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Digital Foundry : Halo Infinite Campaign Re-Reveal Analysis: A Big Improvement Over Last Year's Showing?

Razvedka

Banned
Agree with a lot of the critisism DF have put forward. Halo: Infinite is not a looker. This is made even more obvious when they switched over to footage of Halo: Reach campaign and the difference wasn't obvious. In all honesty, Halo: Reach at 4k native at 60fps would't look a generation behind Infinite.
It is quite concerning. Yes, I'm a Halo fan first and foremost for the gameplay. But man, did Halo 2 look good back in the day and even Halo 3, resolution aside looks really good.

I just don't know with this game. It also concerns me that this is apparently a new engine. I woner how they will scale up the graphics from here. Halo: Infinite seems to be a game with the sharpness filter turned to 11, it's IQ is great! But everything else... animations, enemy models, lighting..
I really do think the problem is expectations. The 'engine' footage from 2018 was a colossal PR mistake, agreed, and that really set the expectations for people. However: this was always going to be a cross platform, cross generation, title.

It's hitting:
XB1
XB1X
XSX
XSS
PC

That's a lot of target platforms, and 343 itself is not exactly an industry leading studio. I think that the delay has helped demonstrably, but yes this is certainly not a showcase for the Series X, which is what people wanted (including me) it to be. But that just isn't a realistic hope. Just looking at the specs of the Xbox One there were always going to be gaping chasms of compromise with this title. Charitably, the XB1 is an order of magnitude weaker than XSX. Personally I'd be curious to see how they 'forked' their code and the flexibility of the engine itself considering the target platforms.

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the next mainstream Halo game will be a real stunner to look at, whether its with Slipstream or some other engine.
 
Definitely a big improvement from last year. Delt with the pop in and bland texture/lighting on the pillars.
Still has some type of glow for the NPCs, that make them standout unnaturally lighting wise, but that has always been a thing with halo.
I do wish it graphically was a show stopper but is really just passable at this point. Gameplay looks very nice, hope to see some other sections than the forest areas.
Only really weird thing is some of the sparks being a 2d render? And some 30 fps animations still, hopefully that gets figured out prior to release.
 
Agree with a lot of the critisism DF have put forward. Halo: Infinite is not a looker. This is made even more obvious when they switched over to footage of Halo: Reach campaign and the difference wasn't obvious. In all honesty, Halo: Reach at 4k native at 60fps would't look a generation behind Infinite.
It is quite concerning. Yes, I'm a Halo fan first and foremost for the gameplay. But man, did Halo 2 look good back in the day and even Halo 3, resolution aside looks really good.

I just don't know with this game. It also concerns me that this is apparently a new engine. I woner how they will scale up the graphics from here. Halo: Infinite seems to be a game with the sharpness filter turned to 11, it's IQ is great! But everything else... animations, enemy models, lighting..

Adittionally, I really dislike Brutes, they're boring opponents. I hope the campaign has enough variety for me to like it. I hope we see prometheans again. They're 'digital nature' gives endless opportunity for enemy variety. Play with that, 343!

Halo Reach would absolutely look generations (plural) behind because Halo Reach's environmental geometry detail and sandbox scale is nowhere near as high as what's inside Halo Infinite. No Halo game comes close. Halo Infinite has a lot of micro-detail and very much overlooked graphical flourishes that previous Halo titles simply haven't had at all ever, only ever had in cutscenes (sometimes not even then), or to anywhere near the same degree.

Starting with Halo 4 they tried to take a more active means of packing in a lot more environmental detail into Halo environments. One of the best examples of this was Halo 4's first level on the Forward Unto Dawn and specific parts of Halo 5, which I admit to enjoying a great deal as it addressed one of my main criticisms of Halo games since they touched HD consoles, I had a lot of trouble believing the purpose served by many locations, especially the outdoors locations. Each game did it in their own way and came with their own compromises as such, particularly in sandbox size and freedom in some cases, but it isn't like Halo games of the past were absent very linear sections, there were many of them. Some of the best Halo levels are very much linear.

No Halo title is touching all the small detail shown in this one screenshot below when you zoom and look around, same for the one below it. None comes as close to having structures of the same size that players can physically approach and observe so much geometry detail. They only share a familiar art style, but that's where it ends. Halo Infinite's scale, geometry complexity, shader work, modeling, lighting, skybox etc., all appear to be taking things to a very different level. One only thinks previous Halo games compete if they ignore the fact that much of what they see in past Halo games is fake window dressing, areas you can't go to or interact with. And even in the bigger spaces you would often never encounter anything visually worth seeing or finding. In many parts of Halo Infinite if you look carefully you can actually see how things work, or a basic blueprint of what the various individual pieces to build something like that are. The designing of things in Halo Infinite is a lot more modular, and because they're a lot more modular they can be reused a whole lot more often and then iterated on to a far higher degree in Halo Infinite than in past titles. The UNSC gear in the screenshot below are all the same quality models for what you would actually play with, only they made artistic modifications and broke them up to fit the narrative of the banished having a facility where they salvage UNSC equipment.

haloinfinitegameplay_4k_02-2aac0699b4c64b9a9cd0d2f52aa09499.png

haloinfinitegameplay_4k_10-3d378ab1a4884a569a0fd7d81997bdab.png

cf_inf_bansheeaction-ac7e65b1efb74fb6938bdb868845b1ae.png



There are parts of Halo Infinite's latest campaign overview where you can see and make out individual latches used to stack storage containers on top of one another for easier moving by the banished. You even see the wheels that are used as part of brute choppers with such great detail. As someone who scrutinizes environments because I like to believe the world I'm in and the spaces, it's clear where Halo Infinite is a generational leap. It simply shares a common legacy art style, which I'm okay with.
 
I honestly don’t think it looks that bad. Not every game is gonna set a new bar for graphics, especially cross-gen stuff right now.

I think the reality that it is a very “average” looking game is setting in because Forza just came out looking like an actual next gen game. The really bad things that stuck out to me was the effects when I saw the campaign. The sparks, explosions/fire effects all looks pretty bad.
 
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avin

Member
Took some notes. Hopefully I summarized accurately....

-Talk a bit about the open world, RPG skill tree and "resource management" aspects. "Grinding to level up". Alex says he is "worried" about the campaign because he wants more classic Halo level designs.
-Beach blonde dude is "cautiously optimistic". 343 only shown off one area. Wants to see more of other areas.
-Open world graphical ramifications. "Less artist driven game". Concern over night-day diminishing artistic aspects.
-More realistic looking than last year's reveal. Less "plastic" looking.
-No pop-in like previous version
-Better cloud rendering
-Improved lighting, especially reflective lighting on structures
-Characters in shadow are fully lit
-Some animations are 30fps
-Complains about sparks when ship falls on platform
-Missing ambient occlusion in areas
-Shadow-casting on foliage/trees is off
-No motion blur, depth of field
-Alex says this is a better showing than it was before, but still skeptical of campaign gameplay

Thanks for summarizing. I get the sense that the DF dudes like to believe they make these videos for worthwhile reasons, as constructive feedback. Here, it sounds like the graphics are good enough, small things may still need fixing and seem fixable. But the major concern about gameplay, about level design in the campaign - the nature of the open world and all that - is not a small thing. I can't see that being buffed out with a little spit and shine in a couple weeks.

Is there any reason this couldn't have been brought up last year? Do we now know anything about level design we didn't know back then?

avin
 

Andodalf

Banned
Thanks for summarizing. I get the sense that the DF dudes like to believe they make these videos for worthwhile reasons, as constructive feedback. Here, it sounds like the graphics are good enough, small things may still need fixing and seem fixable. But the major concern about gameplay, about level design in the campaign - the nature of the open world and all that - is not a small thing. I can't see that being buffed out with a little spit and shine in a couple weeks.

Is there any reason this couldn't have been brought up last year? Do we now know anything about level design we didn't know back then?

avin
We have literally no indication that it’s in any way correct. It could be like the silent cartographer, where there’s external areas you can tackle out of order, but an internal space that’s the typical structured mission experience. There’s no reason to think this won’t be the case. Or say a linear path up a mountain, or along a ridge line or down a beach.
 

avin

Member
Agreed. But I'm not understanding why this DF dude felt he needed to make this video now. If he's correct about the major issue, it's not fixable. If he's not correct, well, we'll all find out soon enough. But either way, voicing these concerns now has no clear value. I'm thinking this video doesn't reach the standards they say they set for themselves.

avin
 

Andodalf

Banned
Agreed. But I'm not understanding why this DF dude felt he needed to make this video now. If he's correct about the major issue, it's not fixable. If he's not correct, well, we'll all find out soon enough. But either way, voicing these concerns now has no clear value. I'm thinking this video doesn't reach the standards they say they set for themselves.

avin
Meh, the main point of the video is about graphics and makes some good points. The comments on gameplay have always been extra and they’ve always emphasized how it’s just their opinions, and never reviews.
 

BbMajor7th

Member
Agreed. But I'm not understanding why this DF dude felt he needed to make this video now. If he's correct about the major issue, it's not fixable. If he's not correct, well, we'll all find out soon enough. But either way, voicing these concerns now has no clear value. I'm thinking this video doesn't reach the standards they say they set for themselves.

avin
Honestly, I think it's because people expect them to and they know that it will generate reasonable amount of traffic/revenue for the channel. I'm not sure they even want to bother sometimes, but like any job, you've got to do what you've got to do to make pay. I think if Alex had his way, he'd probably spend time work on the graphics tech videos and niche PC subjects (like John would probably spend all his time on retro games). But, he spends more time reviewing console exclusives and mainstream AAA because that's where the revenue is at.

As the old saying goes, don't hate the player, hate the game.
 
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CamHostage

Member
Meh, the main point of the video is about graphics and makes some good points. The comments on gameplay have always been extra and they’ve always emphasized how it’s just their opinions, and never reviews.

Also, to be fair... it is an assessment of a game.

I get it that this isn't necessarily their specialty or job (though sometimes there's good talk about a game on DF that makes me more or less interested in checking it out,) but still, it's a little weird to have just a clinical discussion of videogames and never once mention, "...but yeah, also, it's fun." I feel it's a natural part of the breakdown to have some small notices on the gameplay (especially if there's a crossing point where the technical and the play merge, in a bad way like if vegetation doesn't populate or in a good way like if shadows and reflections accurately let you anticipate an opponent.) It's obvious, but it's still worth keeping in context why all of these shadow-casting particles and raytraced surfaces and whatnot are worth talking about in the first place.
 
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