Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2020]

Having watched this, it seems 343 picked a poor choice of area and time given Halo Infinite's lighting tech. This gives me some hope that, combined with the time they have left, it won't look anywhere near bad come launch. This could also be an older build.

I am still disappointed in the lack of animated foliage though.

 

The foliage is animated (wind) in the menu screen at the beginning..

 

The materials and textures still look kind of bad though. The enemies really do look like plastic He-Man figures from the 80s. The guns look like they don't have textures and are just a solid colour with a glossy/specular map on top.

 

They do. Did you watch the second DF video? They believe they can explain some of this.

 

Erm, the trees move. The flowers and the grass don't.
Also, please have a look and show me any foliage that is moving in this scene.

 

But it doesnt explain how all the other open world, weather changing, day night cycle games eg RDR2, the witcher 3, horizon zero dawn, death stranding etc even when in shadow or overcast look lighting wise far superior

Also even raytraced this face aint gonna win any graphical awards, you will notice also the sun is actually visible here, in fact a lot of the scene is in the picture is in sunlight.

Plus you will notice actually artists often put the sun low down because it actually improves the look. Next time you're checking out screenshots from a game company showing off their game notice how low in the sky the sun often is

But its not just the lighting thats lacking in halo its the low geometry, sterile environments, the lack of animation, destruction, movement, pop in etc

 

I had watched it. Went back and checked it again. The guns do look better with better lighting conditions, but they still look very ... pristine? If you look at the guns in a game like modern warfare, you'll find paint chips, scratches, thumb prints, fading, uneven glossiness etc. They look like guns that have been used, real things that exist in a real world. The halo guns have texture for grips, edges and bolts, but the smooth surfaces are perfectly smooth . That's not a technical limitation so much as art direction.

 

Digital Foundry has shifted from videos rooted into Technical Analysis to Speculation and Damage Control. In the past, i respected Digital Foundry for their attempts to be as factual as possible. They had a Gamers Nexus approach to their videos but, ever since Alex joined the team, I've noticed a tonal shift. In fact, I particularly dislike watching videos made by Alex because of his approach to Analysis. This video reminded me why I completely dislike his work. He often attempts to communicate to his audience in an authoritative form while often being wrong. Furthermore, the way his bias reeks through his videos is poor form. If you're going to pretend to be a journalist, at least pretend to keep bias out of your content. We all have biases but the difference between him and other digital foundry members is that they acknowledge their biases in their content. In the earlier video analyzing the Xbox showcase, John had to shut him up when he was trying to explain away a poor showing.

Now with regards to this video, it just serves to excuse 343's poor showing. Lightning was a problem but it was certainly not the problem. The problem with Halo infinite is the complete lack of craftsmanship in the product. Missing gun reflections, missing explosion effects, lifeless worlds, horrible shield and armor designs, bad level design, and poor animations are some of the many issues plaguing the reveal. His comparisons to games built on sub 2TF systems are completely irrelevant as this game is running on a system that's 6x more powerful. We don't need a technical channel trying to make excuses for companies. This goes for both Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. I mean, in the Seitch Crysis video, I believe John was trying to excuse the woeful performance because of the hardware. We have Richard just making click bait and speculation videos now. All in all, im disappointed in Digital Foundry but I guess, they have to do what they need to do. They should take a page out of Gamers Nexus and LTT and start selling merchandise or something. Its clear that they need more funding and that lack of funding is what i think is the cause of this kess than desirable tonal shift.

 

I thought this exactly. They are enabling XBox Game Studios. These excuses need to stop.

People need to remember that Halo Infinite and Hellblade 2 was THE titles showcased at the XBSX reveal in December last year. This implies Halo is a next-gen title. The demo shown on Thursday was not next-gen, and even if the show was a Xbox showcase and not XBSX showcase, then they shouldn't have shown the demo in the first place. The more you look at it the worse it gets. The only likely saving grace for the demo is the gameplay which I initially critized for being slow but I blame the stream for that. In 4K it looked ok for a SP.

Blaming the demo on the PC is also a bad excuse. As pointed out so many times, PC is already a far superior device than the Next-Gen Xbox SX. You have faster GPUs, faster SSD's, faster Memory, more memory, more space. SSD's for PC's are out there that XBox studios could buy with out it hitting their Billions in budget and should've been able to run the demo without any pop-ins.

Excuse after excuse after excuse. Enabling 343 Studios and XBox Game Studios.

 

I agree. I think much of this is a result of their art/aesthetic decisions which I do not like at all.

For everybody thinking the second DF video is some weird kind of damage control, can you explain how an 18 minute video pointing out all the flaws in Halo Infinite in any way makes Microsoft/343 appear less incompetent? It's literally shining a spotlight on all of the bad decisions and technical oversights. DF's analysis, as they do for all games, includes some explanation for some of the issues. They include, for reference, video from The Last of Us Part II and Death Stranding which also have some of the same lighting problems and run at half the frame rate.

Is this DF video also damage control for Sony's first party games too?

 

But go look at those videos, do they just confine their analysis to something like Lighting? No, there's usally visual graphics, frame pacing, Anti-aliasing, shadows, reflections etc. and even sometimes gameplay although these are usually limited to a comment. So yes this looks like damage control and Alex says it explains the whole issue with the demo. Lighting doesn't explain most of the problems with the demo.

'And really I think it can be easily explained and it all comes down to lighting.' - Alex Battaglia DF
Timeframe for the quote captured below.

 

Did it?, From memory I think ~90% of the time they were talking about the lighting. And their main point was, oh it was in the shadow in the valleys, It gave the impressive nearly all would of been solved if they had choosen another point of the map/day as it would of looked much better
there was bugger all mention of the other myriad flaws like the lack of destruction, the low polygon count, the pop in problems, the static environment, the lack of animations, sounds etc.
I didnt want to say before but it certainly felt a bit like damage control

 

But isn‘t this weird...if you need to pull out a current gen game TLoU2 to justify a next gen 500 mill tec show case? Furthermore, chances are that TLoU2 remaster on PS5 will run at higher res and higher framerate...just saying.

(Back to playing the not 500 mill Dollar, still open world game, and not next gen hardware, still having good graphics and(!) good gameplay game „king of sushis“ (or something like that), where the artists manage to blow my mind every couple of minutes...)

 

I think that was the primary focus for this video analysis. The title is: Halo Infinite Gameplay Trailer Analysis: Are The Graphics Really 'Flat'...?

My bad. I watched the DF reaction to the whole conference and the DF analysis on the lighting close together and mentally attributed some of the comments in the reaction vid to Alex's analysis.

 

But listen/read his whole beginning quote.

'So I am just going to cut to the chase here. Did you feel underwhelmed by the graphical presentation found in Halo Infinte and shown off in the Xbox Series X showcase? Would you say it looks flat and current-gen? Well this video is for you as I will try to explain why you may feel this way based upon this trailer, and really I think it can be easily explained and it all comes down to lighting.' - Alex Battaglia DF

Look at what he said. It's a graphical presentation of Halo i.e. all graphics
It's a Xbox Series X showcase - People here will have you believe it was only a Xbox showcase. Being an XBSX showcase should have shown off next-gen. No next-gen was shown.
Yes, the gameplay was flat and looked way below current-gen.
He says he will trying to explain why we feel underwhelmed but then says it's all down to lighting. Then in the video he never mentions pop-ins(there were a lot - grass, clouds, stone texture) and what about the static character models. All the brutes had one look as now shown in all the meme's. Static environments. Explosions and fire looked terrible, something I picked up in the original stream and look like pre-2012 explosions.

These are all things that they have mentioned in other game demos and trailers. This definitely looked like damage control to me.

 

I get this, but DF explaining why something looked bad does not equate to defending Microsoft/343. DF analysis often include explanation for why some effects in games are missing, implemented poorly or create issues.

 

I agree but usually they don't just end at some explainations although in this case, it was really mostly limited to just this one. He mentions pop-in but didn't linger too much on it.

 

A lightning strike caused all this?
Why the attacking on alex so much? In the video itself, he even mentioned there where more problems then just lighting, i think he means its one of the biggest contributors to the bad look.
No idea what the gain for DF would be to damage control for microsoft?

 

This discussion seems a bit constructed right now.

He clearly said at 15 minutes that there are pop ins?!

Examples?