I also don't understand why you're going out of your way to defend Bungie on the screenshot issue.
Back up.
Did I defend them? If so, show me where. I am challenging the
assumption of another poster's rant which he has deposited as fact. That Bungie intentionally leaked 720p no-MSAA screenshots (mixed in with other screenshot resolutions with variable anti-aliasing methods) to headfake a couple posters on the interweb to be a fairly weak hypothesis.
No go ahead, you and Dave, prove me wrong. So far Dave has absolutely concluded Bungie did exactly this.
I don't consider a call for facts to be defending anyone.
As for defending Bungie, I actually have lamented the AA and AF issues. Specifically AF--I think it is ridiculous that so few games take texture filtering seriously. But I also disagree with the idea that they should have castrated the lighting endinge for a small jump in resolution or MSAA. My long held position (want links?) is that I would take better lighting over more pixels in most reasonable situations. The fidelity of their shadows (notably on characters) and lighting to be some of the best this gen in execution. The game doesn't do a whole lot of other stuff well, so cutting back on the things it does best for meager gains in resolution and edge aliasing would be a really poor choice. It would have been like dumping the lighting/shadowing system in Doom 3 to get a 50% bump in character poly count. You don't trash the artistic focal point of your game engine to get meager IQ gains in other areas.
My posting history has a pretty strong record substantiating my affinity toward lighting and shadowing over resolution. My defense of Bungie's choice is more of a defense of my long held preference.
Another comment from the past that would give
some context is the results we see in Halo 3 haven't surprised me at all.
Now that WOULD be awesome... but my impression has always been that Bungies strength is game design, not necessarily 3D technology. They make nice looking games with solid technology, top 5-10%, just not sure their next game will look better. You said may, so I know where you are coming from... I guess I am being a pessimist, especially since I heard they are using an upgraded H2 engine
That was way back in March 2006, before the E3 trailer. There was a strong rumor in this regards that notably included talk of 4 player coop.
While the crappy animations, low poly characters, etc are depressing they were also anticipated. The draw distance, scale of some of the enemies, number of enemies on screen, and 4 player coop definately impacted some of their technical and artistic decisions. I think it is also overlooked the variety of environments that appear in the game. Designing a game with 5 distinct environments is more difficult than making a game with 1.
The game isn't the technical masterpiece of the platform. I never expected such. Obviously it is servicable and one of the better looking next gen games out there. I also think some of the comparisons being constructed against games like Gears and Bioshock are disengenuous due to the gameplay disparity. While Halo isn't as drastic, comparing VF5 to C&C3 doesn't offer much insight on a technical level. That isn't to say that I think Halo is all it can be with its design choices in view, but I don't think comparing it to Gears or Bioshock as a comparitive level of graphical fidelity is on level footing either.
To be quite frank I haven't seen many reasonable comments inregards to Halo 3 IQ in this thread. The game has upward to 3 dozen characters on screen and a significant draw distance. What are some games with relatively similar design choices and how does Halo compare? Where did they fall below, meet, and exceed these previous efforts? What could they have done better overall? Was there better approaches?
For a technical site a lot of the IQ discussion has lacked a lot of technical points. The only concrete examples I can remember from this thread is pretty much dumbing down their lighting and shadowing model for more resolution and AA which would have been an utter disaster on about every level imaginable.
'Fake' screenshot's have always been a cause for scrutiny/call-outs on this forum, and certainly the 640p decision at Bungie would have been locked up months ago - I don't think any sort of would-be indecision is a viable case on their part.
It is much more likely Bungie had a number of contingencies in place. I do
know they were, as recent as two months ago, still toying with MSAA. The engine is capable of MSAA & tiling and the intent was to ship with it enabled. It didn't happen.
Like I said, I highly doubt they would have released 720p no-MSAA shots to confuse Quaz51 for the very reason his method wouldn't have been impacted as such. The presence of bullshots and variable resolution releases are, I assume, the reason he loads up the real game and uses a digital camera to test the actual game.
Do we really think the itty bitty thread on the net caught Bungie's attention enough to hoax their PR shots when they couldn't even count on Quaz51 using them?
It's also a little unclear what you might have in mind by "meaningful solutions" - solutions to what?
Backtrack the thread a little. Dave doesn't believe in any fallout or misappropriation of information and that Bungie should have essentially mailed everyone a letter to let them know they weren't rendering in native 720p. Seeing as he doesn't believe it would be a PR issue, I would like him to suggest how HE would have gone about this issue if HE were Bungie.
e.g. 2 months before release, send out a press clip, "Halo 3 isn't HD" or whatnot.
Once he offers such a "plan" we can look at how it would have impacted PR as well as how it would impact past/present games with the same issue.
