With last night's official announcement that Halo is coming to PlayStation, Xbox's previously exclusive holy trinity has officially stepped beyond the platform's walled garden, which has all been part of the plan for quite some time of course. With Xbox boss Sarah Bond telling us just the other day that exclusive games are a thing of the past.
With Halo: Campaign Evolved though, they're not only making the jump to PlayStation, but also leaving the old Slipspace engine behind, in its place the Unreal Engine 5 roars. And what about AI? As many of you know, Microsoft has been banging that drum hard for some months now, and how it will or in some instances already have, been implemented as a part of daily work at Microsoft, on all levels.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the Halo: Campaign Evolved producer gave a somewhat mixed answer. Because even though he claims that humans have done most of the game, he also suggests that AI has been used to fill in the gaps.
"I want to be very clear ... People are creative. People make games. AI can improve workflows. It can do things for the game. But I want to be very specific and clear that the people are the ones who are creating the game, and there's an opportunity to improve a workflow, or something along those lines, we'll look at it again. It really should be additive to the creation of a game"
Greg Hermann, the game's director, was also asked about the use of AI during development and said:
"It's a tool in a toolbox. I may go a little off message here, but some of that gets very challenging when we look at how integrated AI is becoming within our tooling. We use Photoshop. There's generative fill, for example. The boundary lines can get a little fuzzy. I will say, though, again, to Damon's point, it really is about that creative spark that comes from people and improving just overall workflows"
In the end, Rolling Stone even got a more official statement from an anonymous Xbox rep, who said:
"There is no mandate to use generative AI in our game development, and that includes Halo: Campaign Evolved"
So in short, no real answers.
Do you think AI has been used during the development of Halo: Campaign Evolved?