Halo 5: Guardians [XO]

Yeah, big Halo fan here, i would take sandbox, split-screen and better graphics any day of the week over 60 fps. Destiny actually showcased that a perfectly stable 30 fps experience is good enough for shooters on consoles. It might be problematic on PC where you usually use a mouse but H5 is not even coming out on PC. Not one time did i say, i wish that was running at 60 hz, when i played Destiny, which is very, very similar to Halo, gameplay wise.
 
I don't think you can go from 60 fps looking 20-30% better to it having a similar impact in terms of gameplay . While the 30 fps moon doesn't look quite as nice in motion as the 60 fps moon, it still is perfectly targetable. Maybe you can say 60fps makes it 5% easier to target very fast moving targets, but even then things like the player's skill at tracking a fast moving target and their aiming sensitivity settings will be vastly more important at determining whether they hit said target rather than the framerate (though obviously if its not a solid 30 fps and fluctuates between 15/20-30 or so, then you're going to have issues).

I played significant amount of MP time in COD4, MW2 & Black Ops on 360/PS3 and while I enjoyed it, I still preferred Halo or BF3 in terms of gameplay/ gunplay (though not BFBC2 incidentally, they made a big improvement in gun handling from BFBC2 to BF3). And I think that's down mostly to the mechanics and pace of the games rather than the 60 vs 30 fps.

And judging by the huge success of 30 fps Destiny, vs ~60 Titanfall which fizzled out, I don't think any overwhelming preference for 60 fps gameplay in MP shooters is evident.

COD games are so popular because of their mechanics, they are much easier to pick up and play than something like Halo or BF, I know noobs who'll run around with an M60 in COD and rack up loads of kills but'll struggle to get a single kill in Halo (because you can't just get see a guy first, spray half your clip and kill them with the 4 bullets you landed). Ditto with BF, which takes at least 20 hours, just so you can be ranked in the middle of the post-match summary (I know, because it took me about that long to do exactly that in BF4 on PS4, despite spending 100+ hours playing BF3 on 360 - albeit with a 1+ year gap of not playing BF in between).

So I think 343i trying to replicate COD's success by matching them on framerate is silly. They tried to bring the mechanics more in line with COD's in Halo 4 and failed miserably, and even if H4 was 60 fps people would still prefer playing 30 fps Halo 3/Reach.

Other than mechanics, COD is also a gaming institution that is assured runaway success merely based on its past success and the network effects of the huge COD community and the fact that even non-core gamers and non-gamers are familiar with the franchise.

So all those things are going to be hard to trump, and saying framerate is the major reason why COD is so successful seems like specious reasoning to me.

You're right it's not, the reason COD is successful is not because of it's 60fps refresh, if I implied it, then I was wrong in that statement, I don't like COD period. I grew up with Quake and CS roots and busting my chops to get the fps counter above 100 was the key for me to perform better (even if my monitor couldn't show it), and I did perform better with higher frames than when I had lower frames.

Gameplay is still king, I won't debate you here. But if gameplay is solid and fun, then I don't think 343i is doing disservice by upping the frame rate to further improve the mechanics of the game.
It's an interesting damn if you do, damn if you don't situation. People left Halo because it's all the same, at least this is the argument I read often, it's the same game, people will leave it shortly after it launches.
If true then 343i tweaking the formula, adding different game modes, different methods of traversing the map, abilities etc, and changing the way the game is played is likely the right course of action. So I won't fault them for it, I think if H5 was like H4, I think it would truly flop.

Graphics imo, are a one time thing, once you get over graphics the only thing left is gameplay. And everyone gets over graphics after a certain point in time. You can only be awed for so long, and having said that, I don't mind the tradeoff of graphics in return for more frames. Frame rate feels better at all times, graphics will eventually be ignored by the player. i hated all the motion blur added in Bf3, it just made the game harder to win at. I really liked BFBC2, I thought overall it was a better game than BF3 and BF4. Though BF3 was better than BF4, and BF3 only became really good after their premium service finished with Aftermath expansion.

Now on the topic of split screen: Losing split screen hurts, I don't disagree, but what if there is less than 5% of the player base doing split screen, is it worth it to lose double the frame rate for the 5%? I think so, I generally don't have people over to play games with me at all anymore.

Sandbox stills seems to be intact (for now). War zone is an interesting addition to the game. It's 12v12 ! (at least there is some improvement here!)


As with TF vs Destiny - well, you'd have to compare how many Destiny folks are playing Crucible vs the number playing Destiny, and for what reasons. With TF you are playing for the game. With Destiny, most people play to unlock more loot, which has been a driving point for players to invest time in both the PVE grind and now a PVP grind.
 
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Yeah, big Halo fan here, i would take sandbox, split-screen and better graphics any day of the week over 60 fps. Destiny actually showcased that a perfectly stable 30 fps experience is good enough for shooters on consoles. It might be problematic on PC where you usually use a mouse but H5 is not even coming out on PC. Not one time did i say, i wish that was running at 60 hz, when i played Destiny, which is very, very similar to Halo, gameplay wise.
I felt H5 beta was better than destiny flat out. I didn't mind crucible, but i don't find it to be fair. Any 60fps feels better than Destiny. Plays better than destiny is a different discussion. TF feels like COD with high traversal. My issue with TF are the hitscan weapons and fast TTK that every weapon is nearly capable of.
 
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Right. I'll go back on open world. That should be reserved for games like W3 and Skyrim. But H5 is large in scope still, the battlefield can be large.
I'm not judging graphically h5 until I see a release. The game will never be 30fps, it's built around 60fps so at this point in time we are only debating why h5 does not look like its competitors.
Static-large and open world are very different categories.

I'm just curious but what exactly are you expecting from Halo 5? You've got keen eyes, you can identify downgrades or types of things that I can't. But I'm wondering this time around because there is no "target render" to compare against that you're being a little extreme with Halo 5. I mean they launched a beta at 720p with no AA and terrible textures. 343i has only made two commitments a) locked 60fps gameplay b) dedicated servers only for multiplayer. They never shown any target footage and XBO SDKs are the same as retail units. Logically things cannot get worse than the beta, so they only have up to go from here.
What I'm trying to get at is, it's too early to judge the graphics thinking these are final because you haven't seen the target yet, unlike other games that had to downgrade from their target. Implying that the game should target 30fps and up their graphics because of the state of the game of a build that likely was certified in Mid May, is premature.
I'm not saying that it has to be 30fps, just that it looks poor as it is right now. For example, are they using a forward renderer or what's with the severe lack of dynamic light sources? It's specially noticeable during the campaign footage when a ship spams it's beam weapons against the Spartans and not a single one of those beams is a light source. That looks pretty bad.

This game might be good in terms of art style (debatable, as always) but in terms of tech it's completely unremarkable and even substandard.
 
Static-large and open world are very different categories.


I'm not saying that it has to be 30fps, just that it looks poor as it is right now. For example, are they using a forward renderer or what's with the severe lack of dynamic light sources? It's specially noticeable during the campaign footage when a ship spams it's beam weapons against the Spartans and not a single one of those beams is a light source. That looks pretty bad.

This game might be good in terms of art style (debatable, as always) but in terms of tech it's completely unremarkable and even substandard.
good point. If they are using a forward renderer, ideally it should be forward+. You're right though that it looks bad (can look bad), it's certainly an improvement over the beta, but I don't know how much further the game is supposed to go (hence my earlier post, is the expectation for H5 supposed to be a graphical tour de force) It's unfortunate that unlike Neogaf, we won't get the producer of H5 in here to answer such questions.

If nothing has changed from the beta then:
NX Gamer outlines all the graphical effects in H5. It seems to have a lot more than, 'lack of dynamic lights'. I can't embed the time: but he goes through all the graphics at 10:50
 
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So all those things are going to be hard to trump, and saying framerate is the major reason why COD is so successful seems like specious reasoning to me.

I see you've mentioned how many hours you've put into BF, Halo, etc. That's great, so have I on all of the big hitters across multiple consoles and generations. You do not see the difference in up to 30 fps and up to 60 and that's fine. Others clearly feel the difference in gameplay when immediately switching from up to 60 to an up to 30 fps game. There was a clear example of this with BF4 between 360 and Xbox One, and as I mentioned before MCC and the same games on 360. So we will agree to disagree about the big deal that is up to 60fps.
 
NX Gamer is some random guy on the internet who likes to misinform people by making videos with big words in it. He's talk from 10:50 describes an above-average 360 game.

"The resolution of the specular maps looks low at this point and the coverage and luminance range are not as great as we'll probably end up seeing as the textures in place are low as is the filtering on them". :rolleyes:

Pure garbage of an analysis.

As an extra note, the motion blur is some of the worst I've ever seen with the ridiculously low number of samples used.
 
It might be problematic on PC where you usually use a mouse but H5 is not even coming out on PC.

We don't know that for certain, but we do know that you will be able to stream your XB1 games to a Windows 10 device. Maybe that was their reasoning for the 60fps requirement? If they targeted 30fps & then streamed it to a PC or mobile device, would it be playable? I think they would have received much more crap if it played poorly when streamed.

Tommy McClain
 
Because 343i is listening to the wrong people or asking the wrong people for their feedback on what they should do with H5.

Not sure about that. Sebbbi has mentioned that a LOT of the 20 most played games are usually 60fps. So 343 is basically trying to listen to its customers... are they the wrong people then?
 
Not sure about that. Sebbbi has mentioned that a LOT of the 20 most played games are usually 60fps. So 343 is basically trying to listen to its customers... are they the wrong people then?


If you watch any of the videos and behind the scenes clips for Halo5 they all show 343i working with the "pro gamers" who are in it for the competative fps competition aspect. Their wants are not the same wants as those who loved the Halo franchise. They dont care about campaign or story at all.
 
If you watch any of the videos and behind the scenes clips for Halo5 they all show 343i working with the "pro gamers" who are in it for the competative fps competition aspect. Their wants are not the same wants as those who loved the Halo franchise. They dont care about campaign or story at all.
That is sad to hear actually...
 
That is sad to hear actually...
he makes a great point that is hard to refute. I never saw it that way until reading that. Though, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive necessarily. They've added drop in co-op up to 4 players for any single player campaign, so perhaps not all is lost (when it comes to campaign play). The reviewers of Halo 5 should properly make short work of this game if it's bad in single player
 
I don't consider the The Sprint behind-the-scenes video series fully inclusive of their intentions on who they are making the game for. They can't conceivably show a behinds-the-scene video of the making of the single player campaign without spoiling the game. So those videos are mightily one-sided.

Tommy McClain
 
Fairly sure they imply pro games only come in infrequently and are not the only test team and only get mentioned with multiplayer. Microsoft clearly want to foster a competitive scene and are taking early advcie.

Tweaking movement and look mechanisms to aid mp wont harm sp. 60 fps for all modes is a studio (Microsoft PR?) decision, whatever happens to single player is probably down to that and not the pro test team.
 
If you watch any of the videos and behind the scenes clips for Halo5 they all show 343i working with the "pro gamers" who are in it for the competative fps competition aspect. Their wants are not the same wants as those who loved the Halo franchise.

Pro gamers on their own won't get a title into top 20 most played lists. Sure, something big in pro gaming will have a lot of followers, but there must be other people playing those games just for their own merits.

Also, we've had plenty of 30fps Halo games and almost all are now available on the X1, including lots of different multiplayer versions. There's room enough for a 60fps one now.

They dont care about campaign or story at all.

I fail to see the connection here, but then again we'll see soon enough. However the fact that they've included team gameplay shows a lot of commitment to build a new and complex SP experience IMHO.
 
Actually it was said that in Warzone mode it had a map size that was 4 times the size of past maps.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/15/8782791/halo-5-guardians-warzone

They weren't talking about map size in campaign mode.

Tommy McClain
They confirmed the missions are also bigger, you can read it in this article titled "Halo 5 has the the thirst for volume diluted the essence?"

http://www.vg247.com/2015/07/09/halo-5-has-the-thirst-for-volume-diluted-the-essence/

But it's just cool to find flaws and criticise i343 for crappy things that Bungie were doing already, isn't it?

Bungie would never create a decent Halo anymore, they are stuck in their formula of spectacular graphics, little imagination.
 
But it's just cool to find flaws and criticise i343 for crappy things that Bungie were doing already, isn't it?

Bungie would never create a decent Halo anymore, they are stuck in their formula of spectacular graphics, little imagination.
No reason to sling mud around. This has been actually a good discussion with passionate views from both sides: it does paint a rather important picture of the challenges that 343i has to make when designing this next Halo game. The audience is so divided on so many topics: 60fps low resolution or 30fps higher resolution, campaign with graphical fidelity, dedicated servers/multiplayer and drop in co-op vs split screen. Some love the lore and the campaign, others only play multiplayer. I don't think COD or BF ever goes through this much back and forth. Then again, they've never had to really change their formula yet. But they may have to soon.
 
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