Halo's rumoured Unreal Engine 5 switch makes sense – but it's still a tragedy
There’s a new trend in video game development. Game studios, even large ones, are binning their own bespoke engines and moving to Unreal Engine instead. We’ve seen it with CDPR and The Witcher, we’ve seen it with Crystal Dynamics and Tomb Raider, and now it’s happening to another huge franchise: Halo.
343 Industries, the beleagured steward of the franchise, faced a lot of criticism upon the initial reveal of Halo Infinite, largely over its graphics. Despite significant improvements up to and beyond the game’s launch, it’s clear that the game didn’t live up to expectations and now the developer is ‘all but starting from scratch’ on the next Halo game, with at least 95 developers fired and a switch to Unreal Engine 5 planned – according to a Bloomberg report.
It’s this story that dominates this week’s Digital Foundry Direct discussions, with John Linneman, Alex Battaglia and special guest Sam Machkovech expressing their views on the matter.
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