The game was low-res and jaggy, teture filtering was horrendous. It's only now that you can play it at 4k120 that you can appreciate everything about its presentation.
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Halo Infinite Campaign is visually stunning now
- Thread starter P40L0
- Start date
I thought it was fine before, and I'm not really one who doesn't care about graphics, either.
It's great to see the improvements nevertheless, I appreciate the game come closer to reaching it's full potential thanks to the reaction to last year's showing and the delay.
It's Halo, it was never going to be the prettiest game out there, it never was, really?
It's great to see the improvements nevertheless, I appreciate the game come closer to reaching it's full potential thanks to the reaction to last year's showing and the delay.
It's Halo, it was never going to be the prettiest game out there, it never was, really?
To be fair, this was a problem with most PS360 games. Image quality was a huge issue back then.
CE, 3 , Reach and 4 all look absolutely stunning for its time.
I think it looks great and I'm looking forward to playing it but I wouldn't quite call it stunning when a cross gen open world game like Horizon Forbidden West exists.
Yes but Halo 3 had a lower resolution than the most popular panels at the time (720p), very high contrast and absolutely no techniques were employed to mitigate the aliasing. So it gains relatively more from the more hardware than its contemporaries.
I'm also in the "it looks much better than the 2020 showing but still not amazing" camp.
It's not a big deal, though as long as it has buttery smooth 60 fps at that fidelity level. Also flying!
Not sure if I'm the only one but I got kind of excited when MC came close to that base and it showed a list of objectives (0/2 0/1 etc.).
It adds a sense of progression and gives you more reasons to go to these places besides just going there to kill enemies that might or might not respawn anyways. Can't wait!
It's not a big deal, though as long as it has buttery smooth 60 fps at that fidelity level. Also flying!
Not sure if I'm the only one but I got kind of excited when MC came close to that base and it showed a list of objectives (0/2 0/1 etc.).
It adds a sense of progression and gives you more reasons to go to these places besides just going there to kill enemies that might or might not respawn anyways. Can't wait!
That's a bit of revisionist history. The game was panned back in 2007 for having serious aliasing problems. As far as I can remember, that started the whole pixel-counting era we're living in, even though it wasn't the first sub-HD title that generation (that would be PGR3). There were plenty of AAA games at the time that were 720p native or at least had some form of AA and looked much better in terms of aliasing. Halo 3 was sub-HD, had no antialiasing whatsoever and had lots of fine geometry, foliage and high-contrast edges that made the picture look super aliased, not to mention plenty of shader aliasing as well.
I'll agree on 4, but the rest, no. Halo 4 still looks amazing, especially in the MCC.
CE came out in the age of UT & Q3, and it did not compare. A low res bland mess on a TV screen just wasn't a looker compared to PC games back then.
It wasn't bad looking, but "absolutely stunning" is a hilarious over exaggeration.
This may sound like a hot take but I stand by it.
Reach was a visual design mess. Fun, well made game, looked dated immediatelly.
3 came out the same month as Crysis. Come on.
Also Infinite for our time, now after the 1 year delay.
There's no open world sandbox shooter with that horizontal + vertical freedom at basically native 4K and locked 60fps with that fidelity (both in-game cutscenes and gameplay) on Xbox Series X so far.
CoD Vanguard is a corridor shooter again, Battlefield 2042 is Multiplayer only and still with a huge amount of issues (including visuals) and maybe and only Far Cry 6 comes to my mind (which is still 1800p with 30fps cinematics with simpler encounters, lower res textures and less verticality).
Checking this thread for the first time since the new video and fuck me I already want to jam forks in my brain after a few pages.
Game looks good. They clearly put a lot of time into the lighting and texturing, and the distant LOD is pretty impressive from what I saw as well - some really sharp details far away from the player. I really like the almost-impressionistic look the landscape takes on in the far distance - combination of the colour palette for the landscape and the way it culls detail. Broadly speaking in terms of fidelity it looks a lot like the big team battle maps from the last test, but at a massively larger scale and more impressively lit. I will gladly take that at 4K60 and with the scale and verticality involved.
Reaction online from Halo fans seems to be overwhelmingly positive. No memes or torrents of fresh online negativity from the internet at large, so mission accomplished on that front. I still have unanswered questions about the structure of the campaign, but presumably answers to that stuff will filter out in the weeks ahead. In particular I'd like some plainspoken answers about biomes - what's in the game at launch, and if there are plans to add additional ones via whatever their long-term "platform" plans are for the game.
Even with the obligatory and tedious "it's cross gen" throat-clearing out of the way, I think it looks really good. There's a cleanliness and pushing out of detail in the presentation that just wouldn't be possible on an Xbox One - and certainly not at 60fps. Which leaves me to wonder what this game (and Forza for that matter) are going to look like on a Xbox One, haha. The One S struggled to even run the MP tests with consistent performance.
Oh, and what was with the scuffed-ass sparks effect on the Wasp the Pelican dropped? I hope that was an unfinished effect, because it looked garbo. A minor moment, but once you see it you can't unsee it on subsequent watches.
Game looks good. They clearly put a lot of time into the lighting and texturing, and the distant LOD is pretty impressive from what I saw as well - some really sharp details far away from the player. I really like the almost-impressionistic look the landscape takes on in the far distance - combination of the colour palette for the landscape and the way it culls detail. Broadly speaking in terms of fidelity it looks a lot like the big team battle maps from the last test, but at a massively larger scale and more impressively lit. I will gladly take that at 4K60 and with the scale and verticality involved.
Reaction online from Halo fans seems to be overwhelmingly positive. No memes or torrents of fresh online negativity from the internet at large, so mission accomplished on that front. I still have unanswered questions about the structure of the campaign, but presumably answers to that stuff will filter out in the weeks ahead. In particular I'd like some plainspoken answers about biomes - what's in the game at launch, and if there are plans to add additional ones via whatever their long-term "platform" plans are for the game.
Even with the obligatory and tedious "it's cross gen" throat-clearing out of the way, I think it looks really good. There's a cleanliness and pushing out of detail in the presentation that just wouldn't be possible on an Xbox One - and certainly not at 60fps. Which leaves me to wonder what this game (and Forza for that matter) are going to look like on a Xbox One, haha. The One S struggled to even run the MP tests with consistent performance.
Oh, and what was with the scuffed-ass sparks effect on the Wasp the Pelican dropped? I hope that was an unfinished effect, because it looked garbo. A minor moment, but once you see it you can't unsee it on subsequent watches.
Far Cry 6 has more going on though (NPCs, villages etc.) and very likely a much bigger (and coherent) open world compared to Infinite.
Neither of these looks stunning, imo. What makes Infinite pop, is its` clean artdesign and the "aggressive" lighting.
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Looks good and very similar to before. it also didn't look all bad when it was first shown in hindsight. think alot got caught up on certainly elements looking crap and basically tarnished whole thing. When people are spending 100's on new consoles they expect quality what I think is fair ask.
What's the source for native 4K?
DF Analysis for Halo Infinite recent testing says the game uses DRS and scales between 1800p and 2160p
Exactly, I don't get this constant downplaying of other open world games like they have nothing going on in their maps, when they actually do (Ubisoft games especially are literally HUGE and filled with tons of stuff)
It's Dynamic 4K @ locked 60fps (Quality Mode) but it was hitting Native 4K most of the time on Series X, even in BTB with the last MP Beta.
So it's not native 4K, stop pretending otherwise. The game ranges between 1800p and 2160p in the beta, we still don't know how the resolution scales for the campaign
It also uses temporal reconstruction techniques, according to VG Tech analysis:
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I'm not pretending anything. BTB was Native 4K 99% of the time in last MP Beta and, even if it wasn't the Campaign mode, it's a clear indication that dips from there should be very rare even during the most chaotic battles on Series X, especially on final build, but we'll see what DF will also say about it after release.
I honestly don't think it's looking stunning. It's good enough for me, as long as the PC version is optimised. Best thing is that it really looks like Halo, but nothing crazy. It's a game that has to run on an Xbox One Fat, at the end of the day.
Halo has never had crazy graphics in my book. Maybe the original back when it launched but even then the most impressive thing were the physics and AI, and of course the music.
I've always thought that it's strengths lay on how reactive it's sandbox is, and that looks promising based on the video.
I'm concerned about some framerate drops you see in the video though. It's my most anticipated game of the year on one of my favourite sagas and I really want it to stick the landing.
I also hope they are keeping other biomes a secret, as most scenarios from the campaign that we've seen are very similar. Hoping for snow and desert areas to give it more variety.
Halo has never had crazy graphics in my book. Maybe the original back when it launched but even then the most impressive thing were the physics and AI, and of course the music.
I've always thought that it's strengths lay on how reactive it's sandbox is, and that looks promising based on the video.
I'm concerned about some framerate drops you see in the video though. It's my most anticipated game of the year on one of my favourite sagas and I really want it to stick the landing.
I also hope they are keeping other biomes a secret, as most scenarios from the campaign that we've seen are very similar. Hoping for snow and desert areas to give it more variety.
What's the source for this "native 4K 99%"?
There's no mention about this in both VG Tech and DF articles, both analysis states that the beta ranges between 1800p and 2160p, while also using temporal reconstruction techniques.
The game does not run at native 4K on Series X, that's a fact.
It was mentioned in the DF video analysis and also in Analista De Bits analysis.
My "basically" native meant native most of the time.
Dynamic 1440p @ 120fps are confirmed for Multiplayer only so far.
Not sure for the Campaign yet.
ah yeah makes sense, might be hard to do the detailed open world at that framerate
Analista De Bits got everything wrong about Halo, they even stated the 120FPS mode was running at native 4K lmao. Not a reliable source
As for DF analysis, there's no mention about the game being native 4K "99% of the time", I'll check the video again later
I wish they stuck to their original art style where everything had that super clean look to it. Now they just added a bunch of dirt and grime to everything and call it 'detail'. Also I loved that hexagonal shield recharge effect they had. Is that gone now? Disappointing if so.
If the argument boils down to "there is no other Halo or very specific Halo equivalent games that look better", no one can dispute that haha.
This is peak semantics thread.
Same but I'm pretty sure we're in the minority about this.
+ I really hope the newly crushed blacks are a video compression/capture/format issue and not an artistic choice to artificially enhance contrast. There are multiple screen comparisons I've seen in this thread where the added detail on structures or vegetation mostly comes from additional exaggerated contrast, and it makes the whole view look very busy.
Halo 1 is still the prettiest to me, with some dance shaders and ultra clean textured. Love it.
As an open world Halo, it looks solid. Wasn't really blown away though. Also, what's up with only getting a 6 min video at this point. Was really hoping for an in depth vid-doc with some finer details into the structure of the open world, questing, systems, etc.
It's looking pretty great, but wouldn't call it visually stunning. and to be honest the focus on graphics as such a big part of the discussion kind of drowns a lot of the interesting details of the sandbox they are building. Everyone nitpicking every goddamn detail really is weird compared to a lot of other games doing these kinds of things getting none of that silly level of scrutiny.
EDIT: Not saying that you shouldn't talk about the graphics I just think comparing it to games like FH5 or TLOU2 which is trying to do completely different things is really silly.
EDIT: Not saying that you shouldn't talk about the graphics I just think comparing it to games like FH5 or TLOU2 which is trying to do completely different things is really silly.
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I think the art style does a lot of heavy lifting for this game.
Also this just kind of shows that 343i cant win with Halo lol.
Halo has never been about top end graphics and when it was (Halo 4) it was dunked on for all the sacrifices it made to achieve that.
Also this just kind of shows that 343i cant win with Halo lol.
Halo has never been about top end graphics and when it was (Halo 4) it was dunked on for all the sacrifices it made to achieve that.
Its a cross gen, open world game in 4k/60. The way some of you are setting expectations here looking to see the water droplets coming off armour with RT in them haha.
343i just can't win. While I do agree it doesn't look 'stunning', it does look great though.
If multiplayer is anything to go by, this looks to be a fantastic game.
343i just can't win. While I do agree it doesn't look 'stunning', it does look great though.
If multiplayer is anything to go by, this looks to be a fantastic game.
The thing is I don't even see where this amazing art style carrying it is. The forest just looks so bland and almost generic to me and we've barely seen any other environments.
I haven't played a halo game for a bit, glad they turned it around from the last reveal. I'm happy halo fans get something to be excited about.
I think the problem some users are having is the wording, because the Halo footage shown looks like a PC/Series version and not like a Xbox One game. The last gen console isn't powerful enough to show Halo at that quality. I know what you mean with your wording, but let me show you why the wording is a bit problematic.
The Witcher 3 came out in 2014 and was despite the downgrade uproar one of the best looking games at the time. The game was visually (and quite literally) a current gen game at the time. If someone would've said back in the day that it's a mobile/handheld game, she/he would probably get called a troll or receive criticism.
With Steam Deck on the horizon someone could also call GoW, Horizon, Death Stranding, FH5, Halo, Gears .... and much more mobile/handheld games. If that person uses your logic imo. That's at least my interpretation and please do not take this personally. Let me take FH5 as an example, because most people praise the graphics. There are two issues with calling a game like FH5 a handheld game, despite this being true.
- Saying something like "XY looks like a last gen, handheld, ... game" always (imo) has a negative ring to it. Even if that's not the intent.
- It's not entirely correct, because games are scalable and the Series X version of FH5 wouldn't run on any handheld or last gen console.
I wasn't sure wether I should post this, because it's kinda weird to explain and I understood what you meant when saying Halo is a Xbox One game. Having that said I wanted to explain why the wording can be controversial or at least result in some people pushing back.
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I can sort of get that but this feels like a leap to me. My main reason being that handhelds generally have a general look for games that are made for them. So when I say a game looks like an xbox one game, that means a game that was made for an xbox one and looks graphically like the same game as its xbox one version, regardless of whatever settings you might modify. None of those games were made FOR mobile platforms, and steam deck is definitely a part of a new paradigm where portables can actually do this for the first time somewhat...uh, reasonably.
If I play Horizon Zero Dawn on steamdeck, it's probably going to struggle a lot and it'll be pretty clear it was not made for that platform. The difference in what I'd have to get it to do, even to run at native res, which would be far lower than I'd run it at on PC, would substantially change how it looks.
With this game, it just looks like a cross-gen game. Something that was built to be able to run on xbox one, even if the next gen version has some enhancements. It won't look fundamentally different. It feels like some people in this thread are having a hard time envisioning what an xbox one version of this game will look like, and that just seems bizarre to me.
I don't agree with the statement that what was shown yesterday isn't possible. Obviously we have to define what we mean, but that is such a sweeping statement I can't agree with it taken literally. It would need to look completely different. This seems bizarre given the multiplayer did not look completely different even with some different settings. I do not understand what is so fundamentally next gen only about how this looks. Plus that doesn't make sense that series would look basically the same campaign to multiplayer, but that xbox one would look like it does now in multiplayer but then look like a substantially different game in singleplayer. This seems like nonsense to me.
Like, I played on the btb map at 4K on a 43 inch screen two feet from my face. I could not have gotten a clearer look at how that large arena and into the distance looked with literally what like 24 players all playing which is a lot of players for the engine to handle. It...looked like the same game as in the the campaign trailer.
Like I said earlier in the thread, this is not a knock against the game (my complaints about some where lighting issues aside). Saying it looks nice but pretty normal is not a criticism. It's only going to feel negative in contrast to someone who thinks it is utterly stunning. So saying that people who think "yeah this just looks like an xbox one game to me" are being negative just seems really silly to me. Absence of ecstatic enthusiasm is not negativity. This is why I get this vibe of defensiveness over the whole thing that happened last year. Because by and large I'm not seeing negativity about it looking just average. But people are characterizing those people as being negative.
I don't think the game looks bad. I don't have a negative opinion on the graphics. Me calling it very average looking isn't negative. Me saying it looks like an xbox one game means I think it looks about like a game that would be made for xbox one, obviously running on newer hardware.
So yeah like, you COULD try to read negativity into what I said with the interpretation you explained, but I feel like that's not the best faith or well reasoned interpretation of it. And it clearly isn't useful since a lot of people who seem to hold it are misinterpreting quite a few people who are dropping by the thread to also offer their opinion that yeah it just looks like a normal xbox one game.
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I mean Chief, the weapons, the Banished, the vehicles, the Banished and Forerunner architecture all looks great imo.
The trees are trees, nothing special about them.
We know Halo will be there at the anniversary stream in November. I would assume that more gameplay will be there. But just to be perfectly clear, the second sentence is just my speculation.
I think the main problem with Chettlar's posts is that they're absurdly reductionist and ignore how game development works. The game on Series consoles is not an Xbox One port with added features. That's not how it works at all.
Saying that is as inane as claiming that Cyberpunk 2077 on PC is (or looks like) an Xbox One game. We have many examples of games that look a generation ahead on PC when compared to their contemporary console versions while performing a lot better.
So it's the wording that is the problem with his posts. You can say that Halo Infinite on Series consoles is cross-gen. You can say that it's essentially the same game on all platforms. I can't see how anyone would have a problem with either of those statements. Saying that it is an Xbox One game or that the game on Series X looks like the Xbox One version at a higher resolution is just wrong.
Man I really do not buy that you are an authority on this topic lol, and you're attempts to make yourself seem better and smarter than me with statements like this are obnoxious. And it's more obnoxious because you have continually made assumptions about me and what I think that are not correct and go explicitly what I have literally said, which just makes it funny. The game began development and spent most of its time in development for xbox one, and then obviously a series stack was added in parallel, as well as PC. So I don't know why you think I don't know that.
I do know a thing or two about development, and one of the big ones is you don't spend extra time making different bespoke versions of games look completely different from another. Usually you develop scalable things that are easily changed like PC graphics settings, which are just whatever consumer facing options you choose to show.
No...it isn't, because I saw the game running on PC, and was like, wow, that is a mindblowing looking game. The xbox one version is probably going to have serious concessions.
Weirdly, I was right. Wild.
These are such similar statements though lol. I literally said that you can say it's essentially the same game on all platforms. I literally have repeatedly said that. I did not say that the xbox series x version looks like the xbox one version at a higher resolution. I said it looks like essentially the same game at a high resolution, which supposedly you are fine with. You're super anal about my point that I think resolution is the only difference here, when I literally told you earlier that I DON'T think resolution matters in the conversation AT ALL. You keep misrepresenting my statements and putting words in my mouth and it's obnoxious, because I have multiple times (not every time because holy shit why should I have to type it out every single time in explicit detail) that it looks like the same game at a higher res. Changing the settings is immaterial to me, because making higher res textures, increasing foliage distance, and increasing texture detail on objects does not make it look like a different game. It looks like an xbox one game obviously with better settings and higher resolution. It does not look like the xbox one version. But both versions probably look very similar, so that seems to me like a useless statement to make. I don't understand what is so weird about this.
Hence my comment earlier about how I play everything everywhere. There's nothing weird about me saying that it looks like an xbox one game, because it does. I play games on PC a lot. Me raising the texture resolution and shadow quality does not make them look like different games. They still look like xbox one games usually. This is one of those games where I don't believe xbox series is such a substantial difference. Cyberpunk was.
If I play some game in the future that is decidedly Series X gen, but then I play on PC with a bunch of settings that make it look even better, and someone says who this looks like a Series X2 game! and I go...no it just looks like a Series X game, that seems like the most normal thing in the world to me. Raising settings does not typically fundamentally change how a game looks. It just makes it look nicer in most instances.
It looks sharp and better than 2020 showing but it doesn't look stunning and/or incredible. If you want to see something incredible look at Flight Simulator or Forza Horizon 5. Halo still has a very video game look to me.
The problem is that he and some others are reiterating and spinning this view in a negative way as if the Xbox One S version is making Infinite worse on Series X while what's happening is the exact opposite.
As you correctly stated and based on what we've seen/played so far, both Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 seem to have targeted Series X|S and high-end PC hardware first while optimzing and making their engines modular enough to be scaled all the way back to ancient PC hardware and Xbox One S (in the case of Infinite: chopping it's res from Dynamic 4K to Dynamic 1080p, 800-900p average @ 30fps with also severe frame pacing issues , lowering textures and assets resolution, shadows, effects and even totally cut visuals features like SSR, ambient occlusion, contact shades, Ray Tracing support and more).
They will also run there? Does it mean cross gen (which also makes cross play with a much bigger user base possible)? Yes.
Does it mean Series X and High End PC @ Ultra Settings actually and visibly suffered from it? No.
The generational leap from Xbox One S version to Series X / High End PC @ Ultra is still visible while doing so? Yes.
Both are not just Xbox One S games with upper res and framerate. Both are actually fully leveraging all the hardware they are running from.
And that's the only thing that matters.
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Weird given I didn't say that.
Funny so this is really what this was all about. You don't want people to say this looks like an xbox one game because you disagree that it is holding xbox series x back. So you think every single person who thinks that it just kinda looks like an xbox one game is trying to shit talk the game.
That's honestly really funny, given that if you ask literally anybody here who said it looks average if they have a negative opinion on it, and they will say no.
Ya know, like me, who has explicitly said the opposite.
Maybe you should ask people what they think instead of putting words into their mouths because you're insecure about this topic and you NEED us to think the game looks amazing or it somehow lowers the quality of the game somehow. This is fanboy level conspiracy level mind-reading you're doing.
When you make statements that are wrong about what other people think, as you are doing, literally, to me, you need to stop and reassess. You do not get to tell me I am wrong about what I think lol.