This isn't court. They don't get the benefit of the doubt before anything's been proven. This is a business market, and until they've proven they can make something worthwhile, I have no reason to give a damn. Just based on the people they're replacing, the people backing them, the way Microsoft continues to manage their studios and the fact they look and sound exactly the same, that's already enough reason to not even start caring.

Neither of us have expectations, the difference is that I don't have or need hope, I have other games I'd rather be focused on.

Being Bespoke doesn't make it good. Majority of games share alot of tech, Havok, Wwise etc.

It's about finding the best engine for the job, not weather it's internal or external. 

Game engines are also modified for specific games. The Coalition modified and enhance the Unreal Engines to make Gears of War.

Why did you leave out Switch 2 port? If it's getting a port to PS, it will most likely come to everything. If they choose to port it.

Being Bespoke doesn't make it good. Majority of games share alot of tech, Havok, Wwise etc.

It's about finding the best engine for the job, not weather it's internal or external. 

Game engines are also modified for specific games. The Coalition modified and enhance the Unreal Engines to make Gears of War.

Why did you leave out Switch 2 port? If it's getting a port to PS, it will most likely come to everything. If they choose to port it.

Whether the internal engine is good or not for the job doesn't change that's it's still disappointing that there are less internal engines going around. 

And I left out Switch 2 because I just didn't type it out. Naturally they'll port to whatever they can.

Gameplay is not the issue with Halo, 343i nailed the Bungie titles on Gameplay. Once you play Infinite, it's hard going back to older titles.

It's the direction of the story and the lack of content which has hurt the new games. The Story will always be a challenge since Bungie told the best parts. As for content, we now know the Engine was the issue. 

All they need to do is write an epic story, provide the gameplay they have been offering and fill it with content.

That's when we will have an amazing Halo game. Halo Studios seems to be addressing these issues, hence the changes.

As I figured. It's just a PR move. https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/1fzc6c0/senior_animator_will_waltz_who_used_to_work_at/
Former animator who worked there for 13 years recommends no one work there. For years not heard good things about the work environment there. Phil swept that sexual harassment case under the rug some years back.

Unrelated to the Reddit post. The move to UE5 has to do with the 18-month contracts MS does. YOu hired people with experience on a popular engine than learn a new one. Use them for a bit then dump them. While Retro has used the RUDE Engine for 20 years.

Lol. I'm sorry but this dude sounds bitter as fuck, when even r/Halo is suspicious, the most angry group of Halo fans...

"I miss the days when you were there with us earlier on. Bonnie, Chris, Josh, Kiki, everyone was so fun to work with."

Oh so he enjoyed working with the old leadership, Bonnie Ross, Josh Holmes, Kiki Wolfkill.

"Imagine telling a studio (loudly) almost daily how to succeed for 13 years, 7 of them were spent educating a clueless executive team (with a purely corporate publishing background and no real hands-on coding or art and in some cases, gaming, experience) how to actually make something"

Then he proceeds to slag them off, Lol. (And seemingly thinks he has the answers to everything).

Like this is how bad it got: they released the game without an industry standard in-game player reporting feature. It came down to me seeing a female streamer being harassed by male gamers while she played and I looked for a feature I just assumed the UX team would have built a robust version of. Nope, nothing. So me, an animator, had to lead this charge and literally design the UX wireframes for the in-game reporting feature POST LAUNCH and then force Jerry Hook into a meeting in which he basically lambasted me for taking on the work myself (even though we basically had nothing going on except the occasional bug to fix)

Jerry Hook is no longer at the studio.

Then he makes claims about Pierre, who has been Studio Head for exactly 2 years now, Halo Studio's new leadership is literally the leadership that fixed TMCC and added a ton of content to it. Pierre was Studio Head for exactly 4-5 months before Will Waltz was laid off, hardly enough time to make such a damning comment on his leadership when Will himself says that he "basically had nothing going on"

He comes across as a very bitter ex-employee who is full of himself and wants to ride on the current low-hanging "bash 343" fruit, a professional in the industry does not go to Linkedin and publicly call people "cancer" or make weird "#SaveHalo" posts and the fact that he seems fond of the old leadership is a bit concerning too, 6 years ago he was posting about how 343 is a wonderful place to work for, I don't doubt the leadership was a mess but it feels like he's angrily blaming Pierre for him being laid off after 12 years of working there.

Pierre likely has more actual gaming development experience than Bonnie Ross too so he's no clueless executive and it's weird he talks about as if Pierre was in the leadership team with Bonnie/Frankie/Etc before Halo Infinite launched (he was not). He only joined Halo Infinite and thus 343's core team in 2020? as Head of Production for Multiplayer, a year before the game released, after that messy E3 reveal and a messy development.

If Will was telling Pierre to switch to Unreal Engine then, firstly, it wouldn't have been Pierre's decision, secondly, if Pierre told him to shut up then he would have been right to do so because it would have literally been impossible for Pierre to switch Infinite to Unreal Engine 5 a year before Infinite released, Lmao.

Pierre was on the MCC team before joining the core team in 2020 and MCC used Unreal Engine but switching to Unreal Engine for everything is a huge task and the fact that this dude thinks Pierre didn't make a massive decision like that in 5 months of him having the ability to even make that decision means Pierre is cancer is a bit ridiculous.

Pierre literally led the team that fixed Master Chief Collection and is the only thing that all Halo fans think is brilliant (now) but didn't consider brilliant before Pierre took over and sorted that disaster out, not only sorted it out but added even more content to it and supported it for years (for free, I.E. no MTXs) and then he was shoved onto Infinite only a year before it launched.

It's frustrating, people literally got what they wanted, almost the entire leadership has been canned, half of the studio was fired, it is objectively like 50%+ an entirely new studio now just from the core developers alone and the leadership is like 80% new? Pierre has been Head of 343i for 2 whole years which is nothing in videogame development time.

How about instead of being so eager to rush to doom them already, we instead just wait and see? I honestly don't know what people want sometimes, they want change and they get change but then they still rush to say "nah fuck em" Lol. It's so easy to be pessimistic, not even saying to be optimistic but there's little reason to be pessimistic instead of just "no feelings"

Reason I'm optimistic is because Pierre proved his leadership skills with MCC already.

The constant mentioning of Bungie is funny considering how many veteran Halo employees have left Bungie also but that's not a problem. However, one of the veteran Bungie employees is currently being blamed for all of Bungie's issues (Pete Parsons) so u'know, the old guard isn't always great or rather, doesn't always remain great, stop holding "veterans" up to God-like status and dismissing anyone new, Lol.

Also Unreal Engine 4 was well known as being bad for open-world titles, Josh Sawyer actually had a post about this once when defending Creation Engine, he mentioned how Unreal Engine 4 didn't have a thing called partitioning which helps a lot when creating an open world, Unreal Engine 5 does have partitioning but Unreal Engine 5 released 4 months after Halo Infinite.

It would totally be understandable if Unreal Engine 4 didn't make sense for Halo back then, especially Halo Infinite, but now Unreal Engine 5 with its upgrades does make sense for Halo, especially if they continue with the open-world approach. What we can say for certain is it definitely made absolutely zero sense to switch Halo Infinite to Unreal Engine a year or two before release, Lol.

I have no doubt the previous leadership had issues (despite this guy oddly praising them and then blasting them at the same time) but his criticisms on Pierre come across as not making much sense, Pierre would have had no say in making Infinite on Unreal Engine 4. Pierre was not in the leadership team until 2022. Pierre is known as the guy who fixed MCC. Pierre didn't join Infinite's team until a year or two before its release.

Pierre IS the guy who decided to switch to Unreal Engine...Bit weird to blast him for not switching to Unreal Engine (when he didn't even have the ability to do so) and ignore that he is the guy who has switched to Unreal Engine (within 2 years of being in the position to do so). Probably more like ~1.5 years considering it would have taken some months to make that Unreal Engine 5 demo.

I'll give Pierre a chance to actually release a single game under his leadership first before rushing to blast him for things that don't make sense. I don't believe this dude can make an fully accurate comment on his leadership after experiencing it for only 4-5 months when Pierre was in the middle of reshuffling the studio and then being told to layoff hundreds of employees.

Meh. Loved playing Halo back in the Bungie days. it's been a very lackluster mediocre franchise since 343, so can't say im particularly excited, kinda don't care what happens to Halo at this point.

Depends, if Internal engines arent as reliable as 3rd party engines and the game suffers for it, than its actually a good thing that devs can use proven tech and master whats reliable than waste resources on training and building engines we don't know will work correctly. 

It doesnt bother me what engine they use, aslong as the game comes out correct and at the developers standards.