It's no secret Xbox's first-party studios help each other out from time to time and it seems the Gears of War developer The Coalition might have been quietly assisting 343 Industries with Halo Infinite.
According to some findings on LinkedIn profiles of individuals who previously worked at The Coalition, the Canadian-based developer has been helping bring Master Chief's next big outing to life.
A VFX artist says they were working mainly on Halo Infinite's cinematics and campaign, and there's also a recently departed level artist who said they worked on the project as well while at The Coalition.
Since Halo Infinite got delayed last August, Microsoft has seemingly brought in some other developers and companies to support the team at 343. A week before the delay it was revealed how Sperasoft was assisting with the project.
What are your own thoughts about The Coalition possibly helping out with Halo Infinite? Leave a comment below.
[source comicbook.com]
Comments 9
Why does it feel like 343 couldn't find their rear end if they had both hands and a silent cartographer?
How incomplete WAS this thing when Phil was 2 months away from happily shipping it??
@NEStalgia Probably similar to Cyberpunk 2077, a bit too incomplete for most end users (but just fine for current gen and the master race). I expected CP2077 to release unfinished (based on what CDPR has done before) and shape up over the coming years. I'm actually finding it in better shape than expected (only played it on XSX, but I've installed it on my X1 for funsies). The issue is, as always, choice. Making it for all or just for the privileged? I'm happy to read that they make use of their resources and I'm fine with waiting a bit longer. CP2077 is not a bad game, but it really bombed thanks to X1/PS4-support. It should be way higher on the charts, but I guess most are stuck on last gen. I don't see M$ skipping out on X1, and the verticality is needed anyway for the diff configs of PCs… it'll be just fine (sooner or later, just moderate expectations and get to that backlog!)
Something was not entirely right at 343 but it has been solved by recent changes, probably. To delay Halo Infinite was the right thing to do and Xbox One support will be like playing a PC game on older hardware. I've played Halo, 2 and 3 this far and will play the others before Infinite. I'm intrigued because the goal seems to be combining the best of the series. Also, I enjoyed Gears of War (Ultimate Edition) and it's much better than I expected, it's not just a shooter.
While I do think this is a further sign of problems at 343, this is also not that uncommon. The reality is that certain roles aren't always needed through the whole development cycle and one advantage of having multiple studios is that individual staff or small teams can briefly assist and support other studios at times. Sony and Nintendo do this too
@Insightful Halo 5's multiplayer was praised and Halo Infinite's mp will be free-to-play so you aren't saying nonsense but I expect a good campaign, too.
@Insightful Halo is weird in that it has such a split market. Quake ended up that way too (but went all MP. Halo tried that and it didn't go over well.)
It seems like to some of us the SP/coop is everything. Personally I couldn't care less about the MP, I've played it for maybe an hour once in Halo 3 I guess. It's all about that campaign (as it was the campaign of the original that attracted us to begin with.) And yet the series is probably most famous for it's competitive modes. It's awkward when a series starts to straddle two entirely unrelated genres for different audiences....kind of sucks to be a producer on such a thing. Maybe the best route is split it into two series, one for the campaign, one for the online. But then you look at what happened to Unreal with Unreal Tournament and Quake with Arena, and we never saw an Unreal or Quake campaign again.
@Insightful Yeah, I don't doubt that Halo MP is very good in general, it definitely won a big audience. It's just awkward that it's kind of two distinct games, at this point. Halo still comes from a time when the game was the campaign, and the multiplayer was a bonus mode rather than being designed from the ground up as an online shooter like R6: Siege or Battlefield. So when the MP got so popular it became its own thing.
But when they tried to focus on the MP in 5....that kind of backfired. I kind of wonder if splitting Infinite into two separate releases might have been a good move after all.
Personally I don't really do online shooters. I did Quake semi-competitively back in the day....I did Q2 but never got into it. Noodled with HL online and UT, but it all felt so samey. Splatoon's the first online shooter that really got me hooked since Quake. It might have a lot to do with the gyro controls, though. Still upset MS didn't finally add gyros to the XSX so we could finally get gyro aiming as a standard in shooters.
343 should be shuttered halo 5 sucked sorry to say it was my least favorite halo game…..and i get the feeling 343 is way over their heads right now, and i still feel that infinite should be next gen only and only because of the BASE xbox one which at launch was trash….the base x1 will be the lowest common denominator and so under powered it will hold the game back…..
Developers assisting in development with fellow in-house developers is common practice (check the credits for every Ubisoft game for confirmation), as is outsourcing to external partners, so I really don't think there's much to glean from this, even considering Infinite's delay and Microsoft roping other studios into the fold.
The article's headline does make me wonder what a Halo game from The Coalition would look like, though, and likewise a Gears game from 343? If Microsoft wanted to shake up their two biggest franchises they could switch the developers around for a couple of experimental spin-offs. Perhaps a Halo cover-shooter playing as another ODST from The Coalition, and a Gears FPS from 343?
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