded. Hence no traversal stutter. Even Fortnite has traversal stutter because load zones. Finals still has shader comp stutter but it’s very minor.
highly unlikely they would produce a low effort game on unreal. Its typically just the lazy devs who don't optimize that ship with poor performance on unreal
@@jcdentonunatco " Low effort" the very reason they are moving to UE5 in the first place is because it is cheaper and easier to use for the interns they keep bringing in to build half of their games these days! Perhaps you missed that entire year they had to delay Infinite because it looked terrible and was going to be released that way before massive consumer backlash!
UE is a bandaid to the real issue of them relying on contractors. You also now run into the problem with UE on consoles that we've seen so many games having poor image quality/over reliance on FSR2. The reason why old Halo games look so good at the time was because it was built specifically for the console at 30fps For PC there's traversal stutters. So there's now the irony that Playstation 5 (Pro) is the best way to play Halo since its likely its coming to it.
@@MorbidEel 2004 - Top 1% elite devs = 100k-150k TC per year 2024 - Top 1% elite devs = 500k-1,000k TC per year 2004 - Games cost $60, 10 million sales at best 2024 - Games cost $60, 10 million sales at best 2004 - Working @ Bungie = Lowkey internet forum fame but maintain good WLB 2024 - Working @ Bungie = Death threats, bullying, and abuse for trivial issues after 1-2 years brutal development hell. -- How could Microsoft solve this?
You will be miserable as you show them you alone are better than the whole 200 employees there and they wont let you be free 😭💀 Also use their pronouns
It's M$'s fault with how they handle contractors, nobody knows how to work with the engine and by the time they learn how to use it they get kicked out.
It’s fucking INSANE how people are treating 343/MS with kid gloves, considering they’re stewarding one of the biggest, most influential, and potentially most profitable game franchises of all time. MS/343 should be running an operation at the level of Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, or Kojima Productions, to push out bleeding edge games on their own proprietary tech that people want to play for years after release. They could have an incredibly successful live service cash cow like they so desperately want, if they were willing to put in a genuine effort. Hell, GTAV will be old enough to vote soon, and to my understanding it’s still an absolute money printer because the underlying game is still great.
@@codyo.4884 true. 343 industries is the poster child for peak incompetence in this industry, a company only kept alive because of Microsoft's infinitely deep pockets.
another issue with inhouse tech, engineers come and go with varying levels of ability and approaches, and over time, things get really messy. legacy code isnt updated. patterns get bolted on to old patterns and things start to get really hacked, making the code harder and harder to maintain over a long period of time. nobody ends up knowing all the codebase well enough for major rework. The engine can get stuck under its own technical debt.
"Blam!" itself was a somewhat unstable engine by the time of Halo 5, at least imo. Never had a game crash or freeze more than that game did, regardless of console or even storage type (Xbox One VCR, One S, One X, internal storage, external SSD). The Theater mode being so broken in H5 seemed like an issue too, one that for whatever reason 343i could never actually fix. It was graphically impressive but also seemed to cut corners in other ways, especially with menus. You'd finish a match then go to switch modes, and you'd get a brief flash of the last moment of that previous match, fully rendered in 3D, probably eating up a ton of background resources which is likely what caused some of the issues with that title.
Halo 5 ran great in actual game modes for me, I only had issues in full custom game lobbies that went on for a long time. The biggest issue to me was heavy aim and the problem worse when you unlocked more cosmetics and reqs.
I played the shot out-of Halo 5 and not once did it crash. I was even running UA-cam along side while playing online and still had no issue with crashes. What the heck were you doing to you X1,X1S & X1X?
@@Fairyoftheeclipse Nothing... Kept them all clean, dusted regularly, even repasted my One X which made it substantially quieter. Still crashed frequently and was really the only game to do so. Even MW2019 never crashed on me, and was the most intensive game I ran by far.
i think it would be much better to stick with the in house engine. Sure initially it was hard to develop halo infinite. but the developers learn the tools and i highly doubt developing the next game with the same devs is harder than changing the WHOLE entire engine and redo everything from scratch. And now you also have to get new devs that know how to use UE. But the whole message of "we've learned from our mistakes" ive heard it already before. And i genuinely doubt the problem of Halo Infinite was the graphics.
the in house engine (which was highly volatile even back in the early 2000s) has assets which are over 23 years old. There is no way this was an easy program to work with. That combined with Microsoft's 18 month contractor policy for 343 developers, meant by the time you learned the engine, your contract was almost over and someone new would have to come in to replace you and the cycle would repeat itself. Even if they keep the 18 month contractor policy (which I don't think they did), having a normal engine which most/all modern devs should know how to use, will cut down on their lead times substantially. They will actually be able to work on multiple halo games at the same time, rather than having half the team dedicated to fixing the broken ass engine from 2001 and the rest of them trying to use the broken engine to make a game. Bungie were able to make the halo engine work because they created it in-house and had multiple seasoned devs who knew it very well by the time Reach came out. 343 did not have this advantage and that's why each of their games has been worse than the last as the engine got older and older.
@@IrrationalCharm Halo 5 was literally the start of them outsourcing development tho. A lot of people that were there from bungie ended up leaving during that time. I can give you the story isn't great but I actually loved the gameplay of 5. It was some of the best mp I've played on a halo game.
The engine is 25 years old. Vastly outdated. Takes resources and ppl skilled with their proprietary engine to get anything accomplished. Every one knew the only fix was UE5. If you disagree you have no clue what you are talking about when it comes to development and programming
@@thomasj1026 "you have no clue what you are talking about when it comes to development and programming" Nearly everyone here screeching about how Unreal Engine 5.1 is trash - it's been 2 years since then. One of the mods added to Silent Hill 2 Remake most devs literally can't get because NVidia's been pulling an AMD and basically telling every gamer that there are features (COUGH RAY RECONSTRUCTION COUGH) that are available on their hardware.. but it's been "C o M i N g S o O n" for over a year now. No public release whatsoever. A year ago Unity was the devil, and if there's any positive news about Unity it's "I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!
It'd be great if they just wanted to make Doom Eternal with a Halo skin cuz it's made specifically for that type of game but for the direction halo is going it's not good they could tweak it tho to fit their needs but they'd just be in another Slipspace Engine scenario all over again
id tech is always a great engine to work with. Machinegames and id don't rely on contractors for the bulk of their work so they have permanent staff that know how to use it. Microsoft and 343i/Halo Studios have historically used a lot of contractors, that includes the engineers that built Slipspace, and didn't keep them on hand. So throughout development when issues popped up that would normally not be as big an issue to solve if the original engineers were still on hand, it crippled development for Halo Infinite and even post launch content. UE5 and how it functions regarding development with multiple people and being easily accessible for anybody to learn will solve a lot of their development problems and drastically speed up production.
Unreal Engine 5 has yet to produce a well optimized game. Halo infinite looks great and Ray Tracing is NOT needed. Legit every game with ray tracing has performance issues.
And The Finals isn't using Nanite, Lumen, or World Partition. They actually tried decently hard to optimize that game. I almost guarantee Halo will implement all of the new features (especially with Epic contributing)
But if Slipspace is “old” because it was started during Destiny… How is Unreal Engine not “old” when it started with Unreal Tournament? Don’t get me wrong because I understand the argument for the studio not having to focus on making an engine along with a game, but on the other hand that model is why Epic continues to improve its engine - so it can support more features for Fortnite.
@@Barbaroossa But they are owned by Microsoft. When Microsoft bought them did they sign something saying they can't use idTech for their other studios?
Actually Microsoft also owns Starfield. Creation Engine 2+ I think that would be a great fit for Halo. Might take 10 years to come out though. Or less time if only one companion (Cortana) and less worlds. Two quest lines, Chief and Arbiter. Halo controls, handling, physics, but Starfield looting openwords, outposts (FOBs), etc.
Don’t forget that MS made them gut the Slipspace engine at the last second so it could support last gen. When initially, it was intended and designed to be Series only.
Slipspace was a great engine, Infinite runs like butter on my PC and Xbox, I think it's crazy to suggest that UE5 is an upgrade. Their goal with this was not an upgrade or an enhancement to benefit gamers, it was to cut costs so they can produce Halo games cheaper and faster, and probably tack more monetization on top of that. I really am bummed out that this is happening to studios like 343 and CD Projekt.
Well, they couldn't produce enough quality material due to running their own engine so I think this will be better for the long run. There's a ton of shot registry issues with the game, back smacks, grenades all the above, not doing damage, etc. If they cant find a way to fix it on Unreal 5, they can actually outsource issues to solve them.
Microsoft wants to use an engine that people working outside of Microsoft would know, because Microsoft hires people for contract work. They don't maintain a dedicated staff that gets to know one engine like ID Tech 5. They bring in contractors for 18 months, and part of that time is used to get them up to speed on the engine, which slows down development.
Recruiting developers on UE5 will bring production cost down. Especially availability of custom libraries that they can modify to shorten production time. When you combine both time and cost it's no brainer to switch for UE5. Imagine playing Halo Remake with UE5 full ray tracing?
It makes perfect business sense regardless of the known issues with the engine. Besides hiring / skills you also need to consider MS is now one of the biggest publishers in the world with multiple in-house teams working with this engine. That means they'll no doubt get a good deal with Epic and work closely with them (especially given their mutually beneficial stances elsewhere). They also have UE specialists in the Coalition and so the potential mindshare within the Xbox brand is huge. Instead of a sinking huge costs into retrofitting features into old engines they should be leveraging those exact features in UE and then working with Epic and their in-house teams to instead mitigate the known issues the engine presents. This simply raises all teams using UE and builds a greater relationship with Epic.
I heard some minor confirmation that Halo Studios reuped on their license for Havok, I imagine due to their closeness with the Halo brand and being new to UE5 that they will be implementing anything Microsoft wanted out of the slipspace engine.
Unreal Engine 5 has several advantages. One of them is that it’s cost-effective for game development companies. Another major benefit is that it can significantly enhance the graphics quality in games. The only thing developers need to focus on afterward is optimizing the game well
Switch to Unreal is reactionary. They lose what makes Halo what it is with Forge and the community features. It remains to be seen how they will port those. And all for a bit better lighting and not having to upskill some grads?
When Microsoft's employment rules didn't change 343 won't be able to repair the slipspace engine at a reasonable cost. Of course you can hope that 343's core staff, who will not be fired, will finally fix the slipspace engine, but that means that you won't see any new work from 343 for a long time. Or any progress at all. It's a dilemma, and it's clear that Pierre has chosen to focus on producing the product first.
This is entirely down to a general skill defecit across the industry today, along with an intentional homogenisation and centralisation to minimise cost, maximise consumption. Its quite sad to see really and doesn't bode well for future creativity.
Tech and graphics isn't the problem, it's the lack of leadership that can cater to the diehard fanbase. This is normal in an overly corporatized work environment. When DEI and pandering is the priority, quality and gameplay will continue to suffer. We see this everywhere and it's something that companies will have to figure out.
This truly is the darkest timeline for me. UE has been nothing but a blight on games and these issues have been plauging basically every new UE title I've touched: -Asset streaming / level traversal stutter -Shader compilation stutter duo to incomplete precompilation step -Forced TAA turning the image into a vaseline smear -Dithered textures thanks to forced TAA -Upscalers becoming a requirement for decent performance, even on a 7900XTX -Nanite literally being less efficient than traditional LOD techniques -Lighting and materials making UE titles look very samey -That typical unreal engine soapy movement in third person games -UE defaults to the far less efficient deferred rendering, instead of using a hybrid approach like clustered forward rendering I get that the engine is so popular cause its easy to use. But easier doesnt mean better. Nanite is the perfect example of this. It kills performance and fails to fix the issue it was supposed to address, asset streaming stutter. Even then, unlike LODs nanite is an automated process, which is why its going to be used regardless of the performance penalties. Basically UE allows developers to be lazy and cut corners. This paired with the gaming industry not being known for pushing clean code and you end up with the state of the current market. As a programmer myself that works in the medical field, I cant image relying on a half ass solution, just cause it sames me time. If you cant afford to make a big game and optimize it, then dont be so ambitious. I'm not saying every developer needs to be on the same tier as ID Software who are masters of their craft, I just want a game that runs well and has barely any stutters, while not forcing TAA down our throat.
I just hate that games won’t have their own identity anymore. The grittiness of Halo is no more moving to Unreal. I’m not on board with trying to make every game look hyper realistic. Everything will look like an Unreal Engine game unfortunately.
I really liked halo infinite. But I can understand that making your own engine is too much work. I loved that the game is open world and has restrictive missions also. Edit: it's hard to know whether it will be next gen only or on series x and s. The last halo was on xbox one. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see a series s game just look better on series x and the next xbox.
I can see a big player purchasing the rug a large chunk of the industry is standing on (UE5) then cutting off or pricing out developers. Then the circle of inhouse developed engines will start again.
Plenty of smaller developers with proprietary engines that made it work. The problem is the accountability with 343. If they can’t make it work then they need to be fired
It took a while, but the current product is fun. The new product should be fantastic, I hope.The Coalition, with Gears, visually are amazing. I can't wait to see the young Marcus Fenix return.
One of the most interest talks I attended at GDC a few years back was the breakdown of a single frame on Halo Infinite: ua-cam.com/video/IUiNUky-ibM/v-deo.html I’ve been a UE programmer for 14 years now, with six of those at Epic through 2010-16, I love the tech, but I appreciate the way proprietary engines help drive the industry forward with tech built for a platform. I’ve mixed feelings about this move
My concerns with Halo being on UE5 aren't about scalability, rather performance, can Halo run @ 60fps (on consoles) and at what resolution, will resolution suffer to run at target framerate? Unreal Engine hasn't always had the best performance reputation historically. I know the Halo series itself has run @ 30fps historically but 60fps really is a sweet spot when playing Halo (again, on consoles). I think in this day and age we need to put 30fps to rest especially with shooters. 🎮
*_So they burned the bridges with all the devs who know how to code for the slip space engine, and are struggling hiring devs that will work on their game. Going to an engine every Joe Shmoe dev knows how to use seems like the logical progression. Seems like a solution that is fixing the symptom but not the cause. This isn’t a good sign for Halo studios._*
I'd rather they focus more on the story/gameplay than the engine. All i can think of when i see Infinte footage is "Bla bla bla THE BANISHED bla bla bla BANISHED bla bla" good grief what a disgrace to the original and it's succesor. Just ditch the godawful brutes already.
Why, why are so many games made in the most unoptimized engine out there.. yes, it looks good, but almost every game has stuttering, and the hw requirements are from the future. One of the few good things about it is that with uevr, we will all be able to play all the UE games in vr in 10 years or so..
This is all about making devs low paid jobs by making the devs all work on the same engine and thus if frank wants 160k and dave wants 32k, theyll hire dave and for frank to get work he'll have to do it at daves price even tho frank is the only decent dev
The ue 5 engine is actually a great engine, just need a base resolution of 1080p locked 30fps while using upscaling to 4k if all ue 5 games targeted that with full lumen and nanite everything would be as smooth as butter...it's the push for higher frame rates and resolution are the problem on consoles just give all games one mode one frame rate and push the full graphics as far as they can go....
Well, we do live in a world, where all you have to do is change your name, and you are suddenly no longer what you once were... I certainly haven't forgotten that the majority of this team is still the same people making the games we have all complained about for the last few releases
This sounds more like constantly removing the contractors every 18 months was screwing up the development of infinite and not really the engine's fault.
They aren't talking about current consoles where games keep getting remastered for "next gen", next gen as is PS6 and whatever amalgamation they name the next Xbox.
@@TheBean87 indiana had an exclusive xbox logo previously.... grounded hi fi rush pentiment etc were also always meant to be multiplat? It may take a while but the whole slate is coming...
three years ago, people thought it was a plausible choice to migrate from Slipspace to UE5 bc of its technical prowess and promises. Now that people realize how potato UE5 is in its current state, even a proprietary engine with spaghet code still runs better than UE5
Also … I’d like to know what you guys think the next Xbox home console is going to be power wise. Do you think it would be three times the power of the PS pro and maybe four times the power of the series X, there’s definitely developed kids of what they think out there right now for the next halo game, which probably will be out soon like 2027
Nvidia needs to create an incentive to overspend on new rtx 5000 series, ue5 is a perfect candidate... I wouldnt be surprised all hardware companies are in on this
As a Microsoft contractor, I assure you the issue is Microsoft here. None of the full time employees know how the engine works. Most of the time, they're not even doing work - they're just enjoying the insane company benefits.
@@yyyhhh8481 It's just a racist right wing talking point. They have no idea what DEI actually is. Their feelings are hurt because they have no control over the world so they latch on nonsense buzzwords like DEI and ESG to feel better.
@@yyyhhh8481 Ignore him. He's just yet another weirdo trying to shoehorn in a crack head induced conspiracy theory laden boogyman into a completely unrelated conversation as usual.
Sure, but when the vast majority of the people using the engine are contractors that rotate every few weeks/months, nothing gets done, and nobody knows how to code for the damned thing. Case in point, 343i admitted to not knowing how to add/update playlists on Infinite's launch *because* of the Slipspace Engine. You had people wasting precious resources and time on an engine nobody cares for, and they didn't even bother to do a proper turnover with the developers and oncoming contractors. You get a clusterfuck of a project
Just like with CDPR and the RedEngine, it's a liability because the knowledgeable people who created and understood the technology have left. It could have been improved over time, but the people were no longer there. Halo MCC, Halo 5, and Infinite prove my point. But Halo Studios could have also chosen ID Tech or maybe even Cryengine.
Pretty sure Halo: Infinite was underwhelming because it was an Xbox One game thats development ran so long it got pushed to the next generation. If it had been planned for the current gen only from the start it would have been much better.
Honestly surprised they didn't do it sooner. It comes at a good time too, since new features like MegaLights are supposedly being optimized for console, although we'll still have to see how that ends up working out. Unreal is generally a pretty easy engine to work with, and although this is a band-aid fix for Microsoft's horrible contract work policies, there was no realistic way to keep a 20+ year old engine like that going at this pace. Wish this would have happened earlier to give some of the talent that was formerly at the studio more room to work with.
Shit it didn’t live up to the graphics. I thought I was gonna be seeing when I bought the most powerful Xbox series X especially a flagship game that had some amazing graphics. I’m super excited as a halo fan to hopefully have another halo game come out on the next Xbox… and really have a big graphical leap that people are like holy shit. This looks amazing not like infinite.lol
Was the Slipspace engine an actual issue, or was it the fact MS insisting on contractors revolving every 18mo so that no institutional knowledge is ever built?
This has got to be the reason for the regression in the character models between 5 and Infinite. The expectation that the entries in a franchise build on each other requires the people working on it learn from past mistakes.
@@megan_alnicoIt's an artistic shift.
I guess you didn't watch the video.. They mention that.
Good point
@@wmoule I did. They mention it in so far that them moving to UE5 helps continue that policy... But if the policy didn't exist would they need UE5? Also, lack of institutional knowledge will remain an issue regardless of the engine. So maybe tech features improve, but game design will still struggle.
I miss the days when almost every game used its own dedicated graphics engine made in-house. It made games more unique, now we just get games that have the "unreal look" which carries over across all games that use unreal as the engine
Their engine lacked key features such as stuttering and picture perfect slideshow performance.
Let's hope they learn from the finals as it's also a UE game
@@IwinMahWayyes. That game performs well at even high /ultra. Here hoping they can match that kind of optimized performance
LOL indeed. They really need to improve UE or devs need to start respecting its limitations.
@@IwinMahWayThe only reason the finals works so well is because it loads one map before the and there’s no game world to constantly load in and out, the entire map is loaded. Hence no traversal stutter. Even Fortnite has traversal stutter because load zones. Finals still has shader comp stutter but it’s very minor.
Now that they're migrating to the Unreal 5 engine, we'll all finally get to enjoy shader-compilation stuttering on the PC release of a Halo game.
Can't wait for that tasty console 800p 57FPS with random traversal stutter
HOW DARE YOU, forget compilation stutter too ;)
highly unlikely they would produce a low effort game on unreal. Its typically just the lazy devs who don't optimize that ship with poor performance on unreal
@@jcdentonunatco " Low effort" the very reason they are moving to UE5 in the first place is because it is cheaper and easier to use for the interns they keep bringing in to build half of their games these days! Perhaps you missed that entire year they had to delay Infinite because it looked terrible and was going to be released that way before massive consumer backlash!
Time to get a PS5 Pro then
Yeah, xbox series X2 PJKKSLP!
Cuz their names never make sense
UE is a bandaid to the real issue of them relying on contractors.
You also now run into the problem with UE on consoles that we've seen so many games having poor image quality/over reliance on FSR2. The reason why old Halo games look so good at the time was because it was built specifically for the console at 30fps
For PC there's traversal stutters. So there's now the irony that Playstation 5 (Pro) is the best way to play Halo since its likely its coming to it.
343 is bring back the classic halo 30 fps with fps drops and 720p native resolution.
“Best way to play Halo”, also, not capable of playing Halo.
@@FKA_Skull The rumor is that they're considering launching whatever their next project is on PS5
So UE is a bandai to the real issue of them not willing to pay enough to keep people around
@@MorbidEel
2004 - Top 1% elite devs = 100k-150k TC per year
2024 - Top 1% elite devs = 500k-1,000k TC per year
2004 - Games cost $60, 10 million sales at best
2024 - Games cost $60, 10 million sales at best
2004 - Working @ Bungie = Lowkey internet forum fame but maintain good WLB
2024 - Working @ Bungie = Death threats, bullying, and abuse for trivial issues after 1-2 years brutal development hell.
--
How could Microsoft solve this?
Slipspace ran better than most current UE games.
And still look great
Great is a bit of a stretch. It was meh visually @@mejrikais6002
Co-op mode says hi👋
Lol what, the game constantly crashes especially on LAN events
@@mejrikais6002 Except it clearly didn't.
As someone who has 1 week of experience with Unreal, I can finally apply for a job at Halo Studios
Be sure to tell them your pronouns, or they won't hire you.
You will be miserable as you show them you alone are better than the whole 200 employees there and they wont let you be free
😭💀
Also use their pronouns
@@G360LIVE😭💀
Start using their pronouns
It is pretty ridiculous/very telling that a studio that has the full support of Microsoft can't build and maintain a proprietary engine.
It's M$'s fault with how they handle contractors, nobody knows how to work with the engine and by the time they learn how to use it they get kicked out.
@@deathtrooper2048 you develop core technology inhouse... unless your company is filled with diversity hires. Then you need contractors from outside.
Not the fault of the studio, Microsoft causes it with their contract policies
It’s fucking INSANE how people are treating 343/MS with kid gloves, considering they’re stewarding one of the biggest, most influential, and potentially most profitable game franchises of all time.
MS/343 should be running an operation at the level of Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, or Kojima Productions, to push out bleeding edge games on their own proprietary tech that people want to play for years after release.
They could have an incredibly successful live service cash cow like they so desperately want, if they were willing to put in a genuine effort. Hell, GTAV will be old enough to vote soon, and to my understanding it’s still an absolute money printer because the underlying game is still great.
@@codyo.4884 true. 343 industries is the poster child for peak incompetence in this industry, a company only kept alive because of Microsoft's infinitely deep pockets.
Halo: we chat with Todd Howard. we’re going with the creation engine baby!!! Unlimited planets and loading screens baby!!!!
another issue with inhouse tech, engineers come and go with varying levels of ability and approaches, and over time, things get really messy. legacy code isnt updated. patterns get bolted on to old patterns and things start to get really hacked, making the code harder and harder to maintain over a long period of time. nobody ends up knowing all the codebase well enough for major rework. The engine can get stuck under its own technical debt.
If u thought halo using slipspace was bad, wait until the stuttering mess halo is going to be using Unreal 5.
I'm so tired of incompetent developers switching to Unreal Engine thinking that's going to fix their studios problems...
Me personally, i cant wait to play Halo on Stutter Engine 5
At 900p
With blurry TAA all over the aplace aswell🤩
Can't wait for Halo running at 900p on Series X with rainbow skins
"Blam!" itself was a somewhat unstable engine by the time of Halo 5, at least imo. Never had a game crash or freeze more than that game did, regardless of console or even storage type (Xbox One VCR, One S, One X, internal storage, external SSD). The Theater mode being so broken in H5 seemed like an issue too, one that for whatever reason 343i could never actually fix. It was graphically impressive but also seemed to cut corners in other ways, especially with menus. You'd finish a match then go to switch modes, and you'd get a brief flash of the last moment of that previous match, fully rendered in 3D, probably eating up a ton of background resources which is likely what caused some of the issues with that title.
Halo 5 ran great in actual game modes for me, I only had issues in full custom game lobbies that went on for a long time. The biggest issue to me was heavy aim and the problem worse when you unlocked more cosmetics and reqs.
I played the shot out-of Halo 5 and not once did it crash. I was even running UA-cam along side while playing online and still had no issue with crashes. What the heck were you doing to you X1,X1S & X1X?
@@Fairyoftheeclipse Nothing... Kept them all clean, dusted regularly, even repasted my One X which made it substantially quieter. Still crashed frequently and was really the only game to do so. Even MW2019 never crashed on me, and was the most intensive game I ran by far.
Hahah the jiggly hands really got me
This shit better stutter like CRAZY or I don't want it
Praying this shit is the most insane stuttery / upscaling nightmare imaginable. I'm a big proponent of modern gaming shenanigans accelerationism.
Consumers have to wake up somehow
i think it would be much better to stick with the in house engine. Sure initially it was hard to develop halo infinite. but the developers learn the tools and i highly doubt developing the next game with the same devs is harder than changing the WHOLE entire engine and redo everything from scratch.
And now you also have to get new devs that know how to use UE.
But the whole message of "we've learned from our mistakes" ive heard it already before.
And i genuinely doubt the problem of Halo Infinite was the graphics.
the in house engine (which was highly volatile even back in the early 2000s) has assets which are over 23 years old. There is no way this was an easy program to work with. That combined with Microsoft's 18 month contractor policy for 343 developers, meant by the time you learned the engine, your contract was almost over and someone new would have to come in to replace you and the cycle would repeat itself.
Even if they keep the 18 month contractor policy (which I don't think they did), having a normal engine which most/all modern devs should know how to use, will cut down on their lead times substantially. They will actually be able to work on multiple halo games at the same time, rather than having half the team dedicated to fixing the broken ass engine from 2001 and the rest of them trying to use the broken engine to make a game.
Bungie were able to make the halo engine work because they created it in-house and had multiple seasoned devs who knew it very well by the time Reach came out. 343 did not have this advantage and that's why each of their games has been worse than the last as the engine got older and older.
@@chandlerruoff6866 I don’t think an engine makes a story or gameplay suck this bad like Halo 5.
@@IrrationalCharm Halo 5 was literally the start of them outsourcing development tho. A lot of people that were there from bungie ended up leaving during that time. I can give you the story isn't great but I actually loved the gameplay of 5. It was some of the best mp I've played on a halo game.
The engine is 25 years old. Vastly outdated. Takes resources and ppl skilled with their proprietary engine to get anything accomplished. Every one knew the only fix was UE5. If you disagree you have no clue what you are talking about when it comes to development and programming
@@thomasj1026 "you have no clue what you are talking about when it comes to development and programming"
Nearly everyone here screeching about how Unreal Engine 5.1 is trash - it's been 2 years since then. One of the mods added to Silent Hill 2 Remake most devs literally can't get because NVidia's been pulling an AMD and basically telling every gamer that there are features (COUGH RAY RECONSTRUCTION COUGH) that are available on their hardware.. but it's been "C o M i N g S o O n" for over a year now. No public release whatsoever.
A year ago Unity was the devil, and if there's any positive news about Unity it's "I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!
What’s wrong with using id tech 7?
It'd be great if they just wanted to make Doom Eternal with a Halo skin cuz it's made specifically for that type of game but for the direction halo is going it's not good they could tweak it tho to fit their needs but they'd just be in another Slipspace Engine scenario all over again
incompetency hire is the problem, not the engine.
It's easier to hire people who have UE knowledge.
id tech is always a great engine to work with.
Machinegames and id don't rely on contractors for the bulk of their work so they have permanent staff that know how to use it.
Microsoft and 343i/Halo Studios have historically used a lot of contractors, that includes the engineers that built Slipspace, and didn't keep them on hand.
So throughout development when issues popped up that would normally not be as big an issue to solve if the original engineers were still on hand, it crippled development for Halo Infinite and even post launch content.
UE5 and how it functions regarding development with multiple people and being easily accessible for anybody to learn will solve a lot of their development problems and drastically speed up production.
@@TheOldest Have you personally worked with id tech????
Unreal Engine 5 has yet to produce a well optimized game. Halo infinite looks great and Ray Tracing is NOT needed. Legit every game with ray tracing has performance issues.
The finals
@@IwinMahWay great game with terrible performance issues.
And The Finals isn't using Nanite, Lumen, or World Partition. They actually tried decently hard to optimize that game. I almost guarantee Halo will implement all of the new features (especially with Epic contributing)
@@IwinMahWay finals look like garbage. Image quality is on par with xbox one games. UE5 is an unoptimized mess
@@vandammage1747The Finals looks pretty great, but it could definitely run better for what it is
System requirments were too low on their engine, its time to bump it up to nasa supercomputer
But if Slipspace is “old” because it was started during Destiny… How is Unreal Engine not “old” when it started with Unreal Tournament? Don’t get me wrong because I understand the argument for the studio not having to focus on making an engine along with a game, but on the other hand that model is why Epic continues to improve its engine - so it can support more features for Fortnite.
It is stupid to take UE5 when you have idTech7.
Why can't Halo use idTech7?
@@alterbr33d Bethesda doesn't license Id Software's engine to anyone outside of their own studios.
Seriously, this is exactly what they should do since Microsoft now owns zenimax
@@Barbaroossa But they are owned by Microsoft. When Microsoft bought them did they sign something saying they can't use idTech for their other studios?
Actually Microsoft also owns Starfield. Creation Engine 2+ I think that would be a great fit for Halo. Might take 10 years to come out though. Or less time if only one companion (Cortana) and less worlds. Two quest lines, Chief and Arbiter. Halo controls, handling, physics, but Starfield looting openwords, outposts (FOBs), etc.
Isn't Slipspace basically Blam renamed, i.e. the engine that has underpinned every Halo game and is dated to 1999?
Yes it is. So I don't understand why everyone is arguing they should keep it.
John Spartin?! Is that a Demolition Man reference lol?
Don’t forget that MS made them gut the Slipspace engine at the last second so it could support last gen. When initially, it was intended and designed to be Series only.
Excuse, his name is actually John Halo, known affectionately as Jimmy Rings to his felow Spartans.
Old lore nerd here - IIRC, Master Chief was an orphan and, thus, never had a surname.
I do, however, like the joke referring to him as "John Halo" XD
But who named him John? Should have simply adopt that guy's surename.
John was not an orphan, he was kidnapped at age 6. An orphan is someone who's parents are dead. John's we're alive when he was taken...
Slipspace was a great engine, Infinite runs like butter on my PC and Xbox, I think it's crazy to suggest that UE5 is an upgrade. Their goal with this was not an upgrade or an enhancement to benefit gamers, it was to cut costs so they can produce Halo games cheaper and faster, and probably tack more monetization on top of that. I really am bummed out that this is happening to studios like 343 and CD Projekt.
Well, they couldn't produce enough quality material due to running their own engine so I think this will be better for the long run. There's a ton of shot registry issues with the game, back smacks, grenades all the above, not doing damage, etc. If they cant find a way to fix it on Unreal 5, they can actually outsource issues to solve them.
It's not like Microsoft owns another big prominent game engine they could use for their FPS games like Halo COUGH ID Tech 5 COUGH
Microsoft wants to use an engine that people working outside of Microsoft would know, because Microsoft hires people for contract work. They don't maintain a dedicated staff that gets to know one engine like ID Tech 5. They bring in contractors for 18 months, and part of that time is used to get them up to speed on the engine, which slows down development.
there goes the dream of halo getting to use tech from the microsoft acquired fps studios
would be a bad idea. Halo would just end up becoming a reskinned cod, for example.
It’s not gonna feel like halo anymore.. bungie have done amazing things with this engine in destiny
Will the switch to unreal fix their inability to tell compelling stories?
I do not feel that UE5 is the solution for any HALO game. I hope that when the next Halo game on UE5 is released you will retract these ideals.
Recruiting developers on UE5 will bring production cost down. Especially availability of custom libraries that they can modify to shorten production time. When you combine both time and cost it's no brainer to switch for UE5. Imagine playing Halo Remake with UE5 full ray tracing?
It makes perfect business sense regardless of the known issues with the engine.
Besides hiring / skills you also need to consider MS is now one of the biggest publishers in the world with multiple in-house teams working with this engine.
That means they'll no doubt get a good deal with Epic and work closely with them (especially given their mutually beneficial stances elsewhere).
They also have UE specialists in the Coalition and so the potential mindshare within the Xbox brand is huge.
Instead of a sinking huge costs into retrofitting features into old engines they should be leveraging those exact features in UE and then working with Epic and their in-house teams to instead mitigate the known issues the engine presents.
This simply raises all teams using UE and builds a greater relationship with Epic.
Can’t wait to play Halo on Frame Drop Engine 5!
Could it be worse than slipspace? Looks like lego halo.
I heard some minor confirmation that Halo Studios reuped on their license for Havok, I imagine due to their closeness with the Halo brand and being new to UE5 that they will be implementing anything Microsoft wanted out of the slipspace engine.
The current engine is pretty at times but it's so buggy that at times it looks like a ps2 game and crashes too often
Are you on PC?
@@deathtrooper2048Yeah
Unreal Engine 5 has several advantages. One of them is that it’s cost-effective for game development companies. Another major benefit is that it can significantly enhance the graphics quality in games. The only thing developers need to focus on afterward is optimizing the game well
Yet we haven't seen a single great looking UE5 game yet. All of them are blurry last gen games
Switch to Unreal is reactionary. They lose what makes Halo what it is with Forge and the community features. It remains to be seen how they will port those. And all for a bit better lighting and not having to upskill some grads?
Not just for some lighting. If you’ve played Halo Infinite a good amount over the years you’d know how buggy and faulty it really is.
@@epicon6 halo infinite is my most played game. It’s really not that buggy or faulty. It’s the best multiplayer shooter imo.
When Microsoft's employment rules didn't change
343 won't be able to repair the slipspace engine at a reasonable cost.
Of course you can hope that 343's core staff, who will not be fired, will finally fix the slipspace engine, but that means that you won't see any new work from 343 for a long time.
Or any progress at all.
It's a dilemma, and it's clear that Pierre has chosen to focus on producing the product first.
@@epicon6The only bugs I had in infinite was with the custom browser and desync.
They can still have forge though so technically they lose nothing.
This is entirely down to a general skill defecit across the industry today, along with an intentional homogenisation and centralisation to minimise cost, maximise consumption. Its quite sad to see really and doesn't bode well for future creativity.
Silent Hill 2: James Sunderland's traversal-stutter-fest
Tech and graphics isn't the problem, it's the lack of leadership that can cater to the diehard fanbase. This is normal in an overly corporatized work environment. When DEI and pandering is the priority, quality and gameplay will continue to suffer. We see this everywhere and it's something that companies will have to figure out.
Also we created an entire sequence for the TV series in Unreal ^_^
This truly is the darkest timeline for me. UE has been nothing but a blight on games and these issues have been plauging basically every new UE title I've touched:
-Asset streaming / level traversal stutter
-Shader compilation stutter duo to incomplete precompilation step
-Forced TAA turning the image into a vaseline smear
-Dithered textures thanks to forced TAA
-Upscalers becoming a requirement for decent performance, even on a 7900XTX
-Nanite literally being less efficient than traditional LOD techniques
-Lighting and materials making UE titles look very samey
-That typical unreal engine soapy movement in third person games
-UE defaults to the far less efficient deferred rendering, instead of using a hybrid approach like clustered forward rendering
I get that the engine is so popular cause its easy to use. But easier doesnt mean better. Nanite is the perfect example of this. It kills performance and fails to fix the issue it was supposed to address, asset streaming stutter. Even then, unlike LODs nanite is an automated process, which is why its going to be used regardless of the performance penalties.
Basically UE allows developers to be lazy and cut corners. This paired with the gaming industry not being known for pushing clean code and you end up with the state of the current market.
As a programmer myself that works in the medical field, I cant image relying on a half ass solution, just cause it sames me time. If you cant afford to make a big game and optimize it, then dont be so ambitious.
I'm not saying every developer needs to be on the same tier as ID Software who are masters of their craft, I just want a game that runs well and has barely any stutters, while not forcing TAA down our throat.
UE5 is going to be gaming's downfall
For PlayStation and Xbox maybe not Nintendo
@@SecretPaintsNintendo Swift doesn't have the power to support UE4-5.
promise?
I just hate that games won’t have their own identity anymore. The grittiness of Halo is no more moving to Unreal. I’m not on board with trying to make every game look hyper realistic. Everything will look like an Unreal Engine game unfortunately.
Blam is compatible with UE5.
I really liked halo infinite. But I can understand that making your own engine is too much work.
I loved that the game is open world and has restrictive missions also.
Edit: it's hard to know whether it will be next gen only or on series x and s.
The last halo was on xbox one. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see a series s game just look better on series x and the next xbox.
Wait, MS owns Id... Why not use their engine? What about having the DOOM team or the Call of Duty team help them to make a better Halo?
I can see a big player purchasing the rug a large chunk of the industry is standing on (UE5) then cutting off or pricing out developers. Then the circle of inhouse developed engines will start again.
Plenty of smaller developers with proprietary engines that made it work. The problem is the accountability with 343. If they can’t make it work then they need to be fired
Its okay......they changed the studio name......everything will be better now.......(Mindset of Xbox fanboys)
Not a graphic issues, but off topic, I think the next Halo should be about the Arbiter. Give us a story, from the ground up, about the Arbiter.
Slipspace wasn't designed to run on Playstation.
It took a while, but the current product is fun. The new product should be fantastic, I hope.The Coalition, with Gears, visually are amazing. I can't wait to see the young Marcus Fenix return.
For UE5 stuttering in Nvidia, try setting Vsync to fast in control center. Fixed my stuttering in The First Descendant.
Another engine won't help.
When Bungie left, Halo died 🥲
That’s why halo 4,5 and infinite were great games because bungie left before releasing terrible games like destiny.
@@TheBean87 😂😂😂 Great games, sure 🥴
@@drifter2185 yeah isn’t the average rating for them 8.5?
@@TheBean87 Critics know what the community wants/enjoys all the sudden? They can be argued that they're good games but not good Halo games.
@@Devin11246 gaming communities are toxic cry babies. They’re great halo games.
One of the most interest talks I attended at GDC a few years back was the breakdown of a single frame on Halo Infinite:
ua-cam.com/video/IUiNUky-ibM/v-deo.html
I’ve been a UE programmer for 14 years now, with six of those at Epic through 2010-16, I love the tech, but I appreciate the way proprietary engines help drive the industry forward with tech built for a platform. I’ve mixed feelings about this move
I could play a whole game based on the Osiris Fireteam.
Halo 5??
@@deathtrooper2048 Fair, but I'd remove and replace MC parts.
My concerns with Halo being on UE5 aren't about scalability, rather performance, can Halo run @ 60fps (on consoles) and at what resolution, will resolution suffer to run at target framerate? Unreal Engine hasn't always had the best performance reputation historically. I know the Halo series itself has run @ 30fps historically but 60fps really is a sweet spot when playing Halo (again, on consoles). I think in this day and age we need to put 30fps to rest especially with shooters. 🎮
Amazing video. I thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you Digital Foundry.
Every IP switiching to UE may as well be ignored as game quality is about to drop through the floor
*_So they burned the bridges with all the devs who know how to code for the slip space engine, and are struggling hiring devs that will work on their game. Going to an engine every Joe Shmoe dev knows how to use seems like the logical progression. Seems like a solution that is fixing the symptom but not the cause. This isn’t a good sign for Halo studios._*
I'd rather they focus more on the story/gameplay than the engine. All i can think of when i see Infinte footage is "Bla bla bla THE BANISHED bla bla bla BANISHED bla bla" good grief what a disgrace to the original and it's succesor. Just ditch the godawful brutes already.
Why, why are so many games made in the most unoptimized engine out there.. yes, it looks good, but almost every game has stuttering, and the hw requirements are from the future. One of the few good things about it is that with uevr, we will all be able to play all the UE games in vr in 10 years or so..
Unlimited stutters!
This is all about making devs low paid jobs by making the devs all work on the same engine and thus if frank wants 160k and dave wants 32k, theyll hire dave and for frank to get work he'll have to do it at daves price even tho frank is the only decent dev
The ue 5 engine is actually a great engine, just need a base resolution of 1080p locked 30fps while using upscaling to 4k if all ue 5 games targeted that with full lumen and nanite everything would be as smooth as butter...it's the push for higher frame rates and resolution are the problem on consoles just give all games one mode one frame rate and push the full graphics as far as they can go....
Well, we do live in a world, where all you have to do is change your name, and you are suddenly no longer what you once were...
I certainly haven't forgotten that the majority of this team is still the same people making the games we have all complained about for the last few releases
Nothing wrong with the image quality, at least image is stable-clean
this makes me wonder if the next xbox will have more than 8 cpu cores, if unreal engine is a priority?
only Microsoft studio that has mastered Unreal Engine is The Coalition
Halo won’t even feel like halo anymore. Killed the franchise bye Microsoft
Cya. Fans like you ruin gaming for everyone so you and your lack of knowledge for game development won't be missed.
They have to make it a next gen console only thats my take the formula of making it on older gen didn’t work
This sounds more like constantly removing the contractors every 18 months was screwing up the development of infinite and not really the engine's fault.
Both can also be true
14:03... wait, why? We are SO far into "next gen". It's not "next" anymore.
They aren't talking about current consoles where games keep getting remastered for "next gen", next gen as is PS6 and whatever amalgamation they name the next Xbox.
incompetents need hand holdy tools. That simple.
Halo on the Ps5 pro gonna be 🔥
Keep hoping haha
@@TheBean87 just like people were "hoping" for indiana and doom? 😂
@@pinitriste you mean games that were always going to be multiplat?
@@TheBean87 indiana had an exclusive xbox logo previously.... grounded hi fi rush pentiment etc were also always meant to be multiplat?
It may take a while but the whole slate is coming...
@@pinitriste I’ll believe that as soon as I start taking tabloids as gospel
Because its being ported to PS5.
0288 Thompson Fork
Say welcome to the Stutter-Chief!
three years ago, people thought it was a plausible choice to migrate from Slipspace to UE5 bc of its technical prowess and promises. Now that people realize how potato UE5 is in its current state, even a proprietary engine with spaghet code still runs better than UE5
Just want to mention that UE5 is also spaghetti code
it's battle of the spaghetti code then
Unreal engine 5 games have not looked good on console honestly prefer unreal engine 4
They switched to UE5 so it can be ported to PS5
true but they should have opted for idtech7
That makes sense. That's why all Sony first party games are UE5.
Also … I’d like to know what you guys think the next Xbox home console is going to be power wise. Do you think it would be three times the power of the PS pro and maybe four times the power of the series X, there’s definitely developed kids of what they think out there right now for the next halo game, which probably will be out soon like 2027
What do you feel about the decima engine, and how well playstation management has it down ?
Nvidia needs to create an incentive to overspend on new rtx 5000 series, ue5 is a perfect candidate... I wouldnt be surprised all hardware companies are in on this
As a Microsoft contractor, I assure you the issue is Microsoft here. None of the full time employees know how the engine works. Most of the time, they're not even doing work - they're just enjoying the insane company benefits.
Why does it read like you're trying to say incompetent DEI hires who can't do their and we're hired in to make their ESG quotas go higher?
@Fairyoftheeclipse nothing to do with DEI and more to do with company cultures that i have experienced regardless of sex, race and orientation.
@@yyyhhh8481 It's just a racist right wing talking point. They have no idea what DEI actually is. Their feelings are hurt because they have no control over the world so they latch on nonsense buzzwords like DEI and ESG to feel better.
@@yyyhhh8481 Ignore him. He's just yet another weirdo trying to shoehorn in a crack head induced conspiracy theory laden boogyman into a completely unrelated conversation as usual.
Blam/slipspace was fine for its time
Sure, but when the vast majority of the people using the engine are contractors that rotate every few weeks/months, nothing gets done, and nobody knows how to code for the damned thing. Case in point, 343i admitted to not knowing how to add/update playlists on Infinite's launch *because* of the Slipspace Engine. You had people wasting precious resources and time on an engine nobody cares for, and they didn't even bother to do a proper turnover with the developers and oncoming contractors. You get a clusterfuck of a project
my CTO girlfriend said it's so they can hot swap engeneers out much easier.
Porting to ps5 would be easier
I’m done with ue5 games
is this the outcome of the the many layoffs that hit microsoft :(
Just like with CDPR and the RedEngine, it's a liability because the knowledgeable people who created and understood the technology have left.
It could have been improved over time, but the people were no longer there. Halo MCC, Halo 5, and Infinite prove my point.
But Halo Studios could have also chosen ID Tech or maybe even Cryengine.
Pretty sure Halo: Infinite was underwhelming because it was an Xbox One game thats development ran so long it got pushed to the next generation. If it had been planned for the current gen only from the start it would have been much better.
Honestly surprised they didn't do it sooner. It comes at a good time too, since new features like MegaLights are supposedly being optimized for console, although we'll still have to see how that ends up working out. Unreal is generally a pretty easy engine to work with, and although this is a band-aid fix for Microsoft's horrible contract work policies, there was no realistic way to keep a 20+ year old engine like that going at this pace. Wish this would have happened earlier to give some of the talent that was formerly at the studio more room to work with.
None of the DEI staff knew how to use Slipspace so it was far easier to switch to UE5 if only to stop the screaming and crying
Maybe Slipspace's tools just suck.
343 was just full of DEI hires
Shit it didn’t live up to the graphics. I thought I was gonna be seeing when I bought the most powerful Xbox series X especially a flagship game that had some amazing graphics. I’m super excited as a halo fan to hopefully have another halo game come out on the next Xbox… and really have a big graphical leap that people are like holy shit. This looks amazing not like infinite.lol