With the recent announcement of a change in graphics engine for the Halo saga, it is Epic Games which has once again established itself as a reason to reduce development costs in video games.
Epic Games is not only Fortnite. If the studio has managed to become essential in the world of video games, it is not so much for the success of its Battle Royale with tens of millions of players as for its graphics engine which is today the leader in the industry .
This engine is the Unreal Engine. It can be found in almost all of the great video game productions of recent years. Of Final Fantasy has Hogwart Legacypassing through Gears of War or even Star Wars: Jedi Survivorfew licenses still benefit from an in-house graphics engine. The reason is simple: costs are thus reduced. And it is this choice that the license makes today Halo.
Reduce development costs at all costs
With the arrival of the Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series, the industry has had to face ever higher development costs, not helped by galloping inflation and a shrinking video game market. Developing an exclusive engine therefore has the main disadvantage of requiring a much longer production time, because it must be able to evolve and be suitable for all existing or future technologies, such as Ray-tracing.
Above all, this also means that the developers who will work on a game must also specialize on a very specific engine, where, in essence, the Unreal Engine, like others like Unity, are tools known and used in schools or independent studios. Epic Games has also taken care to make it easier to use, in addition to reducing costs for developers by making many resources free or with royalties that are activated from a significant volume of sales.
We saw it with Days Gonea major production from Sony, whose exclusive game engine required the game to undergo lengthy development, a tenfold increase in budget, and an economic result that fell short of expectations, canceling its sequel.
A psychodrama that did not escape Xbox and 343 Industries, its studio dedicated to the development of the franchise Halo – since renamed to Halo Studios.
On October 6, Halo Studios announced that from now on, Halo would use the Unreal Engine for its next games. In a presentation video, the developers explain that they have been working for several months on porting the various components of the series (assets, gameplay elements, online modules, etc.) to Unreal Engine 5.
The failure of Halo Infinite extinguished all ambitions
“A new era” punctuated by the opportunistic intervention of Lenny Simon, Unreal Engine licensing director at Epic Games, with a smile on his face: “When I first heard about the passage of Halo on Unreal Engine, my first thought was that it was going to be hard to keep it a secret.”
He was not wrong, since the information was leaked at the very beginning of 2024.
The reason for this change is therefore economic, but above all it follows the infernal development of Halo Infinite. Not only did the game disappoint fans, but it also enjoyed more than measured success for a license that presented itself as the ambassador of Xbox. The fault is its engine specially developed for the occasion: the Slipspace Engine. Although equipped with the latest fashionable technologies, it caused many problems for developers, since it was necessary to start from scratch and review certain ambitions along the way.
We finally come back to the problems already experienced by Days Gone in 2018: after years of development and a studio on its last legs, making such a super production profitable becomes impossible. The same goes for Dragon Age Inquisition et Mass Effect Andromedaweighed down by an engine which was not made for the open world, and whose developments were chaotic, all against the backdrop of a pitched battle between DICE, creator of the engine for Electronic Arts, and Bioware, at the origin of these two sagas.
Relying on the Unreal Engine therefore allows you to diversify your recruitment, and above all to rely on the thousands of studios that have already touched the engine. The resources are numerous, and Epic Games is very present to help developers in the event of a problem.
A hegemony of Epic Games which raises questions
The power of the Unreal Engine indeed makes things easier. The situation of Halo shows it: even under an existing engine, Halo stay Halo. In its atmosphere, its gameplay, its details, the franchise retains what fans appreciate.
“I think fans can be very excited about an Unreal Engine-powered Halo because of the possibilities that the engine offers,” says Marcellis Wentz, head of animation at Halo Studios.
Same observation for Elizabeth Van Wyck, COO of Halo Studios: “Before, we really had to focus on building an engine, supporting it, and being both a technology company and a studio.”
The future of the franchise therefore depends on this change of engine. Although it may seem trivial and expected, it is nevertheless the first step towards a more effective and significant diversification of the series, which will be able to rely on studios mastering the Unreal Engine, but which until now could not have the license because of his past choices.
It is also rumored that a remake of the first opus using Unreal Engine 5 is in the works, but also spin-offs, without forgetting a sequel to Halo Infinite. It remains to be seen if, with the promises behind them and controller in hand, players will see the difference, and that is the challenge for Epic Games and Halo Studios.
If an engine used by a large majority of the industry therefore proves to be a good solution, we can nevertheless deplore the end of in-house graphics engines which cuts short all ambitions.
However, there are still publishers and manufacturers resisting the trend – at least in part. This is the case of Sony with the Decima Engine which we see in Horizon or Death Strandingbut also Ubisoft with the Snowdrop Engine seen in The Division et Star Wars Outlawsas well as the Anvil, used by Assassin’s Creed.
Because if an in-house engine has its faults, particularly financial, once mastered, it makes it much easier to adapt to certain development constraints. In the case of Ubisoft, its two engines made it possible to deploy the open world model dear to the French publisher on several different franchises. Same observation at Rockstar with its Rockstar Advanced Game Engine adapted to the gigantic universes that we can explore in Red Dead Redemption 2 or the future Grand Theft Auto 6. In the case of the Decima Engine, it is designed for the Playstation, and therefore uses all the power of the machine.
Arguments that are understandable, but hardly audible at a time of cost reductions. Epic Games’ solution therefore turns out to be more economical and practical, even if it does not push innovation.
