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

With the MCC, and when you get around to fixing this issue, 1 tip. Do not start on Legendary....

 

When the trailer started in the cockpit sequence i was like 'aha', almost PS360 visuals. But when the gunplay/gameplay started i thought it wasn't that bad. Then when you read all the negative feedback things only got worse

 

It was the opening game in a presentation that people were expecting would showcase "the most powerful games console in history". That's the context, and it comes after better looking, earlier presentations about the game. So given what we were expecting, what we got was pretty ... surprising. Unfortunately, this made it an ideal target for platform warriors, and youtubers looking to get lazy hits by just slagging something off.

To me, the actual game looked a lot of fun and I can't wait to play it in co-op. It has some issues that need addressing visually, and hopefully will be, but the core of the game looked promising and big-scale. People who refuse to acknowledge that an open world, big battle, vehicled, real-time lit, co-op, 60 fps game is going to have to make tradeoffs are either thick or trying to be aresholes.

From either the Sony or MS presentations it's the game I'm most looking forward to actually playing. Watching the trailer without the surprise of the graphics, and already knowing it's basically an X1 game with no real next gen enhancements (at this stage), have to say I'm really looking forward to it.

 

Thats how it is, eg in this thread I think we heard a mention of killzone 2 CGI trailer from 15 years ago, no doubt in 2030 it will still be brought up, In NZ ppl often bring up the underarm cricket incident from the early 80s, even in serious political discussions

I wont be playing it and Im not concerned about the game at all, I just found the whole thing amusing (its not schadenfreude) as you can tell my personality from my postings about trump or MS with the xb one launch and kinect and their focus on entertainment and not games or sony when cerny gave that speech to the silhouettes from a couple of months ago. I just find it funny when multi billion dollar companies do things that will be obvious cockups to a lot of ppl beforehand, but for some reason they just cant see it, hubris I guess.
Anyways this really aint as important to MS as it would of been a decade ago, ppl have moved on, eg in the NPD rankings, from what I saw with xbox one games no halo game made the top 5 from first person shooters, A decade ago halo would of had one or 2 in the top 5 shooters, if not top 5 games overall. i.e. like madden/final fantasy/GT gamers have moved on to other things

 

I feel this is very difficult... What are they supposed to do for the low quality assets?
Redo all their mesh work?
Even their normal maps seem to be derived from either a medium polycount model, or from a low detail highpoly model (most likely this).
I don't know the engine they are using, but I would guess that their polygon budget should be already spent.
There is a balance between world and characters. You cannot start adding to the one without subtracting from the other.
Unless they have huge leeway and everything we saw in that trailer is a design choice with no tech restrictions imposed by the hardware or the engine.
But if that is the case, the game and the company have worst problems they need to solve...

What I'm hoping for, is good gameplay and level design.
If they nail those two, and improve their lighting, which I find a lot more doable than improving their assets, then the game will be fine.

 

Who says they have to do any of that? Its a Xbox and PC game, so it has to have the ability to scale. They may have turned down the settings to achieve stable 60 fps. Missing lighting & shadows, LOD transitions relatively non-existence and other issues look like the game settings were set to low.

You don't want to optimize gameplay in an uneven setting. How do you optimize gameplay in the midst of frame drops and variable frames rates due to struggles related to graphics? Plus, you think they are going to optimize over multiple gameplay builds since they are developing for multiple hardware? Or just use the lowest settings that will allow them to optimize gameplay across multiple hardware with just one build until they get close to final builds for each sku?

The demo can represent ideal gameplay at the targeted frame rate and now 343 is simply optimizing each hardware build to meet that target.

It can easily be the case of, we don't want to devote time to a demo given the current circumstances, so give the PR people want we have. Making sure Halo Inf is available at launch is far more important than making a deadline for a press conference.

343 can always produce a gameplay demo with better graphics once we get closer to ad and press blitz thats going to happen before launch.

Very few devs can manage an excuse as readily as 343. They are located in Washington which was literally ground zero for COVID-19 in the US as it had one of the first positive patients. Washington also experienced one of the first serious outbreaks at a long care facility with 170 residents in which half the residents contracted COVID and a quarter died.

 

I'm 100% certain about that.
I was just saying that even if they want to do something for some specific aspects of their game it would be very difficult.

I have no idea what were the settings they used.
I can just comment on what I can see.
I can only speculate on this, but when showing your game for the first time, you try to do so in the best light possible.
And I have certainly heard many times about graphical downgrades. Rarely have I heard of a game that looked mediocre at first showing to turn out looking amazing in the end. In fact I can't think of any from the top of my head. I guess there are always exceptions though, however rare.
Since I have no insider knowledge, the only thing I can do, is use logic and common sense to arrive to my conclusions.

Gameplay optimization is completely irrelevant.
This is a marketing video to be shared around the world, not a gameplay snippet to be shared around 343s offices for remarks and change management requests/approvals.
What I expressed, is that I think that the difference in asset quality, between the lowest common denominator, and a high end PC will be extremely small, and that it is very likely that nothing will be done about it.
LODs, shadow quality and lighting might very well change for the better, especially in the case of the SXS.

 

That's a bit damning.

 

Sounds like management sucks too.

 

COVID-19 maybe? So instead of spending resources just for 8 mins demo and potentially affect the final game, they use old demo.

Btw I meant that maybe the 8 mins demo we got is already achieved the target quality.

 

Could be it was Xbox 1 assets. Then xsx and pc will have separate 4k asset / dlc.

 

If those are all developers who have worked there (and I have no reason to think they aren't) then that kind of fits with what I felt was the case when 343i was formed and they first started talking about their plans for Halo 4.

A bunch of big ego's in management that felt they knew better than Bungie did about how to make a successful Halo game. It's no wonder the franchise went sideways and off the tracks so quickly going from one of the premier best selling franchises to something more questionable.

I really do hope that Infinite sees a return to more of a focus on what made Halo great versus a focus on what some select ego's in management (343i management and perhaps previous MS Game Studios management (Don Mattrick, et.al) not current MS management) felt was the direction to go with Halo.

At this point I really couldn't care less if an old creaking engine causes the game to not look spectacular. If they can find the gameplay magic that was Halo, there's hope. If not, then no amount of graphical wizardry is going to save the franchise.

Regards,
SB

 

You'll see pretty much every big studio say "brand new engine" and it's never true. Usually the renderer gets changed and other engine sub-systems selectively get changed, but the engine is also the tools etc. That stuff gets modified. They will rarely throw it all away, and not all at the same time.

One person in that feedback (I'm assuming that's from some rate your employer type site?) mentions that they primarily use email to communicate. I feel that pain. My industry, and my workplace in particular is quite ... old. Email is still the thing, and it's just painful. They gave us Microsoft Teams but everyone hates it. I wonder if Microsoft studios are forced to use Teams instead of better alternatives from other companies, and then they just decide to use email instead.

 

I also see this as another example of the industry shifting to UE and Unity. I know using those has its own problems, but since Fortnite filled the coffers UE has been hiring up massive amounts of industry talent. Unity did the same to stay competitive. The reality is it's going to be incredibly hard for any studio to roll their own engine and stay competitive. Microsoft Game studios are primarily using UE now, and probably for good reason. It has widely understood tools and it is well known. You can find a lot of people that know how to use it. Easier to customize than try to make a game engine that'll compete, at least at that level. Slipspace could be the death knell for 343, or it could just mean the transition to UE for whatever they work on next. I have my doubts about EA's frostbite remaining competitive. Ubi is doing pretty well, and so are a bunch of the Sony studios. You never know though. It takes one fuckup where you fall behind. One by one through this gen we may see big projects like Halo Infinite fail from technical debt or failure and then switch to UE.

 

we all use teams.

Its actually not horrible when you use it properly. At least its better than using email or yammer.... fuck yammer

 

my work has yammer. I’ve never looked at it.