Inside the Development of Halo Infinite - Jason Schreier article

[CallMeCraig]

@clashfan

It’s funny alot of the same arguments about engine here was probably discussed at 343. Except those people have expertise to backup their arguments. That’s why all large projects are a pain in the butt because everyone on the team has a valid opinion. I think that’s why it was so key for 343 to bring someone from the outside to fix things. It’s almost a miracle we have good games.

i think the most important thing that came with Joe Staten is a lot of experience how Xbox management structure works and how to pull the levers to make arguments heard. Remember Staten worked on Crackdown 3, Flight Sim and now Halo Infinite. He also was at Bungie when Ed Fries put his job on the line to delay Halo 2 a year and make sure its great.

[Resist]

@Doncabesa

They have a game built on this engine, which they spent years rebuilding/fixing. It’s out, the plans are to update/enhance this engine. not completely rework the entire game into a new one they haven’t used before. Halo Infinite will be getting constant updates for a decade, and changing engines would put a solid two or more years dent into having anything come out. This argument makes no sense because it has 0% chance of ever happening. Fixing up/optimizing the slipspace engine is all they will do.

I don’t understand why so many here ha e a hard time understanding this lol.

[nrXic]

@Stefrah

Ha, or its the real world vs this thread, and I am merely the emissary of reality?

Off this thread, the fact that Halo Infinite is not a visual stunner is the consensus opinion. Only here is this some kind of heresy.

I’m playing on my Xbox One and am stunned in many respects. The framerate being seemingly locked at 30, the image quality, and detailed texture work are really good for a title on the base Xbox One.

In some respects, I think other titles do things better (characters, employing motion blur, some aspects of lighting). And in some areas it’s equally comparable to other big titles.

Every single game has their pros and cons, and many times these are purposeful. Every game balances fidelity, frame rate, resolution, and effects to get a balance that suits the game.

I’m sure you and most people already know this so I’m just saying it as a reminder because we do need to keep it in mind when evaluating this game. This engine facilitates gameplay so well. The game feels incredible to play. This is the one unanimous sentiment and we need to realize how much the engine plays a role in that. What decisions in regards to the graphics were made to facilitate this. Let’s not forget that Halo 4 looks spectacular at the cost of the physics engine. Such a sacrifice was not made here.

Now Unreal Engine 4 is an interesting option but a lot of work would need to be done to get it to feel right (input latency has been an issue for a long time) and that sort of work would be a massive bottleneck on the creation of the game.

But when I think about it I can’t think of an Unreal Engine 4 game that looks this good on the Xbox One.

Unreal Engine 5 could be a different matter, but that wasn’t an option back then. Also, as amazing as the Matrix game looks, performance seems to be an issue.

The other thing I want to say is that when we compare Infinite to other games, we are comparing them to engines that have had many iterations of upgrades. Frostbite, id Tech 7, IW 8.0, Unreal Engine 4 and now 5 for Fortnite, Dunia Engine (which is a version of CryEngine), Decima (which is 8 years old and improved over many shipped titles), etc.

I do imagine the SS engine improving much like how UE4 improved over the life of Fortnite. Nothing major but improvements nonetheless. But I do see a lot of potential in improvements for DX12U video cards and Series consoles.

Not to inflate expectations, but we did see the big performance upgrades that Asobo were able to accomplish for Flight Sim a year after it’s release. So anything is possible. So it’s not like character models will be different, or things like motion blur added, but maybe shadow draw distances will be increased, frame rate and resolution are more locked to certain numbers, etc.

Honestly what matters most is if Slipspace can accomplish what it was set out to do. Be flexible enough so it could be easy to add new content. Look at Apex Legends and Fortnite. They do what they need to do well but aren’t the pinnacle of videogame graphics. Both of those games could look better and more comparable to AAA titles. But they don’t need to because their players care more about gameplay and their graphics are designed to serve that purpose.