A couple years ago, there was a Reddit thread of the internal troubles at 343I with reviews on Glassdoor. Back then it could be taken with a grain of salt, because it’s Glassdoor, but now it is pretty indicative of what was shipped.
https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/ghgzzo/insight_into_the_production_of_halo_infinite_from/
Apparently the reclaimer saga was scraped because it “wasn’t Halo enough”.
Worst desiscsion ever made. That’s why everything took so long. That’s why it took 6 years.
I remember, there were also a few videos on TY about it. I never once doubted it.
imgur. com/a/HoycBGk
Even Cortana seems to have no more desire to appear in a Halo-Production.
Yeah, 6 years, a $500 million budget, and a “return to form” art style, all gone completely south because of a myriad of massive issues, including but NOT limited to:
At this point, Halo Infinite can easily place a spot in the top 5 worst game launches ever or even top 10 worst games ever! I could even place it at #1 in my top 10 worst games ever for all I care! And what are the blind 343 fanboys going to do about it? Either nothing or call us the “problem”, further exacerbating the issues.
And now, looking at this, I’ve always had the suspicion that there were internal troubles at 343. Fast forward to 2022, and my suspicion is now a reality.
There was an article by Jason Schreier on Bloomberg shortly after launch describing lots of internal issues during development as well.
The reddit post is over 2 years old, but the following statement nails the actual situation:
“Speaking of, there’s the tech debt, which is probably better summarized as " technical bankruptcy” in 343’s case: a now decades-old, swollen codebase littered with thousands of duct-tape fixes and a development infrastructure so flimsy that it more frequently hurts productivity than helping it. There were times when the entire studio was unable to check in new code or content for weeks. Communication is absolutely atrocious at 343."
Already 2 years ago it was known, that the development tools are abysmal and absolutely nothing changed. So if the game is produced with such “limited ressources”, how can they fix any major technical issue at all? Even BTB does not seem to be fixable, how should it work with desync etc.? Why didnt they take their time to update their tools with their engine? And if the tools are such a known mess, who had the great idea to change the whole staff every 18 month, so no one can learn how to deal with it properly?
And we shall pay for overpriced shop items to support such a technical disaster of a game? It becomes more and more rediculous. Yeah, Battlefield 2042 bugs are more obvious, but a nuclear meltdown of a release cannot justify this _______ (insert your rant here).
The stuff they are talking about there IS the engine. In all likelihood they did put in the time in reworking the trashheap of the old engine and that’s what prompted it being renamed in the first place. The unfortunate truth however is that all of these hotfixes that make the old codebase hard to work with have been added for a reason.
So what often happens when you throw old code out and do a clean reimplementation is that some of the things the old/dirty code did is simply overlooked. It does get easier to work with but in the beginning it does have issues. We have seen similar things with the first releases of new Game Engines like UE as well. They mature over time.
It’s likely that the Reddit comment is from the time when they were discussing switching to Unreal Engine. In hindsight this might have been the better decission however with the obvious caveat that in all likelihood several of the things that people have come to expect from the games (physics behaviors in particular come to mind) would have changed.
Imagine Infinite running on UE5 though.
Yeah, UE5 is quite impressive in the Tech Demos so far. But you also can see how much is still being worked on - e.g. Lumen going from a software implementation to hardware acceleration between the Valley Demo and Matrix Demo.
I personally do not like the cartoony artstyle/design (however you want to call it). If Halo would follow a realistic artstyle with UE5 or even UE4, it would be reason enough to replay the game besides some issues. But the game has so many technical issues, that we should be thankful, that even the cartoony artstyle works… somehow.
It is just one of many points that fits to “wasted potential”. But it is cheap and people will still play the game, so why invest too much in graphics if the name “Halo” is a self-runner…
I’m going to guess you also like halo 5 quite a bit?
Maybe it’s your favorite or not but you at least like it?
I hate halo 5 but I completely agree with basically everything you said about infinite.
Infinite is no successor to H3.
I feel like the handshake meme is quite appropriate for classic purists and halo 5 lovers who dislike infinite lmao.
343I, risking it all again chasing big ideas, then failing hard again going half-baked.
It wouldn’t play like Halo though, once they found out there is no way to really make a proper Halo game on that engine they did a 180.
They also built a new game engine. That took a few years, then they made Halo with it. Overall, I’m glad they made that choice.
Falling in mid air and changing directions don’t feel the same anymore. Halo 5 was the only other Halo to have slides and infinite is different to that too. Overall I wish they stayed on whatever old engine they had because the same plays don’t work anymore. Jumping over people doesn’t feel the same. Yeah. It’s smooth in some cases with the slide I’ll give it that but doesn’t really feel Halo.
I’ll comment on a few of your points:
The game may be in your top 10 worst games ever, but it’s already won a few game of the year awards.
Given the constant discussion that H4, H5 and Infinite “don’t play like Halo” anyway - how bad could it have been? There are loads of games playing completely differently. We also don’t know whether or not that was the deciding factor.
Of course it’s easier to have your new game play similar to an old one if they share a lot of the underlying technology. On the other hand going with an established commercial engine that is used throughout the industry has it’s advantages as well. Realistically speaking we’d be talking about UE4 (UE5 is still not ready for prime time).
In hindsight it might have been easier to tweak the movement mechanics in Unreal Engine, rather than deal with all the headaches they (and therefore we) have now. It is doubtful though that we’ll ever find out what exactlly was behind the decission. I doubt it was MS influence, given that several Microsoft Studios use Unreal Engine.
You don’t get “Craig” The Brute memes or Dominos Pizza throwing shade from a smooth and focused development lol.
The Dominos Pizza one was hilarious.
“You say that like there’s a second possibility?” - Cortana, Halo 4