‘Halo 5’ Doesn’t Share Much Tech With ‘Halo 2 Anniversary’
Halo 2 Anniversary for Halo: The Master Chief Collection is being built alongside Halo 5: Guardians for the Xbox One but that doesn’t mean they are using the same technology. 343 Industries Franchise Director Frank O’Connor gave a little insight into the differences between this year’s Halo remake and next year’s brand new title.
In response to a poster on NeoGAF wondering if the Halo 2 Anniversary engine will be similar to Halo 5, O’Connor stepped in to drop some knowledge.
“Not technically,” he said of the comparison. “It’s a blend of legacy and some proprietary code. [Halo 5]is on a different schedule and couldn’t be branched for this.”
Halo 2 Anniversary is running on the original Halo 2 engine but with a HD graphics engine laid on top. The result is that Xbox One owners will be able to switch instantly between the original Xbox graphics and the new HD graphics for the campaign. However, 343 Industries is trying to get Halo 2 to support 1080p while the multiplayer and the other three games will all support the current benchmark resolution.
There are six Halo 2 multiplayer maps being remade for The Master Chief Collection with Ascension and Coagulation being the two announced so far. The other major difference with Halo 2 Anniversary is how the cut-scenes are handed. The in-game cut-scenes are being remastered into CGI cut-scenes by Blur Studios.
As O’Conner noted on NeoGAF, the only other Halo game that did not use in-game cutscenes was the real-time strategy spin-off title, Halo Wars.
O’Conner also dismissed rumors of an Xbox 360 version of Halo: The Master Chief Collection caused by an errant listing on Amazon Canada.
“Error. There’s no 360 version that doesn’t involve lots of old boxes and some imagination,” he said in reference to the listing.
He did add some praise to one of the remade Halo 2 maps though.
Played a mid-polish version of one of the remake maps yesterday. Dat water. Dem rocks. Dat sky.
Really coming along.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection will be released to the Xbox One on November 11. In addition to Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3 and Halo 4 it will also include access to the Halo 5 multiplayer beta that will go live in December. It will also include the Halo: Nightfall live action series that introduces a critical new character for Halo 5: Guardians in Agent Locke.
