It’s id Tech’s time to shine again!!!

To sum up.

• 343 is essentially rebooting/starting from scratch.
• Major leadership change recently led employees to brace for reorganization.
• At least 95 laid off, 343 still heavily relied upon contractors.
• Slipspace is buggy, difficult to use, a source of headaches.
• Several multiplayer modes for Infinite are nearly finished but haven't yet been released due to issues with Slipspace.
• 343 has considered switching to Unreal Engine multiple times in the past.
• Pierre made the decision to switch to Unreal Engine once he took over late last year.
• The switch starts with Tatanka, developed by 343i and Certain Affinity, it started as a Battle Royale but now may "evolve in different directions"
• Future Halo titles will explore using Unreal Engine, may make development easier but worry that it could negatively impact the "feel" of Halo.
• 343 was never working on story content for Infinite. They were only pitching ideas for new Halo titles in Unreal Engine.
• 343 isn't actively working on story content right now.

Concerns:

• How Halo "feels" on Unreal Engine.
• How Forge will work on it.
• Unreal Engine isn't known as being the best for open world titles but UE5 is making efforts to improve that.

Pros

• Unreal Engine is a far superior engine to Slipspace.
• Contractor problem will significantly lessen as everyone in the industry has experience with Unreal Engine.
• Development will be a lot smoother and better provided they can get Forge and nail the "feeling" down with little issue.

Two of 343's reportedly major issues (Slipspace/Contractors) are now dealt with by moving to Unreal Engine.

Would have preferred for them to just staff up, open another studio, but this fixes the issue too...

What it looks like is happening...

1. 343 will focus on supporting Infinite in the short term, Slipspace is still proving difficult there though.
2. Tatanka will be a test bed for how Halo "feels" on Unreal Engine.
3. Halo Infinite support likely dies shortly before Tatanka or shortly after after they transition fully over to Unreal Engine and kill Slipspace.
4. If successful, they will build from that, once the "feel" is nailed, I believe they'll begin a mainline Halo (Campaign/Multiplayer).

Typical for Halo development, the Multiplayer is built first, as Halo is a gameplay first franchise, as such them focusing on Multiplayer in the short term makes sense from both a financial and development standpoint and Pierre can't magic Halo titles out of thin air if there's none in development. Switching to Unreal Engine is a big change that needs time.

Rumor is Embracer has now sold Tomb Raider to Amazon for $600m, while Embracer themselves only paid $300m for Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and other IP's as well. Basically by buying the franchise from Square Enix for relative pennies because Xbox was tied up with ABK and unable to bid against them, they just got Crystal, Eidos, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain, etc for free and still made $300m in profit.

Edit: Wow, latest update says they didn't sell the Tomb Raider franchise to Amazon, they only leased it to them for a limited time. So they made $600m leasing a single one of the 3+ Square Enix west IP's they acquired for $300m. Xbox really fucked themselves by allowing themselves to get tied up with ABK, lmao.

Curious what Tatanka has evolved into.

What else can it be beyond Battle Royale?

In regards to engines, I've been pointing out for a while now all the developers killing their internal engines in favour of Unreal Engine...As development gets more complex, it's just too much of a headache to maintain your own engine, it's disappointing to see so many internal engines die as it removes some uniqueness but it is ultimately better for development for many.

Switching to ID Tech would likely present near enough the exact same problems as Slipspace has, as long as Microsoft was unwilling to hugely staff up 343i...We can talk about IW Engine but CoD has like 5 studios, thousands of employees, working on it at all times, it barely needs external support.

We're seeing Bethesda studios internally move away from their internal engines and towards Unreal Engine too even though a few of those were built from ID Tech...Sure Doom still uses it and Doom is amazing but Halo is far more complex than Doom, from Forge to the physics to the sheer amount of content it demands.

Certain Affinity would have to learn ID Tech, Skybox Labs would have to learn ID Tech. Contractors would have to learn ID Tech...Then they'd lose those contractors and they'd have to teach new contractors how to use ID Tech...Doesn't really matter if ID Tech is easy to learn, Unreal Engine is easier and everyone knows it by default, they don't need to learn anything.

Providing that Halo can transition over to Unreal Engine...But Halo would need to transition over to ID Tech too...It's about the same amount of work...But in the end ID Tech Halo will likely have the same contractor issues that 343 has right now while Unreal Engine would have no such issues. There is no way around this unless Microsoft hugely staffed up 343i and opened other 343i studios which they didn't seem to want to do.

It's a bit disappointing to see everyone covert to Unreal Engine...It is what it is...It's where the industry is heading...Lets hope it's for the better development wise though....As long as they can nail the "feel" and Forge can come over then ultimately it will be the right decision and improve development a lot.

Personally I don't care for Halo multiplayer and the same pretty much goes for everyone I know, They stopped with Halo 2 or Halo 3 but would eat up a singleplayer campaign every 2-3 years and would splash out on the super pointless deluxe 3x the price of the game for nothing but a purple gun edition despite already having the game for free on Gamepass. Maybe I'm just getting old but I feel this should be the target for Halo going forward as the arena shooter is basically dead amongst the younger generation and the older guys just buy CoD each year to fill their arena shooter needs and will never venture away from it.

Will wait for Embracer Group to report on that first, they'd legally have to and I see nothing yet so I wouldn't be too sure about it being true.

But it'd be hilarious if Square sold everything for $300m and Embracer sold one IP for $600m...Square would be truly braindead business wise.

Having said that, $600m sounds a bit too much for Tomb Raider alone.

Maybe the $600m is the total cost of the IP + Tomb Raider Show in Development + Tomb Rader Game in Development.

Same site is reporting that Embracer is negotiating the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit rights off Warner Bros, Lol.

I'm quite pissed right now. I played P4G up to February 14th and noticed that I couldn't access the bonus dungeon even though I fulfilled the requirement of getting a certain character's social link to level 10. Turns out I have to speak to another character after beating the regular final boss to eventually trigger that dungeon in February. I've googled several times how to unlock the final dungeon and every time those sites claimed that you only need to get that character to level 10.
My last save was from before beating the regular final boss so I have to do that again and then endure almost two more months until I get to that point again.

If Tatanka is successful then I'd say there's no need for a ongoing Halo Multiplayer.

Release the next Halo as a traditional Campaign/Multiplayer experience.

No F2P Multiplayer (that can be Tatanka) and keep the Multiplayer a tight experience.

If it dies in a year then that's fine. Not everything has to live 10 years.

Not every CoD MP is alive for years on end, most move onto the next CoD MP as soon as it's out, Warzone is the ongoing experience.

14+yrs later and just got the the fowl catcher (impossible without someone having a chicken suit which is now impossible to obtain) and dollcatcher all thanks to an Fable 2 community that’s still alive.

• The first project built on Unreal will be "Project Tatanka," a codenamed game being developed by both 343 and Certain Affinity. Originally, Tatanka was believed to be a battle royale mode for Halo Infinite.
• 343 has also paused the active development of campaign-style story content for the time being. Developers were prototyping and pitching new Unreal-based Halo projects, but many of those developers have been cut.

Windows Central is able to corroborate the report about the move to Unreal, as sources familiar with the situation have been in contact. Internally, there was a fierce tug-of-war over the change, with one camp of developers desiring the switch and another arguing that Halo should remain on Slipspace. Often, different development teams were bound by entirely separate non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), preventing active communication and collaboration. Notably, we've heard unconfirmed reports that Microsoft has a prototype of Halo Infinite's popular Forge Mode mapmaking tool running in Unreal. We've also heard that the Slipspace build of Project Tatanka hasn't been updated since early December, which lends weight to the notion that it's moving to Unreal. Ultimately, though, it will be difficult to get full confirmation until 343 communicates this news officially.

Windows Central can confirm that there are no plans to "kill" Halo Infinite between now and the release of Project Tatanka, and that Halo Infinite will continue with new planned releases such as the upcoming Season 3: Echoes Within on March 7.

Based on what Windows Central has heard from people familiar with development processes, the image of 343 under Bonnie Ross appeared to be one of chaos and rivalries, with various teams united only by their love and passion for the Halo franchise.

Report: Windows Central

If they already have a build of Forge running on Unreal Engine then that is encouraging, even if it's just a prototype, they only made the decision to switch to Unreal Engine late last year. All they need is to nail Forge + Feeling and then switching to Unreal Engine will 100% be the right decision and massively improve development.

Honestly I think in the long run, this reboot of the studio will be a good thing, it sucks that it will take time but I'm willing to wait for Halo to get things right under new leadership, people were demanding new leadership for years as well, this is what it looks like, y'all going to have to be patience with Pierre now, it's a different 343.