*spin-off* Bungie's Past Decisions

[Deepblue]

So after leaving the party, I went out to search for non-ugly human character models. I found a few, but there are so many ugly ones... Anyway, I ended up playing through Floodgate because I was having a lot of fun. At which point, I began to experiment with the Arbiter AI. I betrayed him once to take away his Carbine (it turns out that any projectile weapon is a one-shot kill if the Arbiter is firing it at you), then killed him again leaving him pissed but only with a sword. At which point you can start playing with him. (IE sneaking up behind after he goes into a patrol cycle). Makes me wish there were Elites to fight in the game.

I would also argue that Floodgate is one of the best looking levels on the system. Looking at it, the detail on the flood is actually a lot more disgusting then I initially realized. For example, it turns out that Brute flood-forms carry the infection form inside their mouth. Except doing so stretches the jaw a disturbing amount. If you shoot out the infection form and inspect the body, you will find a pool of purple blood inside the mouth, along with a bit of drip/spray towards the bottom (where the bottom jaw is torn off after the infection form explodes). Then there are the pulsating pustules that form and bounce along the back of new hosts. Or the way the heads of human forms are partially severed and pushed off to the side where they bounce and sway as the body moves. Yeah, pretty nasty stuff.

 

[ShadowWolf64]

So after leaving the party, I went out to search for non-ugly human character models. I found a few, but there are so many ugly ones... Anyway, I ended up playing through Floodgate because I was having a lot of fun. At which point, I began to experiment with the Arbiter AI. I betrayed him once to take away his Carbine (it turns out that any projectile weapon is a one-shot kill if the Arbiter is firing it at you), then killed him again leaving him pissed but only with a sword. At which point you can start playing with him. (IE sneaking up behind after he goes into a patrol cycle). Makes me wish there were Elites to fight in the game.

I would also argue that Floodgate is one of the best looking levels on the system. Looking at it, the detail on the flood is actually a lot more disgusting then I initially realized. For example, it turns out that Brute flood-forms carry the infection form inside their mouth. Except doing so stretches the jaw a disturbing amount. If you shoot out the infection form and inspect the body, you will find a pool of purple blood inside the mouth, along with a bit of drip/spray towards the bottom (where the bottom jaw is torn off after the infection form explodes). Then there are the pulsating pustules that form and bounce along the back of new hosts. Or the way the heads of human forms are partially severed and pushed off to the side where they bounce and sway as the body moves. Yeah, pretty nasty stuff.

The problem with Halo 3 visually is that its graphically inconsistent.The game has its moments where it looks beautiful and other parts where it just looks okay.The HDR lighting is damn impressive though.Do you guys think Bungie could have still had that impressive HDR lighting with a different implementation of it?Without needing 2 framebuffers too achieve that HDR lighting?

Also, do you think Halo 3 looks graphically inconsistent because Bungie focused too much on the amazing lighting or were they not wanting to make Halo 3 a true graphical masterpiece?

 

[Rangers]

Also, do you think Halo 3 looks graphically inconsistent because Bungie focused too much on the amazing lighting or were they a little lazy in wanting to make Halo 3 a true graphical masterpiece?

They could have simply used UE3 and gotten a markedly better looking game. Let alone if theyd actually done a good custom engine (look at some of the almost photorealistic forests and waterfall in Cryengine 3, and compare that to Halo 3, it's almost like another generation).

With the amount of time and money Bungie had, it's probably one of my biggest disappointments this generation.

Remember the days when the Halo series was pretty much the best looking console game? Granted, some of that was due to the Xbox 1's power in it's generation, but I long for those days to return. Halo 3 isn't even in the conversation for best looking console games this gen.

That is why quite honestly, I'm happy to see the series leave Bungie.

 

[Deepblue]

They could have simply used UE3 and gotten a markedly better looking game. Let alone if theyd actually done a good custom engine (look at some of the almost photorealistic forests and waterfall in Cryengine 3, and compare that to Halo 3, it's almost like another generation).

With the amount of time and money Bungie had, it's probably one of my biggest disappointments this generation.

Remember the days when the Halo series was pretty much the best looking console game? Granted, some of that was due to the Xbox 1's power in it's generation, but I long for those days to return. Halo 3 isn't even in the conversation for best looking console games this gen.

That is why quite honestly, I'm happy to see the series leave Bungie.

1. Halo 3 isn't aiming for photorealism.
2. I sincerely doubt that UE3 would make a better looking game.
3. The game is not in any way (with the possible exception of the human character faces) "Halo 2 HD"
4. Name a game that is as complete a package. Then I *might* consider your asinine assumption that Bungie was "lazy." It could have used more time, but ultimately that is left up to the publisher (MS) to decide.

 

[Acert93]

They could have simply used UE3 and gotten a markedly better looking game.

A game engine does more than spit out graphics. How many console games have 4 way split screen online and maintain a solid 30fps like Halo 3? How many have a full theater mode where you can view your last 25 matches or game sessions and race through the map and look at action a hundred yards ahead of your location? Or have complete online game records with every gun, placement and order in which you killed or killed an opponent?

As for Bungie using UE3, UE3 had a ton of issues getting to market (look at all the games that missed 2006 and 2007) and many had framerate issues. UE3 games don't tend toward open areas and many struggle to maintain 30fps--let alone 30fps with 4 way splitscreen. UE3 engine strengths don't really seem to be aligned with the design goals of Halo either.

I think Bungie's Halo 3 engine is simply a result of having gameplay goals (4 player COOP, 4 player splitscreen, theater mode) and being married to certain design choices early in the process. I think the biggest problem is, beyond some artistic issues, they wrong tradeoffs. e.g. Bungie has some nice texturing in some parts of Halo 3 as well as having either a lot ofopen areas or some massive, flat, sharp edged geometry. AF and either AA (or higher resolution) would have gone very, very far in improving the work the game already has present. Poor filtering really, really hurts Halo 3. For a game with such excellent lighting shadows at times can be poor (other times quite excellent in their defense--but seeing many shadows disappear 10M away or dynamic lights causing no dynamic shadows seems really unacceptable considering their poly budget) as well as some sort of amient occlusion would have gone really far to making the image look that much better. But it does a lot of things well, muchn better than UE3 even, so the question is how does it compare in regards to game design choices.

Let alone if theyd actually done a good custom engine (look at some of the almost photorealistic forests and waterfall in Cryengine 3, and compare that to Halo 3, it's almost like another generation).

CryEngine 3 is 2010. Halo 3 was 2007.

Halo 3 isn't even in the conversation for best looking console games this gen.

That is why quite honestly, I'm happy to see the series leave Bungie.

On the other hand it is one of the deepest MP games on the market in terms of options and features and has a stable experience with 4 players on a single console. I think you could flip these questions on their head (e.g. why don't more UE3 games have large open areas, better match making, more vehicles, better framerate, 4 player split screen, etc?) In theory with the budget Bungie potentially had available you think they could have turned out something "best in class" top to bottom.

As much as I think they played it safe, did a poor job of developing the story, and made some questionable trade offs, on the other hand Halo 3 still has some of the best balanced guns and infantry/weapon balance, a deep universe, feature rich gameplay and options, and support.

If the only metric a game is measured by is graphics then games like Far Cry 2, BFBC, etc make you wonder what was Bungie doing?! But if you compare what they do with those engines in term of gameplay it appears that none of the games people want to compare are doing 4 player coop or 4 player splitscreen MP etc. There are valid criticisms of the Halo 3 engine and Halo 3 art (egads the human faces and heads!!!) but something as superficial as comparing Gears is, well, superficial at best. A lazy arguement even As it stands I am not sure any current engine on the market would have resulted in a better playing game, so the question is should they have traded off the gameplay and design for better visials?

As for turning this over to MS being a good thing ... lets wait until MS makes a good game from its internal studios before we kiss off studios who actually make decent games.

 

[ShadowWolf64]

A game engine does more than spit out graphics. How many console games have 4 way split screen online and maintain a solid 30fps like Halo 3? How many have a full theater mode where you can view your last 25 matches or game sessions and race through the map and look at action a hundred yards ahead of your location? Or have complete online game records with every gun, placement and order in which you killed or killed an opponent?

As for Bungie using UE3, UE3 had a ton of issues getting to market (look at all the games that missed 2006 and 2007) and many had framerate issues. UE3 games don't tend toward open areas and many struggle to maintain 30fps--let alone 30fps with 4 way splitscreen. UE3 engine strengths don't really seem to be aligned with the design goals of Halo either.

I think Bungie's Halo 3 engine is simply a result of having gameplay goals (4 player COOP, 4 player splitscreen, theater mode) and being married to certain design choices early in the process. I think the biggest problem is, beyond some artistic issues, they wrong tradeoffs. e.g. Bungie has some nice texturing in some parts of Halo 3 as well as having either a lot ofopen areas or some massive, flat, sharp edged geometry. AF and either AA (or higher resolution) would have gone very, very far in improving the work the game already has present. Poor filtering really, really hurts Halo 3. For a game with such excellent lighting shadows at times can be poor (other times quite excellent in their defense--but seeing many shadows disappear 10M away or dynamic lights causing no dynamic shadows seems really unacceptable considering their poly budget) as well as some sort of amient occlusion would have gone really far to making the image look that much better. But it does a lot of things well, muchn better than UE3 even, so the question is how does it compare in regards to game design choices.



CryEngine 3 is 2010. Halo 3 was 2007.

On the other hand it is one of the deepest MP games on the market in terms of options and features and has a stable experience with 4 players on a single console. I think you could flip these questions on their head (e.g. why don't more UE3 games have large open areas, better match making, more vehicles, better framerate, 4 player split screen, etc?) In theory with the budget Bungie potentially had available you think they could have turned out something "best in class" top to bottom.

As much as I think they played it safe, did a poor job of developing the story, and made some questionable trade offs, on the other hand Halo 3 still has some of the best balanced guns and infantry/weapon balance, a deep universe, feature rich gameplay and options, and support.

If the only metric a game is measured by is graphics then games like Far Cry 2, BFBC, etc make you wonder what was Bungie doing?! But if you compare what they do with those engines in term of gameplay it appears that none of the games people want to compare are doing 4 player coop or 4 player splitscreen MP etc. There are valid criticisms of the Halo 3 engine and Halo 3 art (egads the human faces and heads!!!) but something as superficial as comparing Gears is, well, superficial at best. A lazy arguement even As it stands I am not sure any current engine on the market would have resulted in a better playing game, so the question is should they have traded off the gameplay and design for better visials?

As for turning this over to MS being a good thing ... lets wait until MS makes a good game from its internal studios before we kiss off studios who actually make decent games.

Wow...Grest post Joshua and I believe that Halo 3 was rushed out to market, because MS needed that big game for the 2007 holiday push.So, Bungie had to cut some corners in order to meet the fall 2007 launch release, which is understandable.Remember the first Halo 3 trailer that debuted at E3 2006 and it was graphically amazing.All of that was in-game stuff but obviously, Bungie had to cut some graphical corners because MS was rushing them for a Fall 2007 release.

Even then, Halo 3 has its moments where it looks graphically beautiful, especially with that amazing lighting engine that they implemented.Now, Bungie could achieve the graphical splendor of that Halo 3 2006 trailer, with Halo 3 ODST, as they have 2 years to further fleshout the engine.Now that Bungie isn't owned by MS anymore, they could take their time with ODST and that is exactly what they are doing.

Bungie is going to have an integral role in developing the next Halo game featuring the MC as Halo is Bungie's baby.Granted, the game is going to be jointly developed between Bungie and MS's own internal Halo dev team, as the project is going to be a massive undertaking.Lastly, what gameplay features would you like to see in the next Halo game for the next xbox?I think destructible levels would bring Halo's mp carnage to soaring new heights...

 

[grandmaster]

Do we really expect the Halo engine to be overhauled in any way for ODST?

 

[_phil_]

Bungie just need (much) better artists

 

[Rangers]

Wow...Grest post Joshua and I believe that Halo 3 was rushed out to market, because MS needed that big game for the 2007 holiday push.So, Bungie had to cut some corners in order to meet the fall 2007 launch release, which is understandable.Remember the first Halo 3 trailer that debuted at E3 2006 and it was graphically amazing.All of that was in-game stuff but obviously, Bungie had to cut some graphical corners because MS was rushing them for a Fall 2007 release.

Even then, Halo 3 has its moments where it looks graphically beautiful, especially with that amazing lighting engine that they implemented.Now, Bungie could achieve the graphical splendor of that Halo 3 2006 trailer, with Halo 3 ODST, as they have 2 years to further fleshout the engine.Now that Bungie isn't owned by MS anymore, they could take their time with ODST and that is exactly what they are doing.

Bungie is going to have an integral role in developing the next Halo game featuring the MC as Halo is Bungie's baby.Granted, the game is going to be jointly developed between Bungie and MS's own internal Halo dev team, as the project is going to be a massive undertaking.Lastly, what gameplay features would you like to see in the next Halo game for the next xbox?I think destructible levels would bring Halo's mp carnage to soaring new heights...

It's strange, I do trash Halo 3's graphics a lot, but at the same time I'll defend them..GAF loves to mock some reviews "subtle beauty" claim about H3, but it holds some truth. I was also pretty awestruck in certain areas. The scale is immense and I guess it's the HDR, but the game can be..epic graphically like few others, with a very unique look.

But it still doesn't change the fact overall I think it's disappointing..

Here's my believe of what went down with Bungie and H3..it's funny you mentioned rushed to market..I believe the opposite..leading up to the release it was pretty clear from the clues (and I also read it somewhere) the game had been "in the can" (finished and simply waiting on release) for some time. The same way you can tell Killzone 2 had been at it's release (though I think KZ2 was on a much shorter scale). The odd September release date is but one clue the game was done early, most holiday games release in November to give themselves every last day because they need it. Basically I think Bungie had at least 4 years to work on the game, therefore of course they started the assets well before 360 even released or had been finalized..these assets imo were basically weak, or last gen hd type assets, and were never substantially upgraded when the real hardware came along. That's just my hunch. Sort of the way 360 launch games are nothing compared to what the system does now.

But in no way am I excusing Bungie for this. Rather the blame lies with them.

IMO Halo 2 was a graphical disappointment too, so I really was expecting the letdown H3's graphics turned out to be for me.

 

[Rangers]

Do we really expect the Halo engine to be overhauled in any way for ODST?

No.

Look at Gears 2, a full team and two full years, some improvement graphically, but nothing extreme.

ODST has a small team, and less than two years. Hell it's not even a full priced game. I expect nothing but different colored textures in the same engine.

 

[P on the rocks]

A game engine does more than spit out graphics. How many console games have 4 way split screen online and maintain a solid 30fps like Halo 3?

Halo 3 pretty much never maintains solid 30 fps. Not in splitscreen, not ever. The first thing I did when the game arrived is start a local multiplayer match without opponents. I spawed in the Zanzibar remake map at the sniper spot near the wheel. Without moving and without anything happening in the game I did a 360 turn and got framedrops every time I looked at the middle of the map.

The game has severe framerate problems and if ODST has the same problems it shifts from automatic buy to no-buy for me for this reason alone.

 

[DrJay24]

A game engine does more than spit out graphics. How many console games have 4 way split screen online and maintain a solid 30fps like Halo 3?

Haze? I don't think the engine decisions have anything to do with split screen or co-op. Any engine can be adapted to support such things, it's just a matter of tuning down the graphics when you start splitting the screen up, Motorstorm Pacific rift has this feature.

I think the most logical answer is Bungie either doesn't have the technical knowhow or mis-calculated how their HDR method would use the eDRAM and effect the resolution/AA. Or maybe they simply liked the look.

I was recently playing Far Cry 2 and was amazed at the lighting, the sunsets through the trees, etc. It reminded me of what the Halo 3 apologist used as an example of why Bungie made the decisions they did. Except Far Cry 2 did it at 720P with AA. so whatever technical differences there are in the two approaches, it is largely lost on most players.

 

[homerdog]

No.

Look at Gears 2, a full team and two full years, some improvement graphically, but nothing extreme.

What is your definition of "extreme"? They implemented SSAO - albeit in a way that takes away most of the effect's appeal (fades out in motion). If ODST gets SSAO done right it would be a significant upgrade IMO. But honestly I don't expect even the slightest upgrade, technically at least.

Halo 3 pretty much never maintains solid 30 fps. Not in splitscreen, not ever. The first thing I did when the game arrived is start a local multiplayer match without opponents. I spawed in the Zanzibar remake map at the sniper spot near the wheel. Without moving and without anything happening in the game I did a 360 turn and got framedrops every time I looked at the middle of the map.

The game has severe framerate problems and if ODST has the same problems it shifts from automatic buy to no-buy for me for this reason alone.

Halo 3 maintains a solid framerate for me at almost all times. Granted I don't play much 4 player splitscreen but with 2 players it's damn stable.

I agree with Josh on this one; a little AA or AF would go a long way. But assuming that would be too costly I think they made the right trade-offs. The only thing that's sort of a wash for me is their decision to go with the fawesome lighting instead of AA/720p. I'd like to see what they could've achieved had they not used the dual framebuffers for HDR.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Bungie just need (much) better artists

I remember H3 looking stop-and-look good. Admittedly I only played it 2 player on SDTV, but the lighting and environments made me stare at puddles and walk from dark to light to dark, much to my friend's annoyance . Whatever shortfallings of the game's art, the lasting impression I have is positive. Adn I don't think that was as much the choice to go with a wierd renderbuffer setup as much as the artist's efforts. I reckon the same look could be managed at 720p with a different approach.

 

[Acert93]

While I don't think ODST will entail any significant graphical upgrades I think with some evolutionary improvements the Halo 3 engine and design modifications could look exceptional. I don't expect sch due to the goal of ODST. That said, seeing the upgrades in Gears 1 to Gears 2 and PGR3 to PGR4 shows that a company given a couple years can add a lot of evolutionary changes to address short coming, add new features, and further refine and improve what is already there. Here are some of the things that stand out to me where Bungie could realistially address their past choices while retaining their current technology. They could not do all of these, but they could do some which would imo would shore up the uglies and really show off where the engine does excell.

#1: Improved Texture Filtering. Halo 3 has a lot of outdoor areas as well as large Forerunner artifacts that exhibit flat surfaces. Cleaning up the textures would go a far way to improving the graphics.

#2: Shadowing. For all the effort put into lighting the shadowing deficencies really stand out and hold back the general "lighting" model. Shadows are nice in some areas (e.g. self shadowing) but in general shadows are baked into static geometry and shadows of dynamic objects like players disappear about 10M out. Likewise dynamic lights do not cast dynamic shadows. In short the entire shadowing system needs to be scrapped and rebuilt. I was told the new map Sandbox has large geometry peices that players can place at will and due to how shadows work they don't cast shadows--that needs to be addressed.

#3: Ambient Occlusion. Considering how static Halo 3's world is the fact there is not more AO baked into the world is surprising. Using SSAO would really add to high contrast lighting areas that already look great and to areas with low lighting this would take the edge off the flat look exhibited in many games.

#4: AA. Large, flat surfaces like Forerunner artifacts are artifact magnets! Even if the resolution remains sub-720p adding even 2x MSAA would soften the look and enhance the "clean" look Bungie took with the Halo 3 graphics. It seems completely backwards to go with a colorful, clean look and have poor AF and AA applied.

#5: Foliage. While there is no way around improvements in AF, one way to avoid applying it to the ground is more grass and shrubs. The foliage in Halo 3 can be excellent at times, exhibiting player interaction. A number of games (Far Cry 2, BFBC, CoD4, etc) have shown that the 360 can render large outdoor areas with a lot of grass. Considering the large sprawling savanahs of Halo 3 and the green forested plains of the halos there is no reason that this was not persued more aggressively. It would go a long ways to prettying up the graphics and make them more believable.

#6: Atmospherics. Halo 3 has some nice details when looked at closely. Water can look great (but not always!), snow tracks slowly blow over as do those in the sand, etc. These are all quite subtle. Rain, lightening, snow, sand storms, volumetric clouds, etc would go a long ways to giving more life to each level.

#7: More explosions and particles. Halo 3 has some great particle effects and the engine can handle quite a bit on screen at once. Designing more scenes where there are more active particles on screen would be a big plus. I doubt many people would call Halo sub-par if more levels looked like the bridge segment before the Arbiter kills the Prophet of Truth. Flame grenades for the win!

#8: Large scale. The engine can obviously handle large open areas with a dozen friendlies, dozens of baddies, a dozen large tanks, and a scarab. The irony is that this type of scene only occurs a handful of times in the game and is totally absent in MP. If the engine was designed with these scenes in mind more gameplay should revolve around such.

#9: Improved human models. There are so many poorly designed, artistically, models it makes me wanna make AlStrong cry!

#10: Cut aways. The first time I played Halo 3 through I didn't notice the flood infecting Brutes. If you ever watch how it happens it looks very, very cool. A lot of the little details that show how much effort Bungie put into Halo 3 really stand out only if you are looking around. Most FPS are pretty linear and focus detail on the focal objects and route of the player and Halo 3 seems to be more generalized. Using cut aways, cut scenes, better player placement, etc would go a long way to showing the gamer some of these cool things, or...

#11: Bungie needs to open up game design more. A handful of times you enter a large area where you can choose your route and how to address the conflict. The scope of the battle feels more natural and in-place with the engine. Unfortunately the majority of the game is pretty linear. The engine shows it strength when you are allows to wander around.

Designing more levels to their strengths would go a long way as well. There are a lot of epic scenes and they need to take a look at why those are epic--and why others are "totally fail."

 

[BadTB25]

I am very susceptible to framerate induced motion sickness. Halo 3, and the Halo series, has rarely given me motion sickness.

I mostly experience it in the campaign, but only after hours of gameplay.

I also thought that the graphics were pretty good and was only really disappointed in the human character models. It seemed like it was done by a whole different team than however put together the Chief, Brutes, Elites, Cortana and other characters.

In particular, Johnson, near the end of the campaign was especially horrid.

Overall, I think the games looks good and at times very good.

 

[Deepblue]

*large post*

I agree completely and I would like to add one note on the shadowing. Currently, it seems like Halo 3 applies the specular pass before any real-time shadowing is applied. You can end up with some really unnatural looking "smudges" on character faces, or ground textures that look a bit bizarre.

While we're creating a wish list, I'd like to add a few things:
1. Object-based motion blur and depth of field utilized during gameplay.
2. More persistent ripples and real-time reflection/refraction/volumetrics for the water.
3. Better rain! This is important for ODST given the setting provided by the trailer. I barely noticed it was raining at all on The Storm in Halo 3. Bungie is in the Seattle area, they should know how to make good, thick, sheets of rain.
4. Higher LoD on first-person weapon models. I'd almost swear that the LoD you get while looking at a weapon on the ground at your feet is the same as that you hold. Since this is something that's on the screen 99 percent of the time, it can probably afford a little more detail.
5. Animation: Mo-Cap is not the enemy! Embrace it! I think the animation is one aspect in Halo 3 that failed to improve much from Halo 2.
6. Wider FoV. What's the point of all these scenic vistas if you can't really appreciate the spectacle while playing the game?

 

[obonicus]

*stuff*

Are you supposing that they're really time-constrained, or do you imagine them making a trade-off for one or more of these items? Halo 3 already has its share of trade-offs, afterall.

 

[Acert93]

Are you supposing that they're really time-constrained, or do you imagine them making a trade-off for one or more of these items? Halo 3 already has its share of trade-offs, afterall.

For ODST they are resource limited. The game only started development a little over a year ago and it has a small team. Most of Bungie has moved on. Remember! => MS owns Halo now, and Bungie is on their own.

As for time, the 4 year figure given before is overblow. Halo 2 was a major rush project due to some issues in development and was not finished until the Fall of 2004. Halo 3 came out in the fall of 2007. Halo 3 was their first next gen title and based on the performance on peak scenes they can either push the engine further on "simple scenes" or have a lot more "full on" scenes. It is hard to think of any sequal this gen that had 2 years of rework that didn't improve graphically.

But I think that is the biggest issue with this discussion: the focus is only on the graphics and not all the other technology that goes into a game. Even if Bungie slacked on the technology they didn't slack off on features, play testing, or design. Forge, match making, file share, theater, etc all are including in the "technology" package as well as Bungie.net.

Anyhow, every game has tradeoffs. Gears and PGR did, but that didn't stop them from improving. Just looking at PGR3 which was able to add realtime reflections (ok 1 frame delay), full 720p resolution with MSAA, better texture filtering, and so forth. I don't see where Halo 3 is pushing performance limits (either in game as well as other titles showing what is capable on the hardware) that they shouldn't be able to refine their engine. Especially in that my 'guess' is they re-purposed a lot of the Halo 2 engine anyhow.

Haze? I don't think the engine decisions have anything to do with split screen or co-op. Any engine can be adapted to support such things, it's just a matter of tuning down the graphics when you start splitting the screen up, Motorstorm Pacific rift has this feature.

Yo are far to focused on graphics being the only limiter in a game. Haze is an excellent example of an exception making a rule and Motorstorm as with most car games is already doing all the computations for the other cars so the issue becomes one of being able to handle additional inputs for the game loop and scaling back rendering enough to allow 4 unique renderings of a genre where rendering is very predictable.

Shooters, especially ones like Halo where you can be quite separated, would have to account for players all over the map interacting with a larger range of AI. If your shooter bottlenects with 5-8 AI on screen, what happens when you have 4 players split across a large map in vehciles engaging over 20 AI?

You DO have to account for that in your technology and game design. It isn't as simple as just pairing down the graphics.

 

[obonicus]

*stuff*

Okay, but you didn't really answer my question. You want ODST to have fancy new eyecandy, but you're saying it's even more constrained (in time and money) than Halo 3 was. How will they fit this new stuff in? If they could just 'optimize' their engine wouldn't they have done it for Halo 3, get rid of a few of the trade-offs that are sticking points for so many people? Supposing they can't just 'optimize' the engine, what further tradeoffs do you expect to see in exchange for some of the eye-candy you mention?