Does Destiny 2 use the same engine as Halo?

No, Destiny 2 does not use the exact same proprietary game engine as the mainline Halo series. However, under the hood, the technology powering both epic FPS franchises shares common ancestry tracing back to Bungie‘s original "Blam!" Engine first utilized in Halo: Combat Evolved.

Over the past two decades, this original Halo engine has evolved down two separate pathways by the two studios which now shepherd the series:

1. Bungie – The Blam! Engine formed the foundation for Destiny‘s new Tiger Engine. Heavily customized yet retaining Halo‘s core "DNA" within its underlying architecture.
2. 343 Industries – Inheriting stewardship of Halo and the Blam! Engine, 343 has upgraded it over successive games leading to their brand new Slipspace Engine built for Halo Infinite.

So while all three of these engines have a shared origin, Tiger and Slipspace have followed their own unique evolutionary paths over 10+ years of independent development by Bungie and 343i.

The Origins of Destiny‘s Tiger Engine

After creating the enormously influential Halo series, Bungie split from Microsoft in 2007 to begin work on an mysterious new IP that would become Destiny. But they did not simply leave all their existing technology behind.

Bungie brought the core framework of their proprietary Blam! Engine with them, as software engineer Steve Cotton describes:

"We created the Tiger Engine because we wanted to preserve the part of the Blam! Engine that had the Halo DNA in it. And by Halo DNA I mean things like ‘30 seconds of fun‘…feeling really powerful, but still being easy to die. We wanted to keep those elements, because they were part of the feel of the console shooter we created."

So Tiger Engine retains the "Halo feel" encoded within Blam!‘s DNA while allowing massive leaps forward. According to Cotton, up to 75% of Destiny‘s underlying tech was entirely new compared to Blam!, enabling huge gains to memory management, streaming, efficiency, tools, and more.

Over years of dedicated evolution, Tiger transformed into a cutting-edge, robust engine tailored specifically for Destiny and its unique blend of FPS combat entwined with RPG progression, loot rewards, public events, and integrated multiplayer across massive virtual worlds.

Key Upgrades in Tiger Engine vs. Blam!

And these are just a few of many examples where Tiger represents a massive generational leap over the capabilities of the old Blam! tech Bungie originally created for Halo.

343 Industries Upgrades the Blam! Engine for New Halo Games

With Bungie off to new frontiers post-Halo Reach, stewardship of the Halo series passed to 343 Industries. And with it, 343 also inherited continued development of Bungie‘s Blam! Engine underlying each Halo game.

343‘s Frank O‘Connor described enhancing this engine as an iterative process across each new release:

"From Halo 4 to Halo 5 to Halo Infinite – they‘re all based on the original engine, but so much work has been done on them, that they‘re all very individual."

Let‘s examine some of 343‘s major engine upgrades across their Halo games leading up to Infinite:

Halo 4 – Brand new graphics and audio modules to leverage the Xbox 360‘s robust hardware. Cinematic features like facial capture mapping. And Campaign mission tracking/coordination tools.

Halo 5 – Further graphical enhancements and rendering upgrades like image-based lighting, new physically-based shading models for photoreal visuals, vastly improved cloth/hair simulation and materials rendering. Powerful new AI systems and squad behaviors.

Halo: MCC – Major under-the-hood work to fuse and modernize six different Halo engines across MCC, achieving 4K/HDR quality and 60+ FPS performance. Important learnings which fed into Infinite‘s Slipspace Engine.

And this lengthy heritage of iterative advancement from Combat Evolved‘s initial Blam! Engine culminates in…

Slipspace Engine – Built for Halo Infinite

Rather than continually building on prior legacy frameworks, 343 decided it was finally time for a revolutionary leap.

"We needed to start from the ground up on an entirely new engine to build the Halo we wanted without technical limitations." – Chris Lee, Studio Head

So for Infinite, 343 engineered an all-new, next-gen engine named Slipspace – created specifically to realize Halo‘s massive creative ambitions in open world games with frequently updated content.

Key Goals of the Slipspace Engine

• Vastly more advanced graphical capabilities – ray tracing, photogrammetry, massive geometric detail density.
• More lifelike characters and faces conveying emotion through eyes and expression.
• Intelligent tools and pipelines so creators can focus less on tech and more on art.
• Huge, fully explorable environments not segmented by levels/loading.
• Flexible ecosystem supporting continuous live content updates.
• Multiplayer battled balanced for competitive esports appeal.

As you can see, that‘s a HUGE technological leap over Infinite‘s predecessors! Clearly built to last as Halo‘s foundation for another 10 years.

Hardware Demands: Destiny 2 vs. Modern Halo Titles

Now let‘s compare the hardware demands and optimization of Bungie‘s living world loot shooter Destiny 2, forged in the upgraded Tiger Engine, to 343‘s story-focused Halo Infinite, newly built in Slipspace…

Destiny 2 System Requirements

Key notes on Destiny 2‘s optimization:

• Leverages multi-threaded CPUs very efficiently thanks to Tiger Engine. But still leans more heavily on powerful GPUs.
• Streamlined and robust game engine allows Destiny 2 run smoothly even on older hardware that meets minimum specs.
• Supports latest graphical features like HDR, 4K, uncapped framerates, FOV sliders, advanced graphics settings menus.
• Significantly smaller install footprint than many modern blockbusters.

So while Destiny 2 scales well to high-end hardware for max resolution and frame rates, its mature, well-optimized Tiger Engine ensures excellent performance on more modest PCs.

Halo Infinite System Recommendations

Due to Infinite‘s recent launch and more demanding graphical capabilities, it currently requires stronger hardware than Destiny 2 for smoothest performance.

Observations:

• Infinite‘s graphics and expansive environments mandate powerful modern hardware – especially GPU and storage.
• Ray tracing support exclusively on Nvidia RTX cards. AMD GPUs currently more prone to stability issues.
• Wider range of graphics options, but performance optimization still being actively tuned and bugs addressed.

So Infinite demands stronger specs for ideal 60+ FPS gameplay due to its newer, more visually ambitious Slipspace Engine. Destiny 2 runs well on a wider span of hardware.

The Road Ahead…

While only Bungie can reveal Tiger Engine‘s future evolutionary path as they expand the Destiny universe, 343 has publicly stated their grand ambitions for Halo Infinite and the Slipspace Engine as an enduring platform.

Microsoft is reportedly investing heavily in Infinite‘s success – already backing development of the next three mainline Halo games over 10 years, integrating the game deeper into their ecosystem, cross-platform features, regular content updates over multiple in-game "seasons", and big esports aspirations.

Slipspace will need to demonstrate malleability for not just delivering infinite campaign stories, but also serving these interconnected live service goals across the platform and player community.

Meanwhile, Tiger Engine contains over 15 years of Bungie‘s proprietary tech innovations on persistent online worlds with deep toolsets enabling rapid environment design and art creation. If rumors hold true, an all-new Destiny 2 chapter may soon kick that pedigree into overdrive.

So while the once-shared DNA between Halo and Destiny engines has heavily branched through years of dedicated optimization by their respective caretakers, both game engines represent the pinnacle of homegrown platform technology for crafting dynamic living worlds enjoyed by countless players worldwide.

And I can‘t wait to see how both game engines progress into the future!