What you need to know
- A new report from YouTuber Sean W suggests that Halo Infinite’s battle royale codenamed “Tatanka” is switching to the Unreal Engine, and maybe even Halo itself.
- We exclusively unveiled Tatanka earlier this year as a “battle royale-lite” Halo game designed to appeal to a new audience.
- Since the departure of Halo leader Bonnie Ross, many fans have wondered what direction might be in store for Microsoft’s flagship shooter franchise.
- We’ve been researching Sean W’s rumors for the past week and can confirm some aspects of it for now.
Halo Infinite could undergo a major change of course, according to new reports that we can at least partially confirm for now.
Last year we exclusively revealed that Halo Infinite would be getting its own Battle Royale-esque codename Tatanka, in development between 343i and partner team Certain Affinity. Following the leak, CA released a statement confirming its deeper commitment to the Halo franchise, and last week the team stated that the team is doing “great work” on Halo Infinite.
Halo Infinite has been in a bit of an uproar lately. The live service has left a lot to be desired, and 343i has struggled to get back to the necessary pace of updates that live service shooters generally enjoy from competitors like Fortnite, Valorant, and Apex Legends. Blizzard is also launching Overwatch 2 this week, putting further pressure on Halo Infinite to keep up.
The game’s highly anticipated Forge mode is coming later this year, but the third season of content has been delayed until spring 2023, and season four is coming even later, of course. In conversations with 343i employees past and present who wished to remain anonymous, Halo Infinite’s internal Slipspace Engine is responsible for many of the issues with the game’s ongoing development. Two separate sources described the boot status of Slipspace’s developer tools as “nonexistent”. Descriptions paint a bleak picture for contractors and new 343i employees, who had to work with a “difficult” engine that lacked documentation and pipeline maturity. Therefore, these recent rumors may not come as a surprise.
Report: A Change of Course for Halo
Last week, YouTuber Sean W shared a video detailing some of the rumors he’s heard about Halo Infinite, in addition to some speculation about what could be going on in the future. At its core, Sean W reported that Halo’s Tatanka Battle Royale-esque mode may be transitioning to the Unreal Engine. If it wasn’t already there, it could mean that much of the work already done on Slipspace will have to be halted.
Initially I wrote off the report. It didn’t make much sense to drop more than 2 years of work on Tatanka to transfer it all to a new engine, but after talking to Sean W and doing some digging of our own, it certainly seems more and more like Tatanka is either dumping Slipspace, or was never on Slipspace from the start.
Information I received earlier in the year during the original Tatanka leak suggested that the game should include Halo Infinite user-generated content systems in addition to the progress of Halo Infinite itself. At first glance, switching to a new engine might conflict with the design goal of including Halo Infinite content, which would persist entirely on a separate engine. But information we’ve received may point to a broader change of direction for the Halo franchise.
It seems that Halo is indeed gearing up for a wider move to the Unreal Engine, known for games like Gears of War, Fortnite and many others. Sean W’s report was also confirmed by: Jeremy Penter of ACG, as well as some of our own resources. I wanted to gather more details in an effort to paint a more complete picture of what’s going on with Halo right now before making a report, but here’s what we know so far.
Some details about the concrete plan remain vague, we have a tentative indication that this change may also extend across the entire franchise, not just Tatanka, with 343i gearing up to explore the franchise’s future. With 343i founder Bonnie Ross and Slipspace architect David Berger no longer with the company, it seems the studio is eager to explore new ways to adapt to the rapid pace of development in the shooting service game world. Moving to a more popular engine with mature tools, and perhaps more importantly, a high level of experience from the game developers, could be the key to shaping the future of Halo.
At the moment, however, it doesn’t seem like there’s any real indication that Halo Infinite itself is phasing out. Development on Forge doesn’t stop, and neither does development on Season 3 or 4.
Speculation: Why This Might Be a Good Thing?
Halo Infinite’s live service just wasn’t ready when the game launched last year to rave reviews from fans and media alike. While there were concerns about the relatively anemic array of maps, modes, and progression, everyone seemed eager to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt – the company that pioneered the idea of a console service game would have nailed Halo Infinite, right? Right?
Fast forward to now, and we know that Halo Infinite’s live service just wasn’t ready. Six-month seasons are an outlier in an industry where service games often do one month seasons, with new battle passes filled with cosmetics that give a sense of progression and reward, while keeping the competitive balance intact. Halo Infinite’s seasonal updates were also a bit lacking, with minimal amounts of cards and new features compared to other competing games.
At the moment, however, it doesn’t seem like there’s any real indication that Halo Infinite itself is phasing out. Development on Forge doesn’t stop, and neither does development on Season 3 or 4.
Locking up a singular story as to why this is difficult to say the least. Some of the people I’ve spoken to blame former game director Chris Lee, while others blame studio head Bonnie Ross. The one constant area of irritation, however, falls on the Slipspace Engine, which has become somewhat infamous in the commentary surrounding Halo Infinite for its difficult implementation.
I know from information and conversations I’ve had about Tatanka that the game should include Halo Infinite, and Certain Affinity has received Halo Infinite’s source code to build out the implementation. We know from leaks in the Halo API some snippets of how Tatanka is intended to be played, although if the game does indeed change engines, as rumored, it’s essentially a guess how much of the original plan will be kept.
Rather than representing the continuation of Halo Infinite, it’s possible that Tatanka could eventually evolve into the next phase of Halo itself as a completely separate, standalone experience. On any other engine, it might mess up Microsoft’s original plan to include the Forge map tools, but they could still convey Halo Infinite’s cosmetics using Halo’s social APIs.
Microsoft registered the trademark “The Endless” a few months ago, which looked like some sort of campaign DLC for Halo Infinite. There have been a few possible suggestions that The Endless could also shift to Unreal Engine and become a standalone experience in its own right, though we can’t confirm anything about The Endless at this point.
Unreal Engine is widely used in the gaming industry in general, and Microsoft’s in-house teams, from The Coalition to Undead Labs, have a vast wealth of experience with the tools. Microsoft and Certain Affinity also both have internal tools and pipelines for working with the Unreal Engine that have already been set up, at a time when Slipspace is rumored to be problematic to work with at best. Microsoft’s use of contractors also potentially exacerbates Slipspace’s problems, as training new staff to use the tools used by literally no one else in the game industry is bound to create a speed shortage – and speed is definitely the key. key in today’s live service game world.
Of course, I’d caution to take all this with a grain of salt until we get some official statement from Microsoft, or some form of concrete physical evidence. But as the saying goes, there is no smoke without fire, and right now there is a lot of smoke.
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