Former 343i employee speaks on crunch, cut content, overambitious in Halo Infinite development

A former Skybox Artist from Halo Infinite development studio 343 Industries spoke out about his experiences with the company. His comments were all translated from a video in Mandarin by random0_point. He talks about how the executives were overly ambitious in their goals, as they wanted Halo Infinite to be a semi-open world game. The engine needed to be changed significantly, which meant developing the game and engine simultaneously, which led to the disastrous demo showcased last year since many engine features were not fully implemented at that time.

There was also plenty of cut content from the original game concepts, including multiplayer and the former dev laments: “This has led to some things I’ve made over the years that no one will probably ever see.” Crunch was also very common among low-level employees, and he states that many of them worked overtime into the early hours of morning for years.

Despite his experiences with developing Halo Infinite, his overall opinion of the game is mostly positive. “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,” he states. He now works for Certain Affinity and, though still doing some Halo Infinite outsourcing work, says that he’s doing better now than working for 343i directly.