With Halo Infinite getting delayed significantly from its previous release date of December 2020,, and after the disastrous gameplay reveal, it doesn’t take a genuis to figure out that there’s bound to be some development issues 343 Industries has to overcome.
It seems we now have more info regarding the game’s development thanks to a former Halo Infinite dev named Eric Lin. The video (which is in Chinese) can be viewed here, and there’s also a summary via ResetEra poster random0_point:
A former 343i employee (Skybox Artist) shared some insight on Halo Infinite. (video is in mandarin, so I tried to translate his words into English)
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His overall feeling on Halo Infinite: “In fact, I think the finished product will still be great. The story is a big improvement, and the gameplay is much richer, though the development cycle is too long. Don’t expect it to be an epoch-making masterpiece.”
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The company executives were overly ambitious. They wanted to make Halo Infinite a semi-open world game, so the engine needed to be changed significantly. They had to make the game and develop the engine at the same time (Due to engine defects, many workflows were not ideal, though they are now much more improved than before).
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Last year’s disastrous demo was because many engine features were not fully implemented at that time.
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For a variety of reasons, the game content compared to the original idea has been cut (same for multiplayer). “This has led to some things I’ve made over the years that no one will probably ever see.”
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The team at 343 (especially the low-level employees) works very hard, and many of them have experienced working overtime until the early hours of the morning in the past few years. (Crunch confirmed 🙁
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Now he works at Certain Affinity, still doing some HI outsourcing work, and he feels good to be out of 343’s baggage.
That doesn’t seem as bad as initially thought, but of course, we don’t know the full details. In other Halo Infinite news, 343 says they are working to expand beta testing for the shooter “as soon as possible.”
Or maybe you were underqualified/undertalented? It’s easy to cast blame, once you’ve left.
OR maybe its Halo hasn’t had a good game since Halo:Reach and 343 and MS need to stop trying to redefine the wheel just so that Halo can be known as a “MS” game or a 343i game and not a bungie game…..Maybe stop trying to tick every single box hoping that it will make the game sell and focus on making an actual good Halo game. Its only been 11 years since a good Halo game happened
Halo 4 and 5 were good including the Halo 2 remaster. So that’s 3 games. Now were they great maybe, maybe not. Halo 4 campaign was great. Halo 5 multiplayer was great.
343i didn’t make Halo 2. But yeah, they did make the disastrous Halo 2 Remaster. Not sure why you would bring that up to try and argue the idea that 343i is very capable though. The game was literally hard crashing even 3 years after its release, it was that bad. Anything they touch turns to mediocrity.
Halo 4 and 5 are passable but nowhere close to the critically acclaimed games that Bungie made. And passable is not acceptable for a once top tier franchise. Just like Mass Effect Andromeda is an utter embarrassment to this day when compared to any of the original trilogy.
You’re a real dick. Halo fanboy bs.
“Last year’s disastrous demo was because many engine features were not fully implemented at that time.”
Wow, but wait, there are literally Xbots that still deny it was a disaster, even after the 12 month delay lol.
I never hold a developer to delays, that’s fine as long as the game comes out ok. But clearly Halo-i was not up to the high standards. It’s very good they delayed it unlike what Cyberpunk did.
Yaaaawn!!! Nothing new hear that we did not know already. When has an exclusive MS studio created a great AAA story based game? Never? Okay, the original Halo and barely the original Gears of War. Did MS even own those studios at that time?
Nevertheless, if MS had release that trash they demoed as Halo Infinite, that Cyberjunk2077 would not have looked as bad..and its a junk of a game. Couple of things this guys stated that I have issue with as to him telling the truth or just a bitter ex-employee.
1. How can the development cycle be too long and the demo looked like hot ****? Then they extended the cycle to fix it. Makes no sense.
2. Making Halo a semi-open world is not overly ambitious. Making it fully open would be progress.
3. Content gets cut all the time from game so that’s not an issue. Seems like their programmers not that talented
4. Low level employees? He must have been one. Seems like someone clearly has a beef with the higher ups.
5. If this ranting is true, it just means what we have always known, stick to multiplayer game MS, you suck at the rest.