Halo Infinite

[dope_danny]

Looked pretty meh imo in both sound design and grafics but if the story and gameplay is alright then perhaps I get it.

I'm sure the name of the franchise will sell alot on its own though.

Microsoft said it's work in progress but the game have been in production for 5 years with 3-6 months left till launch so i dunno bout that, grafics and sound design that is.

The name thing is interesting in this case because Halo 4 was the last well if rockily received game from the mainline series and that was nearly a decade ago. Younger consumers have had Halo 5 which is unarguably the worst game in the series to try and sell them and if it didn't why would they go back to try the older ones in the MCC when that itself had a reputation for a long time as being a horribly broken mess?

Its going to be interesting to see if Halo has actually been aged out at this point. If you were 13 when Halo CE came out you are now in your 30's and kids on the xbox platform seem to care a lot more about live service stuff and things like Minecraft than their parents shooters that a lot of people based on comments about infinites trailer dont even know Halo had a story and thought it was just a multiplayer mlg thing.

I mean yeah if this is designed via meme and its an open world live service nightmare then thats probably to try and hook da yoof to counter this but in general i have to wonder just how much of a pull Halo has today compared to 15 years ago.

[Erolian]

The name thing is interesting in this case because Halo 4 was the last well if rockily received game from the mainline series and that was nearly a decade ago. Younger consumers have had Halo 5 which is unarguably the worst game in the series to try and sell them and if it didn't why would they go back to try the older ones in the MCC when that itself had a reputation for a long time as being a horribly broken mess?

Its going to be interesting to see if Halo has actually been aged out at this point. If you were 13 when Halo CE came out you are now in your 30's and kids on the xbox platform seem to care a lot more about live service stuff and things like Minecraft than their parents shooters that a lot of people based on comments about infinites trailer dont even know Halo had a story and thought it was just a multiplayer mlg thing.

I mean yeah if this is designed via meme and its an open world live service nightmare then thats probably to try and hook da yoof to counter this but in general i have to wonder just how much of a pull Halo has today compared to 15 years ago.

If we're being honest if you only count the opinions of the people who play Halo for its entire life cycle 343 has never made a lasting Halo title. The games pretty much cash in after a few weeks and we coast until they're dead regardless of what updates they might try and produce.They talk a lot about foundation for the future and updates over time but from their track record they should be much more concerned with capturing the attention of the casual gamer 4 months after release and when they figure that out we can talk years maybe.

Imo bungie pretty much made them the blueprint but they for whatever reason can't comprehend what actually happened with Halo CE through Halo 3. Halo CE really just changed the FPS genre on console gaming via controls and how the aim assist felt etc. Halo 2 brought that back and changed a few things to really make it work for online gameplay at the time in 2004 but what Halo 2 really did that was special was their social features and matchmaking that once again redefined console gaming except this time it was via the social aspect. The xbox dashboard is based off of Halo 2 and generally every game people play online in 2020 borrows from those basic social features now.

Halo 3 ramped that up and provided a small map editor to console gamers who generally didn't have those, a theater mode, and more ways to find, play and share films, clips, maps, and game mode settings. Halo Reach just did all of that in an even cleaner UI but this is where things began to fall. Reach held on because bungie really did do a great job on the social end of things and Halo 3 had carried the hype this far but the actual gameplay wasn't classic Halo and it did begin to suffer.

343 comes in here with Halo 4. They basically missed a lot of the social features and the gameplay didn't really improve. This was an even larger departure from classic Halo gameplay. They didn't have the benefit of being directly preceded by one of the juggernaut first 3 mainline Halo titles.

They released MCC after this to complete disaster. The games didn't really work for months and they missed a lot of the social features H3/Reach had.

Halo 5 released and they waited until months after launch to add things like the map editor, a custom browser, game modes we'd been playing for over a decade on top of the gameplay once again not really being there from a classic Halo standpoint. They also once again missed matching the social features of Halo 3. A game from 2007. H5 tanked a few months after launch.

So here we are five years later. Thirteen years after the last mainstream breaking Halo game with nothing to show for it but a declining population for the entirety of that time. We've got the wrong developer. Bungie was a giant among studios, especially on console, that really pushed what was possible for those first 3 Halo games on console. 343 just doesn't have the talent or the vision. They've been with Halo for about the same length of time and they've basically been pushing out games with fewer features, worse gameplay and driving the series into the ground where bungie was doing things people hadn't really seen before when they were running things. Its sad to have been here from 2001 until now. These dudes actually managed to release Halo CE, 2 and 3 again except without all of the features, a decade later and they didn't even work. They are, as I'm typing this, STILL releasing patches and updating those games to try and make them work correctly six years later. I love the dedication but lol really? A couple more months there and they'll have spent more time trying to fix those games than it took from the release of Halo CE to the release of Halo 3

[Tech614]

We've got the wrong developer.

More like wrong publisher. Reminder that 343i was literally created by MS to make Halo games after the bungie split. The fact they suck at making Halo games is on Microsoft, they created them.

[Belize]

The pistol looks wrong.

The UI is wrong. Whoever said "guns and grenades go on the bottom right" needs to be fired.

[Erolian]

More like wrong publisher. Reminder that 343i was literally created by MS to make Halo games after the bungie split. The fact they suck at making Halo games is on Microsoft, they created them.

Yeah those two are pretty much interchangeable with MS being the umbrella that all of the mistakes ultimately fall under

[Jastall]

Imagine posting complaints about a game's graphics on a website that's pretty much dedicated to WoW.

Not saying WoW is ugly at all, but it's not well known for its realism. What's the old adage?

Good graphics don't make games classic?

If someone doesn't mind the graphics, why criticize their opinion? You shared yours when you said you disliked it, and others are free to say they do like it.

WoW has a highly stylized art design that lends itself to timeless graphics, that HAVE greatly improved over the years. Compare the zones, models and textures of Classic to ones in BfA or Shadowlands, it's a night and day difference. Also a 15 years old game.

Halo is not stylized, it tries to have a fairly realistic design all things considered, but the result looks pretty friggin bad for a 2020 game. Not only is the lighting quality objectively awful, but the environments look drab and boring, and that's after we've had close to 10 years of games showing us amazing looking environments. Fucking Skyrim, unmodded, has a better looking world than this from a distance. Previous Halos looked better than this. No amount of justifying this with muh artstyle will hide the fact that a generation-starting, console-selling killer app shouldn't look like a previous generation starting game. That just screams lack of effort and/or direction.

Not that graphics are the only problem with this game. I didn't even finish the 8 minute gameplay presentation, it was all just more Halo with no differences except a bigger, sparser level design. Playing Doom Eternal just before looking at this makes the comparison even more sad.

[Fayolynn]

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/02...ign-unfiltered

That article makes it very clear they aren't talking about rebooting the story, they are talking about gameplay mechanics.

[Erolian]

WoW has a highly stylized art design that lends itself to timeless graphics, that HAVE greatly improved over the years. Compare the zones, models and textures of Classic to ones in BfA or Shadowlands, it's a night and day difference. Also a 15 years old game.

Halo is not stylized, it tries to have a fairly realistic design all things considered, but the result looks pretty friggin bad for a 2020 game. Not only is the lighting quality objectively awful, but the environments look drab and boring, and that's after we've had close to 10 years of games showing us amazing looking environments. Fucking Skyrim, unmodded, has a better looking world than this from a distance. Previous Halos looked better than this. No amount of justifying this with muh artstyle will hide the fact that a generation-starting, console-selling killer app shouldn't look like a previous generation starting game. That just screams lack of effort and/or direction.

Not that graphics are the only problem with this game. I didn't even finish the 8 minute gameplay presentation, it was all just more Halo with no differences except a bigger, sparser level design. Playing Doom Eternal just before looking at this makes the comparison even more sad.

Even Halo has done an art style that leads to graphics not aging that poorly over time. Look at Halo 3 gameplay on PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knmh6LaZ-Lk sure its not amazing but if my game looked like that 13 years later with just a bump in resolution/framerates I'd be pretty happy with myself

[Jastall]

Even Halo has done an art style that leads to graphics not aging that poorly over time. Look at Halo 3 gameplay on PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knmh6LaZ-Lk sure its not amazing but if my game looked like that 13 years later with just a bump in resolution/framerates I'd be pretty happy with myself

I dunno. 2007 was also the year of Crysis, Uncharted 1, Bioshock, God of War 2 and a few other games that look better than Halo 3 today, and in terms of art style I could lengthen the list quite a bit. It's not a terrible looking game by any means, it's OK, but didn't stand the test of time much more than other titles I think.

And Infinite's graphics already look dated and pretty drab to me. I strongly doubt they will age like fine wine.

[TyrannicalPuppy]

I dunno. 2007 was also the year of Crysis, Uncharted 1, Bioshock, God of War 2 and a few other games that look better than Halo 3 today, and in terms of art style I could lengthen the list quite a bit. It's not a terrible looking game by any means, it's OK, but didn't stand the test of time much more than other titles I think.

And Infinite's graphics already look dated and pretty drab to me. I strongly doubt they will age like fine wine.

Watch the video linked on page 2. All of the game's graphical issues stem from an outdated lighting system, which is going to be rectified by a Raytracing patch a couple days after release.

[Traveler Voltin]

Who the fuck else would I compare it to? Nintendo that makes games for mobile hardware? Or 3rd parties that have different goals and agendas from first party studios? Please enlighten me oh great one. Sony is the most logical and fair comparison you can get.

- - - Updated - - -



You tell me, your flagship first party studio with 500+ devs who has had more then 5 years to work on this project. Why shouldn't the graphics be good? This isn't some indy project, nor is it a constantly evolving game from 2004(for the guy bringing up WoW). This is a full on AAA project from the largest first party dev in the business, larger then even Naughty Dog and they present this?

You keep getting butthurt if a Sony owned studio is mentioned then what if I bring up Playground? Who has created better visuals in an open world and guess who they are owned by... it's not Sony so save yourself the google and guess.

You sound like you where pleased before you saw anything and are now upset reality isn't what your headcanon said it would be.

having a ton of devs is not always a good thing. too many hands in the cookie jar or something like that.

headcanon? wtf are you talking about?

[Erolian]

I dunno. 2007 was also the year of Crysis, Uncharted 1, Bioshock, God of War 2 and a few other games that look better than Halo 3 today, and in terms of art style I could lengthen the list quite a bit. It's not a terrible looking game by any means, it's OK, but didn't stand the test of time much more than other titles I think.

And Infinite's graphics already look dated and pretty drab to me. I strongly doubt they will age like fine wine.

https://youtu.be/QAjwSDecOrU?t=4288? Come on now I think Halo Infinite was as unimpressive as anyone else but there's no need to try and put that above H3

[Tech614]

having a ton of devs is not always a good thing.

Uhh, for graphics and visual fidelity it absolutely is. So many things like overall details minor to major and animation require brute force man power and can't be faked.

[Jastall]

Watch the video linked on page 2. All of the game's graphical issues stem from an outdated lighting system, which is going to be rectified by a Raytracing patch a couple days after release.

"We'll totally fix it after release, promise guys!" is hardly the most encouraging of answers to me.

@Turkey One Yeah, maybe I went a bit too far there, but my point remains that I don't think it was a particularly good looking game for its time, or that the slightly stylized art with (IMO) overly bright colors over muted backgrounds looks good today. It's serviceable for certain. But Infinite is less than serviceable, there are semi-open world games from a few years ago that look better in every respect if you ask me, and they didn't have exclusive-tier budget and a gargantuan dev team.

Also in regards to Infinite, Doom Eternal has a relatively similar, stylized approach that looks far, FAR better both quality and, again IMO, design wise. And it's not even an exclusive, the games that do tend to push the graphical envelope for various reasons as seen with titles like Last of Us 2 this year.

[Saltysquidoon]

Man I love that "we'll patch it" is actually a legitimate thing that Devs are allowed to say to handwave their shit these days. Instead of just a forum warrior delusion.

Imagine being able to admit you know your product will look like shit on launch but not even caring because you know it will print money anyway.

[Pakheth]

I am like so many others very disappointed in Halo 5, but goddamn this looks so bad. Why did they have to get rid of the art using graphics by Studio Blur? Have you seen Halo4/5 and Halo 2 Anniversary? Those games look gorgeous and plays really well.

Also while I fully agree Halo 5's story was utter crap I am not sure I like where they are taking the story in Infinite, not to mention the open world aspect. It just seems so bland.

[Traveler Voltin]

I am just confused how we went from fighting Cortana to now fighting the Banished.
is there suppose to be a book or something explaining this.

[dope_danny]

I am just confused how we went from fighting Cortana to now fighting the Banished.
is there suppose to be a book or something explaining this.

The response to going from "the lead writer dealing with his mothers dementia used it to give cortona some closure since ais only live 8 years" to "we need cortona in the brand to push our siri knock off" was almost unanimously panned. Theres been rumours the whole time that 5 was being "soft retconned" and the far more well received halo wars 2 was going to be used as a jumping off point.

Its still not confirmed but if this is a gaas intended to farm rmt minibuys for a decade then 5 is not really the jumping off point as opposed to "generic evil beastman" ala destiny 2 you can sell on many.

[tru]

Come on my man. Like I know 'Just turn your brain off bro and enjoy it" has become a justified defence to criticism for some reason but you can honestly think that trailer looked good.

Just reading what he wrote I was like oh the new doom huh

[Fayolynn]

I am just confused how we went from fighting Cortana to now fighting the Banished.
is there suppose to be a book or something explaining this.

Hopefully its explained because that trailer was extremely jarring. Not even a hint of Cortana and her AIs. Just a splinter faction of the Covenant that has somehow wiped out most of humanity