343 Industries Boss Bonnie Ross has revealed why she and her team opted to leave behind the old engine of the Halo series and create a brand-new one from scratch, called the Slipspace engine, which it showed off a little bit of last E3.
According to Ross, the series’ previous engine was difficult to work with, particularly for creatives. Further, it was causing development issues that the team didn’t want to have to face every single time it needed to bang out a new Halo.
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Ross also notes that with the Slipspace engine, 343 Industries “can do more with Halo,” and begin to build the future of the franchise.
“The Halo engine is a very technical, engineering-focused engine,” said Ross while speaking to IGN. It’s super hard for creatives to work in. It’s super hard for a lot of creatives to work in, at one time. We did a ton of work, on Halo 4, on the engine, to get it to look… I think it looked amazing for being on the last generation on the last year of the platform.
“We promised the team we would do the work on the tools, and pipeline, for Halo 5, so it wasn’t such a challenging environment to develop on. You know… ‘best-laid plans’… we didn’t do that, and the team, rightfully so, basically called us on it.”
Ross continued, outlining what the engine change means for the future of Halo:
“One; we want to do more with Halo… and two; we want to have a team that can do their best creative work within our engine. So it really was taking the time off and, as we announced the Slipspace Engine last year, it is all to make sure we’re building the platform for the future of Halo.”
Elsewhere in the same interview with IGN, Ross coined Halo Infinite as a “spirtual reboot” for the franchise, and also revealed why its development is taking longer than previous entries.
Halo Infinite is in development for Xbox One, PC, and reportedly next-gen Xbox as well. For more coverage on the highly-anticipated shooter, click here.
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