Halo 4

[Aeoniss]

Honestly I don't think (most of) the books did anything wrong. Rather it was Bungie's bungling of the story in the games (H2, H3).

The only exception would be Contact Harvest.. Which was still an interesting read. But it was stretching my ability to honestly swallow what they were putting my way. "HEY LOOK! BRUTES! BEFORE THE NOVEL FALL OF REACH! OR HALO 1!" Riiight....

The books are both more interesting, engaging and fleshed out than any of the games. It didn't help that Bungie constantly retconned stuff and expected the authors to pick up the slack.

Like Sgt. Johnson becoming a bigger character in spite of clearly dying in Halo 1. Again, not that I mind since I loved his character. The author of First Strike did an admirable job of making his survival believable... Just for Bungie to ignobly kill him, for zero reason, in the only boss fight of the entire third game (which was a joke) with him parting from this mortal coil with a cheesy one liner. When that happened I just about wanted to go out and find the lead writers at Bungie and flog them. Clearly it was amateur hour over there.

By Halo 3 I was completely disenchanted with their idea of 'big ideas' and how to tell stories. It seems 343 has a better grasp of what actually makes a story- substance.

In conclusion: Bungie sucks, the authors did a damn good job of trying to make shit more coherent.

 

[scently]

The books are very cohesive and well fleshed out, they are not confusing at all. If you really want to know more the buy the books and read them. The SIIIs are different from the SIVs, SIII- orphans around age 6 to 12, no tas young as SIIs but definitely not as old as SIVs. It is unknown, currently, the extent of the augmentation that the SIVs will receive (I am sure that that will be covered in the Thursday War) but they are full time, grown up soldiers who chose to volunteer for the program. The different armor customisations you see on the SIIIs is actually canon in that the SIIIs normally salvage materials (like the convenants shield etc) from the battlefield to enhance their SP armor (it is important to note that the Noble team are one of the two SIIIs group to have the Mjonir armour and not the normal SPI armor).

Anyway if you really need to know more, I suggest you buy the books or go to halo.wikia.com for more information.

 

[antwan]

The hardest thing to explain about Noble team is the rainbow colors of their armor Makes sense in gameplay terms of course, you want the player to be able to easily tell them from each other from the start. But why would anyone want to wear blue, read, or orange armor? At least Chief's green made sense in any outdoor environments based on clorophyll

Have you never played halo?
That would apply to almost every enemy ever as well.

My guess is that in the future, all buildings are purple, blue, red, orange, and they chose this color to blend in better with the environment?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

"Makes sense in gameplay terms"

Everything is color coded so it's clearly recognizable and distinguishable even in a heated battle. You immediately know which enemies are the most dangerous, what kind of weapon shots are aimed at you and so on.

Same principle about the character design - 6 green Spartans would look nearly identical even if the proportions and armor customizations are different.

So, there's a clear gameplay explanation, but it can't be justified in the story / universe aspects. I'm OK with it though.

 

[nightshade]

yea that's one issue I have with most modern shooters like BF3 and COD, I cannot identify the friend from foe properly without the name marker on top of their head. red vs Blue on the other hand, always works.

 

[(((interference)))]

Wow, the campaign footage looks absolutely stunning. A clear step above Reach, which itself was a clear step above 3!.

It could actually be the best looking FPS on consoles. I don't think Bungie could have done as well (in terms of visuals) if they were making 4.

Like the new art direction too and the design of the new enemies - they remind me of the aliens in Crysis 2 with their tentacles and glowing red/orange parts.

I wonder what the new enemy faction is exactly - they certainly don't look anything like the other Forerunner AI, these creatures seem biomechanical and quite different in design to the sentinels, monitors etc.

Apparently they're Prometheans:
http://kotaku.com/5916017/im-knee+deep-in-synthetic-bad-guys-in-halo-4s-bold-new-multiplayer/
http://www.halopedian.com/Promethean

And the big glowing sphere is a kind of time capsule for Forerunner called a Cryptum:
http://www.halopedian.com/Cryptum

The Forerunner glyph in the video with the caption "an ancient evil awakens' is the symbol for Didact, so he could be the main antagonist but he's supposed to be 'good'
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/The_Didact

 

[kagemaru]

Game looked amazing, though obviously scripted for demo purposes. I want to see some bigger areas that show off large scale in gameplay.

Also *bow* to Kenneth Scott and his team, the art is very coherent and does a great job at refreshing the Halo look. This is the first time I didn't find the Forerunner look boring in anything related to it in the videos.

 

[scently]

Wow, the campaign footage looks absolutely stunning. A clear step above Reach, which itself was a clear step above 3!.

It could actually be the best looking FPS on consoles. I don't think Bungie could have done as well (in terms of visuals) if they were making 4.

Like the new art direction too and the design of the new enemies - they remind me of the aliens in Crysis 2 with their tentacles and glowing red/orange parts.

I wonder what the new enemy faction is exactly - they certainly don't look anything like the other Forerunner AI, these creatures seem biomechanical and quite different in design to the sentinels, monitors etc.

Apparently they're Prometheans:
http://kotaku.com/5916017/im-knee+deep-in-synthetic-bad-guys-in-halo-4s-bold-new-multiplayer/
http://www.halopedian.com/Promethean

And the big glowing sphere is a kind of time capsule for Forerunner called a Cryptum:
http://www.halopedian.com/Cryptum

The Forerunner glyph in the video with the caption "an ancient evil awakens' is the symbol for Didact, so he could be the main antagonist but he's supposed to be 'good'
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/The_Didact

I think the whole Didact thing is a red herring. I really don't think he is the big baddie.

 

[Acert93]

I just watched the 720p direct feed on my 360 / 28" monitor and I am impressed with the visuals. The helmet effects are crisp and well done, textures appear detailed, lighting and shadowing appear to be high quality by console standards, particles are again top notch with a new vibe, "standard" animation is typical Halo fare but improved (e.g. the Forerunner with shield-mate is much more complex than grunts hopping around) but the small snippets of scripted attacks and behaviors (e.g. Elite pushing the grunt) look great as do the cut scenes, aliasing seems to be very minimal, there are many high detailed objects (MC's armor, guns, the Infinity, Forunner, etc), and so on. It seems 343i did a great job, at least for the level shown, selecting the right technologies to get a great final image. Nothing stands out as being poor and there doesn't appear to be a huge disparity between higher quality and lower quality techniques. Materials looks great and the the "ambiance" is excellent. A good variety of environments have been shown, all looking very nice (buildings, jungles, desert, barren/rocky crags, etc).

Visually--and audio wise--343i hit a home run so far. The snippets of the coop Spartan Ops indicate that the Campaign visuals can scale to larger sandboxes.

 

[Acert93]

 

[Devious]

Seems like they are going back to letter-boxing cinematics like in Halo 3. Is there a specific reason why they might have gone back to that? IIRC, Halo: Reach cinematics weren't letterboxed.

 

[AlNom]

Seems like they are going back to letter-boxing cinematics like in Halo 3. Is there a specific reason why they might have gone back to that? IIRC, Halo: Reach cinematics weren't letterboxed.

Well, with the black bars, they'd be rendering at 1280x524 (it seems). You do the math for what that means for pushing lighting/shadowing, other effects, and scene complexity vs gameplay yet still real-time.

edit: 1280x544 for retail.

 

[antwan]

Looks like somebody upgraded their 3D Studio Max renderers / plugins
Seriously, imagine the direct feed resembling this.. Xbox 720 can't come soon enough :smile: This looks even better than the paintings they released.

edit: is the youtube video the best direct feed source available?
The image quality looks really muddy. There is not much aliasing, but the texture detail gets destroyed. It reminds me of quincunx anti-aliasing..

edit:

I just watched the 720p direct feed on my 360 / 28" monitor and I am impressed with the visuals. The helmet effects are crisp and well done, textures appear detailed, lighting and shadowing appear to be high quality by console standards, particles are again top notch with a new vibe, "standard" animation is typical Halo fare but improved (e.g. the Forerunner with shield-mate is much more complex than grunts hopping around) but the small snippets of scripted attacks and behaviors (e.g. Elite pushing the grunt) look great as do the cut scenes, aliasing seems to be very minimal, there are many high detailed objects (MC's armor, guns, the Infinity, Forunner, etc), and so on. It seems 343i did a great job, at least for the level shown, selecting the right technologies to get a great final image. Nothing stands out as being poor and there doesn't appear to be a huge disparity between higher quality and lower quality techniques. Materials looks great and the the "ambiance" is excellent. A good variety of environments have been shown, all looking very nice (buildings, jungles, desert, barren/rocky crags, etc).

Visually--and audio wise--343i hit a home run so far. The snippets of the coop Spartan Ops indicate that the Campaign visuals can scale to larger sandboxes.

^^^^^^^^

which footage are you referring to? Can you provide a download link?

edit2: Thanks Reiko, downloading as we speak Acert's talk got me really excited because it resembles the rendered shots more than the youtube video so I am excited
edit3: I got the MP4 version so maybe the re-encoding created the quincunx-vibe?
Anyway, not really feeling the love. I hope they drop the quincunx-like antialiasing and get some antialiasing going on without blurring the whole screen/ destroying texture detail

 

[Reiko]

High Quality Direct Feed...

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_e3_halo_4_gameplay-12924_en.html

 

[Kameradschaft]

High Quality Direct Feed...

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_e3_halo_4_gameplay-12924_en.html

Thanks for the link.

Just saw the direct feed video and the game looks amazing, 343i did an excellent job on the engine improving the visuals and pushing for 720p with FXAA while still retaining the beautiful particles of the previous games and a smooth frame-rate.

Also really liking the Metroid Prime influences in Halo 4, such a beautiful game to look at and get inspired by.

 

[Billy Idol]

Now, being back home I watched the stuff on my nifty Plasma TV direct feed style: man!! Game looks phantastic graphically!! I like that Cortanna comments all action...best MS game at E3, no doubt!

 

[Ruskie]

Well I said DAMN! :smile:

Downloaded MP4 footage and I got to say that IQ in this game is impeccable. Probably one of the best I have seen in console game. And I know Al said they even used PPAA in their "bullshot" pictures and it looked so smooth that I thought it was downsampled.

Good to know they are cranking everything to 11 in cutscenes too. Fantastic work by 343i.

Oh and Al, if you read this...Can you say if trailer "infinity" is all real time? And the beginning with ship? I mean I see crawling but my God those that look spectacular, hard to believe thats real time

 

[AlNom]

Oh and Al, if you read this...Can you say if trailer "infinity" is all real time? And the beginning with ship? I mean I see crawling but my God those that look spectacular, hard to believe thats real time

Looks like it. The black bars would certainly help too.

Edit: Oh, I thought you meant the conference demo with the Infinity flying through the clouds at the beginning. For the Infinity trailer, there's nothing really impossible about the part with the ship in space, but it looks more like a recording for a menu transition (when it switches to the war room). *shrug*


For those who have no idea what we're talking about: http://press.xbox360.com/products/p51/halo-4?grp=Blockbuster+Games&event=5

 

[Acert93]

which footage are you referring to? Can you provide a download link?

As mentioned I got it off of the Xbox 360 (marketplace). The streams there are usually (usually) very good.

 

[Prophecy2k]

The game looks faaaar better in motion than it does in stills.

Also the prothean/forerunner enemies look a little like something out of neon genesis evangelion. Very Japanese anime inspired.

The overall art style is very different to past Halo games. But since it's a proper sequel, I consider that a good thing