Halo Infinite [Fall 2021] [XO, XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

[iroboto]

There's really no excuses for what was shown. 343i has been working with its inhouse engine for more than 15 years now (and unless they are a bunch of idiots, which I hope they aren't, this one is a evolution of the previous one. "build form the ground up" is literal PR BS 99% of the time). Their engine is quite capable as seen in Halo 4 but the shit-tier offering that was Halo 5 (outside of the cinematics) with its shadow LOD making them disappear 2 meters in-front of the player, 1:2 & 1:4 rate animations LOD, horrendous mipmapping, shitty animations etc all this in a fully static environment with baked lighting is quite an achievement in terms of crappyness even on a toaster like the Xbox One. RDR2 on base Xbox One, even if only 30fps, looks like something from another universe. The only good thing that came out of Halo 5 is the pretty good dynamic resolution.

The Blam engine was supposed to be tossed in favour of a new engine for Halo 2. But it didn't happen. They've been modifying Blam since. Slipspace is the first time they've ever named an engine. I'm pretty sure this is new.

I think the scaling issues they are suffering, and with respect to seeing the growing pains that Destiny team has had with this engine in supporting new content; I suspect this is actually a real ground up new engine if they want this to be a proper open world supported game with lots of different types of content.

 

[AlNom]

Dynamic shadows have always been a sore point for the series tbh.

One thing I thought I noticed on the map was that the world was broken up into big sections of Halo.

 

[orangpelupa]

Dynamic shadows have always been a sore point for the series tbh.

One thing I thought I noticed on the map was that the world was broken up into big sections of Halo.

I wonder if those are freely explorable like zelda botw or there will be ridiculous invisible walls like destiny

 

[milk]

I like where they are going. On a complete 180° from their previous games, 343 abandoned any atempt to spice up Halo's visual design and deliver a hollywood-like sci-fi presentation. Instead, they are going for absolutely gamey functional look. Enemies pop out, with vibrant discerninable colours. Readability and performance is king. Feels almost like a 90's arcade game in visual style. And instead of trying to re-imagine the original game's corny-ass-hell monster and technology design, they doubled down on it. Everything looks like a cheap TV sci-fi action prop. Power ranger level. But if you wanna pay homage to Halo CE, which fully deserves homage for the cultural significance it had to gaming if nothing else, all that is quite fitting actually. Does not look great, but might service gameplay very well. Shows where 343 priorities are now, which is a shift from where they were on 4 and 5. It's a move in the right direction for THIS particular franchise, I think.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1286684027039166468

You can delay the game, it's OK.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The pop in does stand out but it's not the only thing.

If this is representative of gameplay on Series X why is there pop-in at all? But Infinite is months out, I remember reading a long interview with Neil Druckmann just before the release of The Last of Us Part II and he said there were still have major issues with their code just a week before going gold. I think it's important to bear this in mind, a lot of things games only come together at the last moment.

 

[Scott_Arm]

If this is representative of gameplay on Series X why is there pop-in at all? But Infinite is months out, I remember reading a long interview with Neil Druckmann just before the release of The Last of Us Part II and he said there were still have major issues with their code just a week before going gold. I think it's important to bear this in mind, a lot of things games only come together at the last moment.

I just don’t understand why they showed it to us.

 

[VitaminB6]

I just don’t understand why they showed it to us.

I'm glad we got to see it personally. I'll admit the graphics were a little underwhelming but if you're a fan of Halo this is an automatic day one buy/game pass download. I'd rather have graphical upgrades as the game gets closer to launch than the typical downgrades we see all the time when a game gets released.

 

[chris1515]

Brad Sams said a source told him Halo Infinite will release without multiplayer maybe better to delay the game if it is true.

 

[Ike Turner]

I just don’t understand why they showed it to us.

That's quite an achievement though. The worst looking AAA game shown so far (Sony included) is probably the most expensive one with the longest development time and the biggest franchise. Never underestimate Microsoft when it comes to fuck ups. The gameplay demo is at times worst looking than a 360 games (but running at 4K!).

 

[iroboto]

I'm glad we got to see it personally. I'll admit the graphics were a little underwhelming but if you're a fan of Halo this is an automatic day one buy/game pass download. I'd rather have graphical upgrades as the game gets closer to launch than the typical downgrades we see all the time when a game gets released.

agreed, nice to see a return to form.
I'm totally not sure about shipping without multiplayer. That's Halo roots there.

 

[iroboto]

That's quite an achievement though. The worst looking AAA game shown so far (Sony included) is probably the most expensive one with the longest development time and the biggest franchise. Never underestimate Microsoft when it comes to fuck ups. The gameplay demo is at times worst looking than a 360 games (but running at 4K!).

Well then, by this admission you'd agree its a new engine. That or 343i is spending 5 years and 500million on eightballs

 

[Ike Turner]

Well then, by this admission you'd agree its a new engine. That or 343i is spending 5 years and 500million on eightballs

A "new engine" doesn't cost 100s of Millions of $$. 343i has been run like crap & pissing away $$ from the get go. The whole MCC outsourcing fuck up & years of money sunk into it to salvage it is a prime exemple of the studio's management fuck up. It should have been restructured years ago. Compare this to The Coalition/Playground/Turn10 etc...343i is simply inefficient. As a matter of fact a big chunk of the Slipspace Engine development (& also Halo 5) has been outsourced to https://skyboxlabs.com/. Its ridiculous..

 

[BRiT]

Brad Sams said a source told him Halo Infinite will release without multiplayer maybe better to delay the game if it is true.

Actually, delay the entire game by at least 1 year and make it Series X and PC only.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Well then, by this admission you'd agree its a new engine. That or 343i is spending 5 years and 500million on eightballs

I feel bad for the people at 343. I would not be shocked to see exposes about "What happened to Halo Infinite" outlining an Anthem-like project. $500 million sounds like "we scrapped it and started over multiple times, and now we're being forced to release this as a launch title during a pandemic."

 

[Xbat]

I remember reading a long interview with Neil Druckmann just before the release of The Last of Us Part II and he said there were still have major issues with their code just a week before going gold.

Yes but they didn't parade those massive issues in a video clip that's supposed to show how awesome and powerful the next gen machine is.
It would be more forgivable if it was being played live and there was some issues but it wasn't.

 

[iroboto]

A "new engine" doesn't cost 100s of Millions of $$. 343i has been run like crap & pissing away $$ from the get go. The whole MCC outsourcing fuck up & years of money sunk into it to salvage it is a prime exemple of the studio's management fuck up. It should have been restructured years ago. Compare this to The Coalition/Playground/Turn10 etc...343i is simply inefficient. As a matter of fact a big chunk of the Slipspace Engine development has been outsourced to https://skyboxlabs.com/. Its ridiculous..

Depends on how much changes. Tools may need building/reworking. Releasing for multiple platforms. Likely game design changes etc.
The other studios have established industry leading engines to work with. I'm not saying it's impossible they didn't have mishaps. This we will find out more when journalists pry. I'm not even sure where the 500M figure came from.

Large projects with large aspirations tend to be either super inefficient or fail: see Death Stars and Star Killers

 

[BRiT]

I'm not even sure where the 500M figure came from.

The receipt for the hookers and blow ...


I would much rather hear they completely squandered the money through nefarious means than use it just to fail this hard. Then again, maybe things will look better in October or April and we'll all be able to laugh at this train wreck reveal.

 

[iroboto]

The receipt for the hookers and blow ...


I would much rather hear they completely squandered the money through nefarious means than use it just to fail this hard. Then again, maybe things will look better in October or April and we'll all be able to laugh at this train wreck reveal.

I think they struggled with getting back to Halo gameplay roots.
It's not an easy position to be in. The world of FPS is moving forward. But they have this crowd they keep trying to cater towards who has no interest in advancing the gameplay beyond Halo 1-3 (no sprint, no thrusters, no ADS etc).
But people need to move on. They released Halo MCC for those folks, and that should be enough for them.

tragic nostalgia issue:

But they want back and decided on a Halo spiritual reboot. And I do agree it's 'Halo' take on FPS. H4 and 5 felt like your typical shooter game with better AI enemies for a campaign. I think every FPS game that's been good has had an identity, and Halo lost theirs. They may have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make it a Halo game. And that may have resulted in a lot of re-work and then the eventual realization a new-engine would need to be made. SO they needed to scrap and rebuild. Supporting XBO to XSX to PC is not an easy task either. Most other exclusives do not need to target so many platforms.

 

[Scott_Arm]

There are many ways the game could look good without being gritty or photorealistic. Everyone thinks Breath of the Wild is a beautiful looking game, but it's not a technical powerhouse. It just has a very well executed and cohesive art style. Maybe they could have gone for a painted look like some old sci-fi novel covers. If they do patch in ray tracing, I imagine that'll improve things quite a bit, but I don't know if it'll help with what look like a pretty sparse environment and ugly enemy models. There's just a weird mix going on. Master Chief looks like he's from one game. The pilot of his little ship looks like he's from a different game and the enemies look like He-Man action figures from the 80s. Then it has a whole bunch of technical issues that didn't require any special investigation to uncover. They have four months at most, most likely, to get it right. Seems like a stretch. If it was an old build that had all these issues, I just don't know why you'd show it at all. Wait another month or two and as long as you show it before the console launches you're good.