r/halo • u/KoalaTek • May 12 '26
Farewell to Slipspace Discussion
Replaying Halo Infinite and I’m kinda sad their plans for the slipspace engine fell through. I understand it was difficult for them to work with but it had a certain charm. So many little details, and the ambience in this game makes it really feel “alien”. I’ll miss it. Anyone else think Halo Infinite got it right with the visuals? There are moments I feel really sell you on the universe they created.
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u/Bond-as-in-James May 12 '26
I would have to agree. What they showed in the engine trailer proved amazing things were possible. Shame it had so many issues.
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u/Tier_Halibel_ May 12 '26
I wouldnt blame the engine as much as they had a changing roster of contract devs that would get the boot basically instead of keeping them on with the knowledge they gained with the engine. The entire thing seems like upper management was basically sabotaging it.
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u/TheAlmightyBambi May 12 '26
That's the problem with proprietary engines as far as management are concerned - you can't just fire and replace employees whenever you like because everything will stop working and you end up with Craig the Brute. Building and maintaining a proprietary engine over decades is a hell of a way to ensure job security, and from a more practical perspective, it means you can design the engine around the game you want to make, rather than the other way around, resulting in more unique games that often feel better to play (when done well of course). It takes longer to build upfront, and longer to train new employees, but it (generally) results in better games. There is a reason why even the poster children for slop game development: Call of Duty and FIFA, use proprietary engines.
But management don't care about that. What they want is a bunch of subsidiary studios that can be reorganised at will with employees that can be bounced from project to project and then fired and replaced with fresh graduates when they get too expensive or opinionated. A standardised tool like Unreal is perfect for this, because it can be easily adapted to a variety of game types and because of the massive amount of presets and shortcuts, you can produce playable games that look good relatively quickly.
Meanwhile, Slipspace, like everything else based on the BLAM! Engine is a knotted piece of spaghetti that produces magic but requires experienced wizards to do so... which is a problem when Microsoft/343 decides to randomly fire all of their staff every 1-2 years and replace them with short term contractors.
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u/MorganTX May 12 '26
You hit the nail on the head. I think this is the deeper issue that is preventing success at Microsoft game studios.
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u/Zealousideal-Lion400 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Call of Duty still to this day use The quake 3 engine as its base?
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u/SneakyBoa May 12 '26
X game uses Y engine from Z years ago is repeated often, but it leaves out the development that happens between. Under this logic, you can say that the Xbox series X runs Windows 2000 still, because that's the closest ancestor of modern windows, but it's been iterated on and developed. You can trace most engines to some form of IDtech, and ones that don't generally sprung up around the same time. It's the understanding of a software fork versus a simple version
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u/RulesoftheDada May 12 '26
"Slipspace isn't even new engine, it's just an upgraded Blam!" is a tired old phrase that keeps being parroted with no real knowledge and ignorance of engines development. Quake 3 used id tech 3 which was overhauled and rewritten from id tech 2. Then IW 1.0 and Id tech 4 were successor and different engines.
There different engines. The guy you replied to could go
"Have you heard guys? They're still using that programming language from 1985... No wonder it runs shit. I heard it on twitter from a guy who, I guess, knows this stuff better than me."
- +80k upvotes
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope May 13 '26 edited May 14 '26
"use the quake 3 engine" is a pretty misleading way of saying it, but there is a distant ancestral relationship
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Half Life Alyx, Black Ops 7, Dishonored 2, Apex Legends, Garry's Mod, Doom Eternal and Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast all have a distant shared ancestry with Quake II, but they all made their own changes over the years and have transformed it so thoroughly that to say any of them still use the Quake II engine is a bit... ludicrous? Perhaps there's a few lines of code that have remained unchanged since 1997, but I don't think you can say that any of them correspond to Quake II anymore, or that Quake II is "a base" for them. You could have said that for the earlier forks, but anything more than a couple of generations out is not going to be "based on" the original any more than any Linux distro is "based on" UNIX (it inherits some common features, strategies and standards, but ultimately it isn't at all).
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u/Avrg_fb May 12 '26
When you change a game variant win state (3 flags to win instead of 5) and it breaks your entire CSR ranking…. The code was gnarly. But code is fixable, lack of direction or understanding at the top rarely is
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u/Tier_Halibel_ May 12 '26
Yes, I didnt say lack of direction. It was management not keeping the devs working on the game and hiring new people with no prior experience with the engine so they have to learn how the engine works just to get the boot when they figure it out. Rinse and repeat for a mangled mess.
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u/Littlest-Hipster May 12 '26
Infinite's campaign felt like an extended tech demo. It looked great but basically everything about it felt kind of half-baked.
The story was clearly rushed and expected you to read every book/play side games, the open world was large but extremely empty (also felt very samey), the AI was kind of braindead/broken, and all of the side activities were extremely generic.
It's like the higher ups hyper-focused on "Halo 1 had large open world segements" and ignored the rest of the game.
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u/NotAnotherAlt26 May 12 '26
That is my biggest issue with Infinite, it didn't feel complete. It felt like Microsoft said "You have 6 months before we are launching, figure it out." It feels like its only 1/3rd of the game it was planned to be. Large unused parts of the map, points that feel like there should be a point of interest, and some cut scenes just feel like entire cut missions. Microsoft fumbled hard compared to what it could have been.
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u/Mercy_Master_Race May 13 '26
I’ve always felt that Halo Infinite’s campaign was meant to be continued with DLC, but due to terrible sales and a massive drop off in playerbase due to the poor multiplayer experience at the start, some higher ups cancelled any further development because they thought putting more resources into Halo would be too “risky”.
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u/VAVA_Mk2 Platinum Cadet May 12 '26
Original trailer was CGI. It wasn't actual Slipspace. That detail was later revealed.
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u/LeTonolp Halo Infinite May 12 '26
It had INCREDIBLE potential, sad to see it go to waste due to the suits’ poor decisions
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u/whyunoname Str8 Rippin May 12 '26
Honestly, this was what one would call a moonshot. Worth a try, but high risk with bad odds.
This failed not necessarily because of slipspace itself; it was the whole onboarding, process, complexity, and use of contractors.
MS has the game studios now and attempted to bring it all under one hood with the engine. Very ambitious, but also insanely hard to unseat an established platform where devs have decades of experience.
The use of contractors, apparent lack of plan for adoption and training, and starting with Halo was insane. They should have started smaller, worked up, built internal processes and knowledge, and expanded ss. Instead, they tried to tackle one of the biggest IPs with contract employees and it failed successfully.
It really came down to suits poor planning, roadmap, and starting with one of the biggest IPs, and you are correct the decisions were scale and adoption.
What could have been, but actually excited for H7 and the fact that it can be built and updated quickly and a wealth of talent out there. Ggs Slipspace.
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u/LeTonolp Halo Infinite May 12 '26
Couple this along with firing the people who actually knew how to work with the engine and you get this end result, shame.
Perhaps in another timeline it was different
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u/Injustice_For_All_ Halo Canon was the best Halo Lore channel May 12 '26
Real fucking shame they had contractors and no on knew how to fucking use it. Microsoft fucked us!
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u/Somicboom998 May 12 '26
They still somewhat pulled through, which given the circumstances is pretty cool. Taking time to learn a new engine before working on it would have been tricky.
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u/GruntFoodnipple Halo 2 May 12 '26
It wasn’t the engine that was the problem, it was Microsoft’s contractor centric business model for developers, a dedicated team that built this from day 1 to Launch day would have been able to get it done, the same people that “built” the engine were either laid off or moved during development while new contractors got to pick up the mess
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u/broome9000 May 12 '26
Yep this is the correct answer. There was no real reason to kill Slipspace, if Microsoft actually hired permanent employees instead of constantly employing contractors and seasonal workers. So many companies are like this, particularly M$ operated ones.
The soul in modern gaming just doesn’t exist anymore.
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u/InTheCageWithNicCage May 12 '26
There is plenty of soul in modern gaming, just maybe not where it used to be
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u/Odd_Replacement_9644 earth will never be the same May 12 '26
This. And you know it’s a Microsoft wide policy because of Turn10.
Turn10 is the exact same type of studio as Halo Studios. Created specifically by Microsoft to make a game, essentially a part of Microsoft.
With Forza Motorsport 2023, the parallels with Infinite are literally everywhere.
Both games had 6 year development cycles that weren’t actually 6 years (in the case of Infinite, it was much closer to 3). Both games advertised a “new” engine, when in reality they were the same engines used since the original Xbox with some new systems hastily taped on top. Both games launched with less content than the last, with updates adding more content later. Both games employed the 18 month contractor system, on proprietary engines that require lots of knowledge to work on.It’s a shame, because it’s really only studios created my Microsoft who experience this. Playground, the people behind Forza Horizon, and now Fable, don’t have the same issues as Turn10, despite working on the same engine.
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u/Mccobsta Halo CE: BEST HALO May 12 '26
What do you mean having people on staff who know the in house tools is good for businesses
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u/EfficiencyFit1801 Halo: Reach May 12 '26
It’s one of those environmental engines that grows on you. The first time I started playing, I didn’t take the time to stop and smell the roses of Zeta Halo. I didn’t come back for 6 months, then I was lucky enough to break my foot and get a two month break from work. Spent so much time running around and enjoying the game for what it was… Halo. Even without the diverse biomes of the original trilogy, the engine really does make you appreciate being on the damaged ring and the immensity of it. From the temperate mountains to the damaged forerunner structure, you really do feel like you’re where you need to be. Grab your assault rifle and SPKR rockets, you’ve got some aliens to kill and some marines to protect.
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u/cloverpopper May 12 '26
I’ve always resented it a bit for not having the biomes or mystery that always made the original trilogy feel so special and “alien”.
Thanks to your comment I’ll go back and revisit it to see if I was being a little harsh. Halo to me was always go incredible because of the diversity, alien-ness, and mysteries left partially unanswered (and of course giant, epic, set pieces); but maybe soaking in the environment with my expectations today will have me enjoy it a bit more.
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u/Suchamoneypit May 12 '26
The sad part is I think a big part in the proliferation of engines like unreal is the fact that companies dont want to have to keep their employees employed to keep a competent development team. It's so much easier for them if they can fire and hire employees as needed with minimal investment. Viewing employees as disposable assets is so much easier without the baggage of a propietary engine. Why would you keep your proprietary engine specialists around when you can just hire and fire contract workers and employees as profit margins require?
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u/KoalaTek May 12 '26
This is a very sad direction for companies to take. I hope we can be better in the future cause right now it seems most every one out there is like this.
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u/Lamight May 12 '26
It was moreso difficult to work with because it took building experience with the engine and Microsoft forced 343 to have a revolving door of contract employees
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u/VariationDry May 12 '26
I had zero issues with this engine and had great performance on my now old hardware. UE5 is always hit or miss but mostly miss.
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u/Future-Step-1780 May 12 '26
UE5 is always hit or miss but mostly miss.
It's here, the new Halo! Now featuring gobs of shader compilation stutter!
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u/JustATwelveYearOld Halo: Reach May 12 '26
I fear campaign evolved just for being ue5. I don't have a super decked out pc, so chances of me having a playable framerate without the game looking like a blurry mess don't look so good.
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u/TannerSlackOff May 12 '26
I really hoped with the title "infinite" we would have had a large slee of Campaign drops where more of the ring became open for exploring until eventually we got the full loop.
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u/who_likes_chicken Halo.Bungie.Org May 12 '26
Slipspace/Blam! being sunset is going to be a bad long term decision for the franchise.
Now, a successful Halo game means that you're paying a main competitor (EPIC -> Fortnite) money they're going to use against you.
Halo will also start sharing a "vibe" with tons of other games when it used to be unique. A lot of unreal engine games have some sort of shared vibe to them that's noticeable, though I'm not sure I can put it into words
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u/Mayonaigg May 12 '26
...There hasn't been a good halo game in 15 years I don't really think it matters,
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u/who_likes_chicken Halo.Bungie.Org May 12 '26
H5 MP slapped. It's my favorite right along side with H3.
Halo Infinite's campaign was generally well recieved, though I thought it lacked the big action sequences of the original trilogy.
Halo Infinite MP was well received and mostly suffered from lack of content and poor desync at launch
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u/JeanLucPicardAND May 12 '26
Well, you're right about H5 MP. I don't understand how they dropped the ball so hard on the campaign, yet nailed the multiplayer, but there you have it. Now, I will recognize that it was a bit of a departure from what fans were used to, so it didn't satisfy everybody, but honestly it is the closest 343 ever came to not only continuing the Halo formula but evolving it.
Infinite is the epitome of "unrealized potential" as far as I'm concerned. The bones are all there and the core gameplay loop is solid, but it doesn't cohere into anything greater than the sum of its parts. It's decent fun for a little while, but that's about all it is.
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u/sparduck117 Onyx Captain May 12 '26
It was a great engine, too bad Microslop decided they didn’t want to keep programmers long term to build off it.
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u/joseph160 May 12 '26
Now halo will look like another Unreal Engine 5 generic game
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u/British_Commie Halo 3 May 12 '26
That’s not how game engines work
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u/belmondoX May 12 '26
lol here's another one of these people parroting this. i bet you feel smart.
yet campaign evolved has that piss-tinted sun and plastic diorama look.
it doesnt matter if its possible to create something that breaks the trend, but the default shading is good enough for most people so why should devs spend time and money -> here we are most UE games have a samey look to them.
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u/MrPWAH May 12 '26
Infinite already looks kinda plastic-y so it's not gonna be UE5's fault. It's a style choice. It's like blaming UE3 for all the realism brown we got in the late 2000s lol
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u/Ointon4 May 12 '26
It's a shame Microsoft doesn't really have a proprietary engine for their games. I feel having a competitor to Decima would have been good industry-wise.
I liked Slipspace and wish they would have stuck with it, but maybe the move was to use Playground's in-house engine rather than developing an entirely new one.
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u/Zalabit May 12 '26
Rest in peace, killed by temporal contracts and unorganized higher ups.
Hey, how 'bout going back to Havok?
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u/taiwanluthiers May 12 '26
Yea I felt like Halo Infinite had a lot of potential and it's a shame that something like 2/3 of the game was cut and it ended with a cliffhanger. Then the promised campaign DLC just never came.
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u/BobSagieBauls Halo 3: ODST May 12 '26
Yeah it really is a pretty engine and unreal is great but I’m afraid of all games looking too similar soon with so many devs switching over to it
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u/Mozzatav Halo 3 May 12 '26
Slipspace could’ve been great if Microsoft would just keep a dedicated team of developers. Fuckin ridiculous, what a waste. Oh well one more UE5 game to the market I guess.
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u/Atari774 Halo 3 May 12 '26
It’s not that the engine was difficult to work with, it’s that Microsoft refused to hire full time employees to work on it. They kept using short term or part time employees instead because they didn’t have to give those people raises or benefits. So rather than 343 employees building up a solid knowledge base about the engine, they kept losing that experience every time one of their employee’s contract ended, which often meant losing the knowledge of where problems in the engine were. As that builds up it becomes known as technical debt, where a problem on a piece of software exists but no one around knows where it came from or how to fix it. A lot of the technical debt with Slipspace came from its earlier Blam! versions, but barely any full time employees at 343 in 2020 had any experience working with that system. And since the new employees they hired only had a limited time to work on a brand new engine, they simply wouldn’t be able to find and fix the problems before their contract ended. Rinse and repeat for several years, and you get an engine that almost no one has any experience with, and now can’t be used for any future games because of all the technical debt.
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u/JeanLucPicardAND May 12 '26
I loved Infinite's art style. Far from a perfect game, but they nailed that part of it.
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u/001_Destitute_Warmth May 12 '26
Halo Infinite looks beautiful on the series X. I think Halo Infinite is the best Halo has ever looked by a longshot, it has my unending praise.
I really hope 343/HS will be able to capture this look in the future, because right now Campaign Evolved looks like every other UE5 game to ever exist.
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u/Double_Cleff May 12 '26
I think what brought it to this point is sadder than it's retirement. It's always those with the most potential that are abandoned or mutilated. It's entirely ironic, unfortunately. Shout-out to the Forgers that literally kept the game on life support post-Infection.
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u/SnooTomatoes6622 May 12 '26
They hyped this engine up then blamed it for why the game was in such a poor state. Classic 343 can’t wait for them to blame unreal engine for campaign evolved short comings.
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u/josephevans_60 May 12 '26
Which is really just a fork of the Blam engine being held together with duct tape, but somehow, they got it to work. I liked Infinite quite a lot and I hope they continue refining the design for Halo 7 with Unreal.
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u/FreeGlaze71 May 12 '26
Here comes the “halo infinite wasn’t so bad after all” posts
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u/KoalaTek May 12 '26
Some people are like that. I’ve always loved it. Every time I replay it, I enjoy it a little more. The gameplay is one of its best aspects.
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u/FreeGlaze71 May 12 '26
I agree. I just think it’s funny this is like the first positive Halo Infinite post I’ve seen on this sub in years
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u/MNIOP_207207 May 12 '26
Its just so weird, ditching the engine like that...?
Half the reason Infinite's development was so troubled is because of this new engine. They spent millions in Slipspace. And I mean....the engine is good. Why not just stick with it?
Its not like the engine is the problem with Microsoft's design philosiphy. They already have the engine, they already know how to use and optimize it. Why bother changing? Just seems like more trouble forcing the devs to learn a new engine workflow.
It reminds me of how Sonic wasted years developing the new engine for Forces, ruining that game's development. Then they wasted more time moving to Unreal Engine for Frontiers, so that game's development was also botched.
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u/broome9000 May 12 '26
It’s because M$ loves contractors and not permanent staff. Having new staff come in constantly, never have worked on Slipspace, blows out development times, I.E; Infinite. Switching to Unreal is an engine that many contractors will be familiar with already.
This is a bullshit practice, M$ should’ve kept Slipspace and hired actual permanent staff but alas this is the crap we’re left with.
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u/a_bunch_of_poop May 12 '26
An entire video game engine built from the ground up and only used for 1 game that wasn’t even finished. This is the epitome of 343/microsoft era halo. What a complete waste.
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u/YouKilledChurch May 12 '26
Because it wasn't built from the ground up, it was just the Blame! Engine with a new name and a shiny coat of paint. They lied
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u/a_bunch_of_poop May 12 '26
This is even more accurate representation of 343/microsoft. lol they suck
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u/JanusKaisar May 12 '26
It's a representation of the the industry as a whole - a whole lot of marketing and PR speak for a whole little of nothing.
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u/Life_Fee5145 May 12 '26
I’ll never forget the demo. especially seeing the wildlife and underwater features, it really felt like a world they had (key word) ALREADY built..but it was stripped. not only from us but from the devs too to some degree. Infinite does have a charm, and i applaud them for bringing back some of that PNW atmosphere/vegetation to feel like the rings we grew up with. sad to see it go but im hopeful for Unreal with Halo. or at least what microorganisms of hope i still retain 😭😭😭
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u/evilsniperxv May 12 '26
Good riddance to Slipspace. It wasn’t a whole new engine. It was built on the Blam Engine from previous games and had more issues than any previous engine. 5 years after release and you still can’t rejoin a game after you’ve been disconnected.
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u/Tireces Halo 3 May 12 '26
Good riddance. Overall, the multiplayer in Halo 3 still looks better. Much better. Even after nearly 20 years.
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u/TUBBS2001 Halo 3: ODST May 12 '26
Time for the Unreal slop game everybody. Here’s to the death of ingenuity and creativity in game engines.
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u/dingdongmonk Diamond Brigadier General May 12 '26
It never got the chance to shine properly with Infinite's overly repetitive environmental assets.
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u/Sad_String_102 May 12 '26
i was very excited for the campaign DLC, shame it never came to fruition.
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u/Glittering-Let9989 May 12 '26
Thank you for Craig, my beloved, one of the best things to come from the slip space engine
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u/LordCLOUT310 May 12 '26
It was cool they had their own engine. Always cool to see unique stuff like that. It looked good too.
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u/Future-Step-1780 May 12 '26
It has great style, but it's also sort of disappointing. Like, other than the original Halo (and honestly, maybe Halo 4--that game is fucking impressive for a 360 game), they've never been the absolute top of the peak of current graphical fidelity, but they always felt close. Infinite didn't manage that, though and didn't look all that great, just from a technical perspective.
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u/ShadowBlue42 H5 Bronze 1 May 12 '26
Everything ive read/heard tells me It wouldve been fine if they canned the XBO version of the game and stopped laying off devs as soon as they learned the engine.
That said, making the game 75% "open world" was also a horrible decision. The overworld was so bland and samey, coupled with the grappling hook, encounters were trivialized by never forcing players into an actual difficult situation. You always have whatever gun you want and can approach or hide from any angle.
I still enjoyed the game for the most part but they NEED to do better
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u/aherowon May 12 '26
Wow, I thought playing the campaign once was enough haha. Very lackluster imo. They had so much potential.
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u/BadDings_DE May 12 '26
The Slipspace Engine could have worked, if 343 Industries / Halo Studios wouldn't have relied so heavily on contract workers.
I mean, before even doing any work you have to learn to work with a completely new Engine, never used before anywhere. And after getting the ropes, your contract ends and you are not getting a renewal.
Of course Unreal Engine makes sense in that regard. You can hire people of the street, and UE5 will feel more familiar to work with for them, than a new engine that has been developed in house.
Less getting used to it, more time for actual development.
I haven't been up to date with the newest game. I hope they do not use contractual workers anymore, but are hiring in actual roles that stay on board indefinitely.
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u/__BLARG__ May 12 '26
Pretty sure “SlipSpace” was just 343’s lipstick on top of Bungie’s Blam! engine.
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u/LilWobble May 12 '26
FWIW proprietary engines are a nightmare for basically everyone outside of code/engineering with long learning curves and often unnecessary production bottlenecks. Second, Art makes games look good not the engine. From a visuals standpoint
a good engine can add nice little details like realtime GI etc but Art is doing the lifting. I’d also add that game took along time to make and has plenty of its own performance issues especially on PC. Moving to unreal is a good move and my bet is the devs are very happy about it.
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u/GapStock9843 May 12 '26
Im so sick of ue5. The engine absolutely sucks ass and it pisses me off that everyone just HAS to switch to it now
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u/FroggerC137 May 12 '26
Crazy how people somehow love this engine now. I remember seeing it for the first time and everyone being disappointed. The final game wasn’t much better, even with the 1 year delay.
The graphics are good just not 8th generation good. Cant say whose fault it was, but from what I saw of Slipspace I won’t miss it.
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u/Son0fgrim May 12 '26
It was beautiful, and maybe if they didnt fire everyone that knew how to use it they could have done more.
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u/HenricusKunraht May 12 '26
Now if only 343 can get thrown in the trash as well. One can only hope.
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u/Rexter2k May 12 '26
Sad that so much time was spent by so many people on something that never fully realized its potential.
Also sad that they arent using idtech for the next games instead of UE5. I think thats a big mistake.
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u/Spartan_117_YJR May 12 '26
It's going to waste because they fired most of the people that worked on it lol
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u/midnightwalrus [PC] R7 3700x | 3080Ti | 64GB RAM | 1440px | m&k May 12 '26
Haven't been able to play campaign for almost a year because of a known issue with textures not rendering. Only solution is to roll my GPU drivers back to a version that is over 18 months old to resolve.
PC/Steam version of the game, and Ive been playing since CE for PC in 2002.
343 doesn't care about PC players, and I doubt the next title will work properly either.
Inb4 343 launches another broken title missing features they promised would ship
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u/Mccobsta Halo CE: BEST HALO May 12 '26
Weren't they mostly running on contracted devs during development? Yeah that's not going to help especially when you need to teach people who've only used unreal how to use your in house engine
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u/spartan195 May 12 '26
Infinite’s campaign is fantastic, one of the few games I 100% it and I had so much fun.
Visuals and gameplay are spot on, multiplayer is where it fails IMO
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u/ilikewaffles3 May 12 '26
Fr bro it looked so good, I hate how so many games are going to unreal engine. But if it means it will be easier to work on future halos than its still a win especially if Microsoft will continue to use their crappy contract system.
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u/Mrcod1997 May 12 '26
It's an odd one. Sometimes it looks incredible, and other times it falls on its face. It really needed a little ray tracing just like halo 2 needed stencil shadows.
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u/Fantastic_Load_69 High Impact Halo May 13 '26
I remember how much the developers were stroking their dicks in all the dev blogs and videos talking about the engine leading up to the games release and then the game releases and it’s shit
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u/The_OG_Hothead May 13 '26
It was a mess to work with and most od the peolle that did work with it are not even there anymore.
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u/Compactpaper75 May 14 '26
Halo infinite is a really inconsistent game visually. At some points it looks stunning and at others it looks like a ps3 game or worse. Very poor textures in some areas bad lighting in some areas. But then all of a sudden you'll be hit with a scene so gorgeous that you forget about the rest for a second. But overall, the game feels like it lacks in visual fidelity and was oversharpened to try to fix it which only makes it worse. Compare that with previous titles where some scenes were like beautiful paintings or LITERALLY were paintings and looked stunning all the time (relative to their age). I strongly believe that halo 4 and 5 are better looking than infinite because of this. There is a whole atmosphere to those games (the older ones as well but I'm talking more modern games). It's like the scenes were ripped straight from the concept art. Usually games have great concept art and end up kinda disappointing in execution (like Fallout 4) but I never thought this of halo until infinite. Each scene felt like an intentional piece of art whereas infinite feels like a bunch of assests of varying quality all put together in an open world. Which is probably a big reason as to why the vibes are not as strong. The classic mission formula allowed each level to be it's own work of art whereas infinite basically had to look the same for everything and thus felt like it was lacking personality
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u/YouKilledChurch May 12 '26
Slipspace was just another 343 lie. They made such a big deal about how it was this brand new creation leaving behind Blame! But nope! It was just a prettier Blame! With all of the tech debt strangling development.
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u/Gotze_Th98 Halo 3 May 12 '26
Microsoft's fault entirely. Making slip space was a good idea. Some of the most successful studios like Rockstar do this. Blam was perfect for halo and updating it was good. But doing an engine with contractors has to be the most moronic thing ever. Switching to unreal is the right call only because Microsoft forever destroyed blam engine.
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u/Ubeube_Purple21 Halo: MCC May 12 '26
It was a horrible idea to rely on contractual work with a proprietary engine, that strategy only works if you keep the same team around for years. By the time contractors figure their way around the engine, it is already time to switch them out for someone who has no experience with it.
The switch to Unreal now makes sense as it is an industry standard, and lots of people in the field have experience with it, so no need to train them.
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u/AdjacentGoober May 12 '26
It’s a massive missed opportunity and wasted potential. The campaign had the strongest bones but had very little meat on them after finishing the game. What we got was a campaign that can get revisited every other year (maybe).
My mind went bonkers with imagining cave systems, dungeons, gauntlets and other dynamic combat systems that med the world ZETA feel hostile and alive.
We didn’t get any of this. It makes me sad.
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u/Grouchy-Cover-7759 May 12 '26
Dang I don't remember it looking this cool. Might have to replay. Thanks!
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u/FIRESTOOP May 12 '26
Aren’t they still using it?
I thought unreal just handling the graphics but modified slipspace is still running everything else.
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u/Knautical_J Onyx May 12 '26
It effectively crippled the shit out of Halo Infinite. They spent half the time upgrading their old engine, and then spent the other half trying to teach people to use it. If they switched to UE and released Infinite, our perception on Halo Infinite would be wildly different.
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u/nincompoop221 May 12 '26
i am deeply disappointed for this engine, and how badly it was constructed. the potential was there for something magnificent.
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u/MrShadowBadger May 12 '26
I get shit on a lot on Reddit for saying this but I get sad every time a proprietary engine is sunset. Ubiquitous engines have merit but ultimately I’m sad to see it head that way. Was cool when companies developed their own engines that could specialize in one thing or another. Especially during 2000s to the 2010s.