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

As in redo but I doubt that's going to happen. Probably waiting for the Ray Tracing update and other improvements.

 

As with everything MS these days, the messaging is mixed...
It will be extremely (emphasis on extremely) surprising if they have both ray tracing and 120fps at the same time...
And if they want something truly impressive, it cannot run on XBoxOneS as well.
It will also be extremely impressive if they manage to redo their assets at such a small timeframe...
I'm not expecting miracles... Those things sound like miracles to me.

 

To me the assets (including textures) are fine for a cross gen game. Actually, I think they're pretty damn good for an X1 game especially if it's targetting 60 fps.

To me the problems are the pop in, pop out, static nature of the environment, texture filtering, choice of contrast and lack of vibrancy*, shadow quality, lack of high quality reflections, lack of GI, weird mega coarse software style VRS ... and probably other stuff I can't remember.

(*Halo's colour schemes only work if you have the battered tones of the UNSC contrasted against the fantastical alien stuff)

Basically, assets are fine by me for a cross gen game. But the way everything was presented by the engine .... not so much.

 

Their also targetting 60fps, and online MP esport style. It's never going to be a AAA/SP 30fps graphical powerhouse of a game. MS has other titles in the make for that.

 

People are far more pissed about F2P (and everything that entails) than the graphics.

 

I haven't seen anyone being pissed about the multiplayer being free-to-play. Where are you seeing that outrage?

 

I guess they came to see that it could not possibly become "it" this year even if it launched. There isn't much decision making if you feel the product simply can't hold up as it is.
Now, whatever time they gain now, would have bought them 10x the efdective results had it been used in pre-production instead of now in middle of actual production, with a lot more dependencies in place by now.
Depending on how much overhauling they decide to do, there might be content thrown away and recreated from scratch too, time gone to waste that wouldn't have if they planned properly so it could have been executed right the first time.

 

What I don‘t understand: why not just use UE4 (or similar)? If the devs have no clue how to make a game engine with proper workflow...why not take an existing well working engine instead?

What is the rationale behind this decision?

 

UE and open world games don't mix well. So they would have other issues to face. Also, they would have to remake Halo Forge for users to design their own maps too.

 

The engine is fine. Its a game that was designed for 2013 hardware and scaled up for the xbox one x. It was originally going to be released in 2018 but was delayed and imho was delayed because of the what SOT turned out to be and the looming xsx launch. But they were already in a process of making the game run well at 4k and decided to target higher frame rates for the xsx. They figured they would be able to continue to roll out improvements as the game aged. That is why the raytracing stuff was coming after launch of the game. We all know they wont be able to do 4k 120fps with Raytracing but they also want this to big a big competitve game like FN , Apex, overwatch. FN esp but also Apex will run well on a potato . So MS wanted the multiplayer to run extremely well on all the platforms it be on. The eye candy would be reserved for the higher end platforms and would come out later on.

To me i'd be perfectly happy playing what I saw in the 8 minute demo. It looked nice and the framerate was amazing. I could only imagine how smooth and stable it be on an rdna 2 or ampere card for the pc.

 

and it will also come to steam, so most of the visual issues (low res texture, low detail, lack of shadows, etc) probably can be fixed via mods.

 

maybe because they already know their own engine like their own kids? Sure it may give you headaches. But its a known headaches.

 

All the comments we've have seen from developers suggest the engine is anything but fine.

 

Yes it looks like a project that was intended for Xbox One all along. In addition I am sure they have seen Minecraft revenues across the many platforms they support and if they could they would probably release the game on mobile platforms as well, like also FortNite for instance, so kids play it during their breaks at school etc.

 

There's a part of me that believes if they go XSX exclusive, they can't get it running on xcloud for a great deal of many years until the hardware is available to deploy to all available data centers.

I think they would rather have it run on xcloud for now. And when they finally get around to full deployment of hardware, drop support for XBO generation, and those who still don't want to upgrade can enjoy the streaming variant of it.

 

Nor did their own engine.

 

Right, but perhaps better the devil you know than what you don't know.

Personally, I think there should have been a small core team among all the Xbox Games Studios which deals with game engines, experimenting with improving them to meet certain internal business needs, especially if vast majority of those studios are focused on one or two primary engines. It wasn't until just a couple years ago that Microsoft picked up additional studios and gained more overall experience outside the MS in-house engines. Maybe this is happening now, so future titles will be easier to create?

 

Sony's got ICE, EA has got Frostbite.
What should MS's team be? SnowStorm? ColdSore? ChillSoftwareResearch? LowTemperatureThing?

 

Maybe something like Fahrenheit to evoke the big brother vibes? Additional benefit is to see who recalls history.

 

Crytek