Switching up an internal engine in favor of the industry-standardized Unreal Engine is not new, as we’ve seen it several times in the past. Many triple-A titles have undergone an engine change, including the highly-acclaimed The Witcher 4.
A few months ago, Certain Affinity posted a tweet about deepening its relationship with 343 to evolve Halo new ways. The tweet also linked several job listings, including Lead Technical Artist and Senior Technical Animator.
— Certain Affinity (@CertainAffinity) April 12, 2022 The responsibilities of these roles mentioned “in-depth knowledge of the Unreal game engine for setting up characters, control rigs, simulation, and blueprints.” One other point mentioned the research & development of new technology that may require the use of Maya and Unreal. Per the job postings, the company is clearly looking for developers already well-versed in the Unreal engine. Industry Insider ACG recently tweeted confirming that many of his sources are talking about Halo’s switch to Unreal engine and that it has already been decided internally.
Unreal is a great choice. https://t.co/8KxMqREWIk — ACG (@JeremyPenter) October 2, 2022 But why would such a huge company ditch its own engine for an Unreal engine? Because it makes the most sense. The Unreal Engine 5 is currently the leading engine in the market, with the most up-to-date features that help developers create beautiful yet optimized games. A popular Polish video game studio called Flying Wild Hog (FWH) also ditched its in-house engine, RoadHog Engine, in favor of the updated Unreal engine. FWH will be utilizing Unreal Engine 5 for all its future games. Many players over on the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit are still skeptical about the confirmation from ACG, with one of them saying, “This guy was wrong about AC so going to take this with a grain of salt.” In any case, given the optimization issues that Halo Infinite faced, the idea of changing to a more stable engine is not outlandish. Perhaps this change could boost the next Halo game back up to the popularity level it once was.
