Halo 4

[Rangers]

You've clearly not realized at the time, and maybe not even today, that it wasn't just graphics that sold games even in 2007.

Halo3 had 4-player split-screen and online coop, film recording and playback, Forge, and a very well developed multiplayer component - way ahead of anyone else. That's how you sell 10+ million copies of an exclusive game, something the PS3 wasn't able to repeat in the 5 years that have passed.

It also wasn't that much behind the curve, just look how aged Uncharted 1 looks today as well when you compare it to UC3.

Or you could say it was the beginning of the franchises decline and ceding the crown to COD, that it had a guaranteed huge market inherited from the past and turned enough people off that future sales declined, can spin it a lot of ways...

Anyways I'm just speaking of graphics and my personal feeling about them in Halo 3 vs (apparently) Halo 4, not sales or gameplay or anything else. I dont play much multiplayer at all. I'm strictly a campaign guy, and I hated (maybe too strong a word) H3's campaign too. Lets say I was disappointed.

4-player split-screen and online coop, film recording and playback, Forge, and a very well developed multiplayer component

None of that should have stopped Bungie from doing better graphics which is my point.

Also Uncharted was a good looking game at least, for it's time definitely, unlike H3 (imo imo imo etc etc disclaimer etc). So, bad analogy.

Go play Reach or even Anniversary for 30 minutes, then put 3 in directly after and tell me it doesn't look terrible.

I think it's clear if you look at one of the main narratives to this gen that "360 exclusives have not pushed the machine/been up to par" the ringleader and obvious choice is, the kingpin 360 exclusive in the kingpin FPS genre itself, Halo. If indeed Halo 4 looks as good as early returns suggest, it will be interesting.

I suppose I'm slightly sympathetic to the manpower argument, H4 has 250 on it, apparently. Anybody know what Bungie had? Maybe 100?

Although I'm not sure how these things work, but I recall David Ellis saying recently the massive manpower scale up for H4 only occurred recently, so I'm not sure it entirely counts, or how games work in that regard. I think he said they went from 30 to 250, quickly, and recently. I dont know what all those extra people are suddenly doing this late in development or what they were doing before...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

My point is that Bungie was right to stick to their own engine, instead of trying to make UE3 to work with their online and community features just so that they can have prettier graphics. It would have been too much of a sacrifice.

 

[Rangers]

You can't expect a game of Halo 3's scale to look as good as smaller scale games like Gears 1 or Uncharted 1. It must have really sucked for Bungie to create an engine allowing a significant amount of characters onscreen in conjunction with massive play areas, yet hear nothing but complaining that the game isn't pretty enough.

Yeah I thought of that, but it seemed to me Gears had pretty big areas. I think the same thing of Crysis 2. Think of the Road Rage level in C2, it's pretty big. It is not like those games are strict corridor shooters. I dont know, it's an interesting question.

I've been saying, Halo cant be the best looking game anymore, for the very reasons you list. Then I see those GI DMR shots, and it calls that into question...

 

[Reiko]

Yeah I thought of that, but it seemed to me Gears had pretty big areas. I think the same thing of Crysis 2. Think of the Road Rage level in C2, it's pretty big. It is not like those games are strict corridor shooters. I dont know, it's an interesting question.

I've been saying, Halo cant be the best looking game anymore, for the very reasons you list. Then I see those GI DMR shots, and it calls that into question...

Corrinne Yu happened...

 

[Rangers]

Corrinne Yu happened...

LOL, yeah, maybe.

I'd be more inclined to believe "250 people" and "dev team with more gfx focus than Bungie" happened, as well as Corrine Yu , much as it's fun to espouse the latter.

 

[Turok]

Yeah I thought of that, but it seemed to me Gears had pretty big areas. I think the same thing of Crysis 2. Think of the Road Rage level in C2, it's pretty big. It is not like those games are strict corridor shooters. I dont know, it's an interesting question.

I've been saying, Halo cant be the best looking game anymore, for the very reasons you list. Then I see those GI DMR shots, and it calls that into question...

Gears 2 and 3 did (at the very least they had some pretty impressive draw distances), but Gears 1 didn't.

And you can't compare a game from 2007 to a game from 2011. As time goes by, dev tools improve, familiarity with hardware increases, and with that familiarity comes more efficient code. Also, Crysis 2 runs like crap on the 360.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Gears and most UE3 games have large but non-interactive distances. Actual gameplay areas are still far more confined, compared to Halo games.

 

[Rangers]

Gears and most UE3 games have large but non-interactive distances. Actual gameplay areas are still far more confined, compared to Halo games.

I am not so sure in practice it's all that clear cut, I cant remember Halo 3 or even Reach that well though.

I remember that large desert area you ride the choppers through in 3, but then again there are pretty big areas in Gears and Crysis 2 as well.

 

[nightshade]

But still not even half as big as the ones in Halo 3/Reach.

 

[ultragpu]

So some new screens with decent quality res and all.
http://i.imgur.com/d9muu.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9NG0u.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/cFEF2.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/5D7bY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/kZR0H.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/aZWGZ.jpg
Well environment details are definitely improved, level design reminds me of UT. Though human face or skin shader needs more work. I have to say I still have seen better on consoles but Halo is finally up there in the same ballpark.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Where do you see any humans there? Cortana is a holographic projection of an AI, not intended to look realistic....

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Well there was a level in Halo 3 with two scarabs...

 

[nightshade]

Halo was already in the same ballpark with Reach, that was a fantastic looking game both in terms of art and tech.

 

[ultragpu]

Where do you see any humans there? Cortana is a holographic projection of an AI, not intended to look realistic....

Even Holographic projection can be realistic in terms of textures, the face of Cortana just seems so untextured and a bit on the low poly side.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Seriously, stop it please.

 

[Ruskie]

I agree with Laa Yosh, Cortana is holographic AI so making facial shaders and textures like you see in Crysis or Uncharted makes no sense.

Although I guess they will also look to save as many poly's as they can since Halo is more expansive than majority of console shooters so when you get in fight with 20 some ai frame rate doesn't get dragged in single digits.

 

[dragonelite]

Aren't those screenshot not technically scans from the digital version of GI?

 

[dragonelite]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed1fa8N61OU&feature=g-u-u

 

[Reiko]

Even Holographic projection can be realistic in terms of textures, the face of Cortana just seems so untextured and a bit on the low poly side.

lol Cortana isn't supposed to be real. Remember in Halo 3 her face was also smooth, compared to the rest of the humans who had more detail in their faces...

 

[kagemaru]

Halo 3 was my main problem with Bungie, it came out in 2007 well after true next gen games like Gears of War, yet imo was the epitome of a SD game in HD. I thought it was pretty inexcusable given the vast amount of time they had to work on it.

I mean I can literally remember playing Halo 3 back in 2007 wishing to myself "couldn't Bungie at least just have used bog standard UE3? It would have looked much better than this".

Reach I thought looked great, definitely next (current) gen worthy, unlike 3. Yet if it holds up, 4 looks even way better.

I guess, it's position as MS main first party standard bearer holds a lot of import too. It just didn't compare to some of the competition, nor show what the 360 could do, while 4 looks to do all those things (again if it holds up).

IMO how halo 3 turned out was primarily due to two reasons: priorities and pride.

Every studio has finite amount of manpower and time. IIRC the whole saved film feature was a pretty big undertaking in engineering for example. Very few games even today support such a feature and even it's implentation in the game may have created hurdles. I wonder if their investment in these types of features took time away from investing things to make the screen look pretty

Also while it looks great, their HDR implentation introduces some limitations. I wonder if anyone on the team ever questioned this choice or maybe someone decided they were going to use this method no matter the cost.

None of that should have stopped Bungie from doing better graphics which is my point.

I've always been under the impression that adding split screen can limit how much is pushed in the single player mode. Is this not the case?

Well environment details are definitely improved, level design reminds me of UT. Though human face or skin shader needs more work. I have to say I still have seen better on consoles but Halo is finally up there in the same ballpark.

lol

Where do you see any humans there? Cortana is a holographic projection of an AI, not intended to look realistic....

I understand it's silly to judge shaders and such from cortana, but wouldn't she be a good preview on the improvements to character art, more specifically the modeling?