First, we want to acknowledge that yes, we’ve heard the feedback coming from parts of the community regarding the visuals in the Halo Infinite campaign demo. While we see and hear far more positive than negative, we do want to share a bit more context. From our perspective, there are two key areas being debated around the community – overall art style and visual fidelity.
Based on our learnings from Halo 4, Halo 5, and Halo Wars 2 – along with strong community feedback – we decided to shift back towards the legacy aesthetics that defined the original trilogy. With Halo Infinite, we’re returning to a more ‘classic’ art style which was a key message going back to the very first reveal that garnered enthusiastic and positive responses. This translates to a more vibrant palette, “cleaner” models and objects with less “noise”, though it doesn’t mean less detail. While we appreciate this may not be everyone’s personal preference, we stand by this decision and are happy to see it resonating with so many fans around the world.
The second theme being discussed involves visual fidelity. Negative feedback in this area includes comments around characters and objects appearing flat, simplistic and plastic-like, lighting feeling dull and flat, and object pop-in. We’ve read your comments, we’ve seen the homemade examples of retouched content, and yes we’ve heard the Digital Foundry assessments. In many ways we are in agreement here – we do have work to do to address some of these areas and raise the level of fidelity and overall presentation for the final game. The build used to run the campaign demo was work-in-progress from several weeks ago with a variety of graphical elements and game systems still being finished and polished. While some of the feedback was expected and speaks to areas already in progress, other aspects of the feedback have brought new opportunities and considerations to light that the team is taking very seriously and working to assess. We don’t have firm answers or outcomes to share yet but the team is working as quickly as possible on plans to address some of the feedback around detail, clarity, and overall fidelity. The team is committed and focused on making sure we have a beautiful world for players to explore when we launch.
Graphics don’t worry much. The game looks fun, and it’s the fun sandbox aspect they’re finally delivering on like I’ve wanted them to do for a lot of games already and they never pulled the trigger. Can’t wait.
Wonder how the decision making works with these kind of things. Who decides to do an uncut demo instead of some vertical slice, or some small gameplay clips. I’m sure 343i knew that they’d get feedback on what was shown.
The graphics are only one concern IMO. The unfinished state of the graphics adds onto the other concerns about the game and strongly hints at the game coming in hot for launch. Not very encouraging IMO.
At a Q&A after the showcase they couldn’t confirm the game would be feature complete at launch, the news of adding features like Ray tracing after launch, the complete lack of any console footage indicates those versions are in an even poorer state than the PC version they showed, developers who left 343i expressing the engine is a mess and they are in crunch mode, etc.
I’m not against GaaS as a whole but I am against a publisher using that model as an excuse to release an unfinished game and that appears to be what we’re getting from all the info so far.
They should delay the game IMO. People would be more understanding of that than releasing a game that doesn’t doesn’t live up to expectations. For many people, this is the last chance for 343i to do Halo right. They can’t afford to take any chances.
Sad fact is it’s the launch title for a new Xbox. That’s not only the hundreds of millions for Halo on the line, but also the billions for a new console.
I think the console will sell out with or without Halo. If anything, a disappointing showing for Halo can give a bad first impression to many on their shiny new console. Phil already said he’s willing to delay Halo in an interview with IGN. Would be nice if he practiced what he said. Hope they pull it together in the end, I just want what’s best for the game.
The graphics will be fine and serviceable. After seeing the large space capabilities of the engine via the campaign demo, I am curious what MP modes they have in store. Certainly some arena game types where the 120fps stuff will live, but hopefully they have a big game mode to take advantage of these sprawling spaces and usually great vehicles.
Other than Halo 4, I never considered the franchise to be on the bleeding edge of graphics. Even then, I was disappointed with the visuals in the Infinite gameplay trailer. For a game that’s supposed to be built to take full advantage of the XSX, it didn’t sell the advantages of the new hardware. Ray tracing at launch, rather than being a post launch feature, would help this game a lot I think (judging from the DF video).
I’m glad that 343 have addressed these concerns and comments in their blog post. And I’m sure there will be some minor improvements to the visuals, but I’m not expecting any major changes (until RT).
That being said, I play Halo for the gameplay and the story, and in that sense I was very happy with what was shown. Gameplay looks awesome, I’m excited for the new sandbox, and I’m happy to once again have an epic story with Master Chief at the center.
Well, for me, much of the game looked amazing. And “some” of the game, not so much. Graphically. But as for Halo gameplay, it was there in spades, and that is what I am looking forward to. I have had fun with all the Halo games, and I am sure this will be no different.
While I’m bummed it isn’t the next gen graphical showcase a lot of us were hoping it would be, I just hope it plays great. Def my most hyped next gen launch game.
I did a few write ups on this on my twitter feed, with examples and the like. I won’t link them as I don’t want to self pimp. To be honest, the game doesn’t look as amazing graphically as many were hoping, and I can understand why people would be surprised this isn’t the best looking game ever, even more so after seeing Hellblade 2 WIP trailer.
However, it’s 120fps in MP, and in 4k. It still looks great, and with a little polish can look spectacular. People also need to see not only the scale of HB2 is much, much smaller, but also it’s target FPS and resolution is much smaller. It’s also only targeting next gen.
Most importantly for Halo however, the gamePLAY looks to be absolutely fantastic. I’m absolutely excited to see what they have cooking and can’t wait to play.
So for me, at 1st, the game did look meh. But after watching the 4K stream in my theater room and hearing it on ATMOS(Even though YouTube doesn’t output ATMOS but it was close enough) I for sure am more calm about it. You can see small details on the pillars but people seem to say they are bland with no texture or detail, just a flat service. Not from what I saw. Then I also thought of the scale of this game. Running @ 60FPS with mostly 4K output, this game is going to be massive and fun as hell for 4 player co-op to explore. And whatever the future holds. I think there can be 2 sides to everything, has Halo ever been a graphical power house? No. Was this game supposed to show off the XSX power? Yes…but then no lol. I think thats where the open world 4K/60FPS comes into play. And in the end, watch the game play BLOW everyone away. In the end will the game be more polished? Of course, but im not expecting some overhaul in these coming months, and if the game was to come out tomorrow with what we saw…id be all for it cause for me atleast, I saw Halo. End Rant lol!
The things I found off was lighting, pop in and some textures but that doesn’t ruin my hype at all for this game. Gameplay and story will always be more important than graphics but that’s not to say graphics aren’t important. Halo to me has never really been the game you play for hyper realistic graphics which some people to think it should.
MP is a huge draw card for me and if it’s good that’s all I’m here for haha oh and a good story. It’s good to hear that we play as chief pretty much most of the time and damn that pilot has more charisma and is much more interesting that most of the characters in recent halo games.
Personally I’m extremely hyped for the game and I can’t bloody wait.
If they can fix some of the textures and the lighting i think it could look pretty good. Who knows maybe once the ray tracing update hits indoor forerunner structures with bright lights could look pretty great.
Lighting should be able to be fixed, pop in is just a optimising and they could improve textures but that one is probably a bit harder. But you should expect the overall game to improve from that demo we just saw.
