Halo 5: Guardians [XO]

[Rangers]

Well I gave my impressions on my 5 minutes (ok maybe 10 or 15, I didn't really count but figure of speech). So far it could not grab me at all. But I will surely try more and it is very shiny...

One thing is there no HUD type arrow pointing the way? I'm kinda looking around where to go, didn't Halo 4 have that? I dont remember. Or is it just the typical "so linear you cant get lost" setup?

I also keep finding myself trying to see if I can see the dynamic resolution/dynamic blur. Like "oh, did it drop right there? Can I tell? Is it 1080P here I wonder?" etc, A bit distracting in itself, although I suppose a "normal" player wont have this problem.

60 FPS also reminds me of those 48 FPS LOTR movies. Soap opera effect.

I am glad it appears most guns have ADS. I feared this would be a big issue to get used to coming from 1k hours of Destiny and I had a problem with it in MCC. Although, I am not sure the guns are significantly more effective when ADS-ing as they are in Destiny, which might make it not desirable to ADS even though it's there. A weird situation. I just wish could keep my nice militaristic Spartan guns instead of being forced into the ugly goo shooters. And there's no reason for them to be ugly, alien guns could be cool too. It's downright obnoxious, stop it Bungie/343. Although I guess at this point they are beholden to the series past. But see there again, they're always desperately trying to come up with new things in the series it feels like, so there you go, new things that actually make sense.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The intro is CGI, although using lots of ingame assets. That alone should also tell you a lot about the graphical differences between H4 and H5
Just try to look for images of the Chief in the two games and compare them, I think there's a lot of advancement.

As for the weapon stuff, it definitely is a design decision... Based on H4 a lot of the alien guns are actually quite good, many of them even unmatched by the UNSC ones - the plasma pistol and fuel rod cannon and needler all have unique abilities and the player should be encouraged to experiment with them. Some of the forerunner stuff wasn't bad either, the light rifle is a good match for the BR/carbine for example and the surpressor got closer to the needler in H5, but with a lot more ammo. Sure, if you're unwilling to try them out then I can see it becoming an annoyance, but Halo has always been featuring lots of different weapons that are still very well balanced. Maybe it's a bit forced in its approach to make the player discover them, but it'd be pretty flat and boring with the same 5-8 weapons IMHO.

 

[AlNom]

The cut-scene graphics are pretty sick.

Also, butts. Snoo snoo kthnx

 

[Laa-Yosh]

One thing is there no HUD type arrow pointing the way?

I think you can use the d-pad to give you directions if you're lost.

60 FPS also reminds me of those 48 FPS LOTR movies. Soap opera effect.

Cinematics are 30fps, the game part is like any other 60fps shooter that people usually like

Although, I am not sure the guns are significantly more effective when ADS-ing as they are in Destiny, which might make it not desirable to ADS even though it's there.

I think most guns keep the spread; the only advantage you get is that the stick controls become more refined. There's no numerical advantage though.

I just wish could keep my nice militaristic Spartan guns instead of being forced into the ugly goo shooters.

I personally thought that only a few UNSC guns were any good. The pistol is nice for headshots; BR is a good overall mid range weapon, DMR is good for longer distances and the sniper rifle is cool but has limited mag capacity.

The alien guns have a lot of cool stuff though. Needler shots follow the target, plasma pistol overcharge takes out shields and disables vehicles, plasma caster and incinerator cannon have larger area of effect compared to the rocket launcher, plasma grenades can stick to the target etc.

 

[AlNom]

Not sure I like the new Palmer face. She even looks more... asian (eyes + make-up to the max eyebrows)? Sort of reminded me of Anders from Halo Wars. Still, butts.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Scanned talent is Vedette Lim

Voice is Jennifer Hale (Femshep etc.)

 

[DrJay24]

The whole "drop your gun cause you're out of ammo in artificially record time and grab some icky ugly alien pea shooter you dont want" thing has really gotten old too.

I have the same complaint, I'm sad to hear they didn't change the formula. I also read they still don't have LT to aim down the sights. They seem to really fear messing with the formula.

 

[AlNom]

Scanned talent is Vedette Lim

Voice is Jennifer Hale (Femshep etc.)

ah...

She just looks too different from H4 I guess. Not a complaint about the actual looks, just that it's inconsistent (and well... rofl for H4 considering the different studios involved)

 

[Laa-Yosh]

That's strange, personally I've always looked at the alien weapons as both a nice extra in the unique ways they've worked, additional options in how to handle various enemies in different environments, and not as an annoyance. Probably the only time in any Halo games where I've became frustrated with the scavenging aspect was in Halo 3's "Cortana" level. The one with the Flood infested High Charity...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

She just looks too different from H4 I guess.

I thought the likeness has always been quite good; perhaps it's the straight red hair...

(and well... rofl for H4 considering the different studios involved)

Care to elaborate?

What I can say here is that you've seen 4 different takes on the same actress in the two games. 343i had H4 Palmer and a more detailed H5 Palmer; then Axis did a version for Spartan Ops CGI, and we've had our version for the epilogue. They're not all the same, obviously, but I thought the likeness came through...

 

[AlNom]

Care to elaborate?

What I can say here is that you've seen 4 different takes on the same actress in the two games. 343i had H4 Palmer and a more detailed H5 Palmer; then Axis did a version for Spartan Ops CGI, and we've had our version for the epilogue. They're not all the same, obviously, but I thought the likeness came through...

Well, that's what I mean. They're not the *same* throughout. I dunno. She just looks different everytime I see her. H4 real-time/H4 epilogue/H4 SpOps/H5...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Another interesting case of character likeness would actually be Halsey. See, there was no scanned talent, so all her incarnations are based on the head sculpt from my amazing longtime co-worker Karoly Porkolab. So we had our CG version for the H4 Prologue; then Axis got our assets and built their version for SO and the H5 intro/outro. Then 343i also built a realtime version for the cutscenes.

I can see lots of differences between the various versions, but apparently for the gamers, her looks are quite consistent...? I mean I've worked on that blink for a LONG time and I can spot the changes but that shouldn't be a metric...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Well, that's what I mean. They're not the *same* throughout. I dunno. She just looks different everytime I see her. H4 real-time/H4 epilogue/H4 SpOps/H5.

Lasky has 4 versions as well, same way - H4 ingame / H5 ingame / SO / H4epilogue... Actually that's 5 as H5 also has a CG movie with him, but at least that's also made by Axis (the ending).

Edit:

The thing is, everything is different from the starting scans onward.

We all use different facial pipelines, although I imagine H4 and 5 are quite close. But then Axis has a different approach and we have another.

Then the renderers are different too. H4 was mostly based on H3/Reach engine as far as I know; H5 is a new one. Axis uses Houdini's Mantra renderer, we use Arnold.

So getting a completely consistent look across different generations of hardware, pipelines, and renderers, is pretty much impossible... And it's also kinda bad to hear that all of the parties involved have not managed to make it completely right.
It's actually an interesting issue, seeing how transmedia stuff looks to become the norm. I mean Quantum Break will try to mesh live footage with ingame stuff, for example, and I happen to know about some other interesting stuff in the near future. Based on your opinion, this might be a lot more important thing than I've previously thought...

 

[AlNom]

Ok, so I have a crush focus on Palmer. So sue me. :3

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Let's just say I don't get the apparent fan hate for Palmer...

 

[AlNom]

Proooobably the Spartan Ops/Halsey thing.

 

[Scott_Arm]

She looks like a nice lady

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, probably, and perhaps also the EU stuff.

Now, trying to redeem this somewhat offtopic series of posts, I'd like to point out something interesting about how 343i is using mocap and scanning and voice acting, which I believe is a nice example of the possibilities for the industry. Basically these are three different kinds of approaches to involve real-life talent in creating a CG/ingame character.

First the looks: this is now almost exclusively based on scanning for human characters. Team Osiris is for example a 1:1 match for the voice actors - except for Locke.

Spoiler

Cortana

on the other hand seems to be a mix of two different people at least; and I've already mentioned that Halsey is a completely fictional one. Also, Fillion has definitely been de-aged, he even joked about it in a late night TV show. Lasky's face is the scanned talent.

Second, the acting. As far as I know most of Osiris is played by the scanned talent - but in some scenes, because of actor availability, some of them might have been played by someone else. Palmer's mocap in H4 was almost entirely Vedette Lim; but in H5 she was replaced by Jennifer Hale usually, based on BTS videos. Jen Taylor has played Halsey but Cortana was a different actress in H4; same goes for the Master Chief. Lasky is always played by a different actor and not the scanned talent.

Then the voice acting: obviusly most of Osiris was the scanned talent, Arbiter has always been Keith David. Chief is always Stewe Dowes, Cortana is Jen Taylor; Palmer in H4 and 5 was Jennifer Hale. But as far as I know Locke's voice is always a different actor; Lasky is always the mocap actor.

So, in the end, there are many different variations of talent behind a character:
- scan, mocap, and voice are the same person
- scan is different from the voice or the mocap
- there's no scan at all, mocap and voice may or may not be the same actor
- lastly, there are also mixed cases, where the scanned talent is not available for the mocap shoot and the acting is done by someone else; then the talent might only do a voice-over, or maybe a full performance alone that's added to the previous session in the game

This is what I've been referring to as 'Frankenstein' characters. But it's sort of misleading in the name as I believe this is the most reasonable approach.
There are certainly a lot of advantages to use the first method where voice, likeness and acting are all provided by the same person; but this requires a lot of organization and would probably cost the most, as people with such rounded abilities are likely to be in high demand in movies and TV (perfect example would be Kevin Spacey).
So it makes all kinds of sense to leverage all the technology available and use the best possible solution. And costs are not even the most important factor here - talent availability, workflow flexibility and artistic freedom are just as important. For example, Naughty Dog is almost always using the same talent for mocap acting and voice - but they're also always using hand crafted characters instead of the talent's likeness.

I actually think that this is something where games are a bit ahead of the curve, and eventually we're going to see more of this in feature film CGI. For now, it's usually a single actor providing mocap and voice for a fantasy creature; but not so far in the future, we're probably going to see stuff like different actors for different likenesses, particularly a 10-30 years older actor driving a younger incarnation - or someone acting for a deceased actor. It's going to be pretty interesting and possibly quite freaky

 

[AlNom]

Ya, certain voiceovers for Locke seemed rather... weird. Intonation sounded off at times. That said, I'm quite amazed how life-like they got him to look in the real-time portions

I quite liked Palmer's Initiation comic (butts), but certainly the artist depicted her as more... caucasian than the real-life person, not that the comics have had particularly great art lately. :/ Such a downgrade from Bungie days.

I'm still trying to figure out Halsey vs Cortana voice acting.

Keith David is awesome. I was hoping to see Half-Jaw (Robert Davi), but... oh well.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I think Jen Taylor is actually quite good. The Cortana / Halsey voices are different enough IMHO and any similarities can be easily explained by the fiction.
She can do the acting for Halsey very well, but it's not easy to remap the facial performance as she looks like 10 years younger than her true age (40+). We've had some pretty weird stuff on the first pass of facial mocap for Halsey...