Having watched the HD footage here are some of my thoughts:
First, the Reach reveal is clearly not CGI but based on a game engine.
Second, this engine is very similar to Halo 3’s—this is not too dissimilar to the Forza Motorsport 3 “photomode” based videos. Strip the game of the uber-AA and the uber texture fidelity, go sub-HD, and scale back the shadow filtering and you have a game eerily similar to Halo 3. Indeed, look at the Halo 3 cut scenes where shadowing and lighting are amped up, LOD is maxed, and cinematic angles are chosen to show off the quite good Halo 3 material systems and emphasizing contrasting lighting situations and tada! Example you ask:
http://ui27.gamefaqs.com/986/gfs_63166_2_18.jpg
The Halo 3 reveal was in a real-time engine, too, and if you go back and look at it you can see how it is the Halo 3 engine but very selective, photo-esque angles were shown to emphasize the setting.
Side-by-side the Halo 3 and Reach videos have a bit in common to my eyes although you can see some progress.
So, in my opinion, this looks like an evolution of the Halo 3 engine and, based on how the Halo 3 reveal covered up certain deficiencies as well as how Microsoft has been using super-sampled rendering to show off their games, I think we can piece some stuff together as this does indeed seem to be generated from their engine.
Obviously, unless Bungie has sold out to 4xMSAA or a screen space AA trick, we can assume there will be a bit of jaggies. The art shown thus far is very dark and low contrast so aliasing will be minimal, mainly seen in areas with illumination. Going sub-HD will increase aliasing and lower image quality. No/little AF will destroy a lot of image quality again, especially the ground or objects at sharp angles; they may use a negative LOD which could cause swimming.
These things, right here, will really close the gap between Halo 3 and what we saw in Reach.
The video shows more foliage than seen in Halo 3; what was seen was pretty Spartan though. It looked clumsy in the wind (really fast moving, generic, and cloned repeatedly). Not too dissimilar to CoD4; alone it looks weak, but in the grand scheme it works. There were a lot of nice atmospheric effects. A bit of dust, but if you focus on the dust it isn’t atypical of other games.
Shadows looked really, really nice (dynamic shadows cast and received by dynamic objects) with great filtering. Bungie has done a lot of research on lighting and shadowing based on recent trade shows and it really shows. But I doubt what we saw makes it into the gameplay engine (see: Halo 3). We can hope that we don’t end up with disappearing shadows 10 feet away, but I am not sold on what we saw makes it into the retail product during gameplay. I am guessing they tweaked their renderer some as they had a lot of lights in the video. Even though the setting was dark ambient lighting seemed decent and the number of lights was quite good.
Human models were generic, but a LOT better than Halo 3. Faces looked kind of glossy and not the highest resolution textures I have ever seen, but they worked. The material systems on the armor actually look similar (in a very good) to Halo 3 and were some of the best parts of the video. Very detailed (in a Gears of War way) and reacted well to environmental lighting. Didn’t notice a reflection of the player in the Spartan visor at the beginning (something that saw a big downgrade in Halo 3 from video presentation to gameplay).
The storm in the background was amazing, but probably a skybox ala Halo 3 and ODST. Looks amazing but you can never get “into” the storm and keep the graphics. So a nice atmospheric background effect, something Halo 3 already did and did well.
Normal maps seemed higher resolution and used more frequently; Resolution of textures in the distance is also a lot better than Halo 3.
Vehicles were all detailed (e.g. the warthog had better texture resolution than Halo 3 by memory) but it wasn’t jaw dropping amazing. It moved kind of stiff, too. Overall they looked quite nice though and fit the Haloverse. Lights and rotor wash dust all add nice detail to the world.
The highlights were really “metallic” objects. The aircraft at the beginning look very detailed and lighting worked well (a great contrast between lit and unlit angles as well as self shadows) and the Spartan armor was amazing—especially the Spartan with the huge knife and flaming skull scratched paint visor. The scope was large and open with a great backdrop.
But… Halo 3 also had nice texture work (e.g. go to high ground and look directly down at the ground—very, very detailed!) but the real-time game play rendering kills IQ. Materials were also quite good on armor in Halo 3. Halo 3 could also support large vistas with great atmospherics.
The problem with Halo 3, besides IQ, is a lot of their tech choices weren’t maximized. The spent a lot of time with HDR and how the Spartan armor interacted with the environment and then they spent most of their time outdoors with a single light. So you get some amazing sequences (like the bridge where the flood help MC to get to the Prophet of Truth where the lighting and contrast is excellent) but a lot of ho-hum sequences as well.
I REALLY dig the grittier look (ala the commercials) and if Halo Reach has large firefights in open expanses I think the engine makes a lot of sense. But if we are back to medium sized skirmishes linked by linear gateways connecting segments I don’t see what is being shown is a lot different from Halo 3. Sure, maybe we will see a lot more darkened environments that put the lights to great use and maybe with Bungie familiar with their tool chains we will get overall better quality assets and better presentation. Halo 3 was a mess (no filtering or AA on open environments and large flat forerunning objects make a big ????!!) in terms of how the gameplay matched with their tech decisions. Games like BFBC and Far Cry 2 really make you pause in regards to what is possible.
But it doesn’t really matter. Halo gunplay is excellent, Halo 3 had some great AI, and Halo 3 is one of the richest featured games ever with 4 player coop from start to finish, amazing MP options and features, and have now branched out with FireFight. If Reach is large battles with a lot of kick @#$@# Spartans saving the day and Bungie continues progressing the features while keeping solid “30 seconds of fun” in the Haloverse I think consumers will be happy.
Seriously, are you guys doubting Bungie here? I'm 100% convinced that this is all done in their engine with the actual assets, nothing looks impossible here. The only thing to suspect is the AA, as there's just too much of it, thus suggesting that the trailer material has been bullshot-rendered (and making it impossible to tell if they've managed to get rid of the 640p-noAA resolution of the previous games).
It may be generated from the engine, like Forza 3, but it doesn't look realtime on the console. And it isn't just the AA but the textures.
This is crazy, everyone criticized Bungie for not pushing the hardware enough - and now that they're doing it, the same people are saying it's a trick?
The Halo 3 trailer, which was realtime, looked great as well. Selective angles goes a long way. The Halo 3 E3 trailer, though, if you look around had some aliasing (they also used some DOF and edge blurring in the E3 vid) and textures with sharp angles were quite blurry--this video showed amazing edges and great textures. Doesn't sound like something these consoles are doing in realtime.
I would like to be proven wrong.
By "same" I mean I should be able to take on any enemy in the game 1v1 and have a chance to win the battle. I am still a Spartan after all.
Now, a squad of Spartans would breeze through just about any Covenant, so I hope they add challenge via sheer number of enemies, rather than making the individual Spartans weaker, the enemy stronger, and/or the weapons weaker.
IMO the "second to second" combat experience is what makes Halo great. I don't want that watered down just to force some type of tactical teamwork approach to missions. The player should have options, and not be forced to play the game only one way.
Now, having said all that, I think it is possible to mix the two styles, so I'm not too worried at this point.
Agreed. I want them to keep melee, nades, and distanced weapons--but I don't want weak Spartans either! The solution is huge HUGE open battles where coordinating with a total of 6 Spartans to rule the field 8)
I don't have a link for this but a Forum mod at Bungie said:
* odmichael
* |
* Forum Ninja
*
*
The website is a Microsoft website. However, my guess is this is a mistake. Spartan III's were developed on Onyx and had no involvement on Reach. ONI kept the project a secret. These spartans look like Spartan II's to me.
Stolen from Gamersyde.
