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

I remember it being a Bungie-era consideration that they talked about at one point. It kind of highlights the importance of such for multiplayer and identifying weapons at all sorts of angles during gameplay, and that's also where colour schemes help as well. In Halo 4, they made the colouring of the new plasma rifle and carbine so similar (dark blue), it's just silly.

Note how 343i must use a separate UI outline on items in-game. It's incredibly distracting, but I find it's just a hack on top of a failure of gameplay design considerations.

 

Weapons, characters, vehicles, all need to have clear and distinct silhouettes. It is important both in art and gameplay design.
DF released their take on the lighting of the game.
As always, interesting stuff

 

I watched the DF video earlier, it provided some explanation for why the graphics look flat.

SPOILER: 343 picked a poor combination of location and time to capture footage. It doesn't address all of the complaints, but probably the big one. This is actually quite encouraging.

 

I'm guessing nothing as bombastic as a scarab battle which would have been perfect for using the grappling hook.

Rescue 3 marine groups
Destroy 3 turrets
Defend 3 spots
...
Repeat 343 times

/CynicAl

*grumble*

 

That video explains well what exactly happened but still, we can understand but the fact remains that the presentation is really subpar and look worse than most games.

This really needs to be delayed, why would the insist on shipping the game like this, incomplete, with a visual overhaul coming latter with RT, without multiplayer and who knows what's more with all the additions from player feedback? And why they need this feedback anyway? They don't have a clear vision yet?

 

I'm assuming they picked the very first level /mission.

Confirmed shipping with multi player

 

https://wccftech.com/halo-infinite-...eatures-a-new-acoustic-engine-leveraging-xsx/

I don't get it. Like, the game doesn't look horrendous, but nobody thinks it looks good either. The way they're talking about it, it's cutting edge and fully leveraging the hardware. There are open world games that were released current gen that were 30fps, that should be easily doable at 60fps and dynamic 4k and they'd look better without any other changes.

 

It is an inherent problem with real time lighting, without any form of semi-accurate indirect lighting.
It is not an excuse though.
If we are to assume that the game will have a day-night cycle, I can only imagine how it will look at night time (either really flat or with a moon light that provides the same brightness/contrast as that of the sun).
The example provided by DF, Metro exodus, is a good one. But the difference is a lot more pronounced here.
I still think a lot of it has to do with art direction, or perhaps lack thereof (an approximation of the likeness of a 2007 game that was great then, but doesn't cut it now)...
RT might save the game graphically for XSX, but what about the rest..?
I won't say that MGS5 (a game with similar restrictions in terms of lighting) looks better (it doesn't), but it looks a lot more consistent.

 

I think this is a fair assessment of the visuals. I think what may have happened is that Halo Infinite spent a long time targeting Xbox One hardware and in the latter phase of the project they had to scale it up to Series X hardware and PC. For all the bluster about game engines being easy to scale upwards, this does require a lot of work especially if your engine was spec'd out years prior and you are trying to re-engineer the engine years later mid-game development.

It's easy to forget that the multi-generational aspect of Xbox and the commitment to bring Xbox games to Windows have come relatively deep in Halo's development. Had 343 known this was the strategy at the start, Halo would probably have looked a lot better for this showing.

 

Absolutely amazing video by Alex. (when are they not?)

The number one thing I want from next gen is a lighting model that "looks" like it's physically accurate, regardless how many tricks they used to achieve it. With everything else in the pipeline having improved so much in the last decade, this is really becoming the achilles heel of real time rendering.

 

That there, is my main (admittedly egoistic) concern with Microsoft's strategy this gen.
More games at launch, more games for everyone at a lower cost, but setting a slower pace when it comes to advancing games as a whole.

 

I don't really understand how things will turn out with the 10 years of content - there's a limit to how much they can change the graphics. Also... download size???

They might be able to scale up encounters later on, but we don't yet have an idea of where they're going for gameplay and metacontent.

 

Alanah Pierce had a behind-closed-door viewing of the exact demo & said that level was about half-way through the game. YouTube link below is time-stamped at the start of her experience. It lasts about 19 minutes with discussion 4 others on Rooster Teeth's Inside Gaming Send News podcast. It has some nuggets from her Q & A, but a lot of filler too.



She is also on the Kinda Funny X Cast & they just released episode 2 of their weekly podcast about Halo & the Games Showcase I haven't started watching it yet, but I'm linking below...



Tommy McClain

 

Kind of reminds me of the first Destiny.
The plan sounds very similar.
I think that the second one is closer to keeping the promise of many years of content akin to an MMO especially since they are going for seasons and expansions as opposed to sequels.

 

This is why I like the ssd cart that they made. If your a big halo fan and want to play it through the 10 years (i doubt it will be supported 10 years but maybe the rest of this future generation ?) you can buy larger ssd carts. You could actually buy an ssd cart and devote it to just one game. Also as time passes the carts will go from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 TB i am sure (8 might be a bit much but who knows)

Also there are lots of games that have existed for a long time that have had drastic changes to graphics

MMO's go through this and then you could look at a game like skyrim and see how much even moders can change

 

hm... fair enough, I suppose, but it seems lofty to expect them to change everything (particularly campaign).

 

Best thing that could happen to DF and PC gaming is Alex joining the team.

 

Alex always does an amazing job at explaining and more importantly visualizing how effects work in graphics. He always puts a ton of work into those videos you can tell. He was an amazing addition to the team. I love the vids he does with John; those two make a good team.

And yea, it's nice to have someone who's more PC oriented on the team so we get more varied content and a different perspective on things.