Halo Infinite

[one-armed dwarf]

343 acknowledge the feedback/criticism 
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/infinite-inquiries

 

Quote

QUESTIONS ABOUT GRAPHICS AND VISUALS

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.

 

 

Hopefully this game gets a delay and they don't just crunch these guys into dust for 4 months or release this thing as a substandard product ala FFXIV 1.0 or Anthem.

 

It will fuck the Xbox launch* but it might fuck things worse to send a game out that could kill Halo as a brand.

 

*I mean who the fuck knows if these things will sell well anyway after the miserable economic news coming from the States yesterday

[Maryokutai]

There's a lot of Microsoft PR having a negative effect on this I feel. 4K at 60fps, needs to come out on launch day etc.

 

I agree that they really need to give 343 some freedom and room to breathe here. Delay the entire thing and let them build a "performance" and "quality" setting.

[Maf]

 

[Maryokutai]

 

[Maf]

Lol the Arwing.

[DisturbedSwan]

Definitely for the best considering the state it was in.

 

XSX launch looking even more thin on the ground in terms of games though.

[Maf]

Spider-Man gonna smoke ‘em in the winter

[DANGERMAN]

By that token wouldn't the PS3 have the biggest launch line up ever? 

 

 

Anyway, right decision. If Halo Infinite comes out and is really good people will forget the delay very quickly, its going to be around for years. Fallout and Anthem have shown how hard it is to both fix on the fly and recover a reputation 

[Maf]

It’s such a bad look on top of a lot of funny looks for Xbox. This was the big one. If anything was going to get Xbox up it was this. All the sudden Xbox gone from a big game supported by a lot of back up to maybe relying solely on the back up. Harsh. People will probably feel other ways about it but to me this could be one of the sorest launches of all time. Who puts a box out without a big game? Yikes. 
 

This is not a dig becomes times are hard but I wonder if they got tunnel vision and didn’t notice the thing was not up to scratch or they was just hoping everybody else wouldn’t notice it’s not up to scratch. 

[Maf]

It just went from “Do I need a Series X this year?” to “Will I need to turn my current Xbox on this year?” the big ouch

[radiofloyd]

There’s always Cyberpunk. 

[DisturbedSwan]

I can’t help but think launching XSX this year now Halo has been delayed is a little silly. It’s got big 3rd parties and indies along with game pass, but with all those available on their previous console, I just can’t see any point in it until the next big MS Studios game comes out, and that won’t be until sometime next year at the earliest. 

[Maf]

It’s not practical to cancel the launch because they have so many business partners that have probably planned around the XSX being out. So they are going to have to stick to this year I would imagine.

 

Also I don’t remember the last time a console launched months after a rival and doing that hot. Halo or no Halo they need to put it out.

[Maf]

What are you saying about Knack

[one-armed dwarf]

This is good news. 

 

But right now the prospect of buying an Xbox just doesn't seem a better choice than upgrading a GPU, cause all it has now is backwards compatibility (which PC has plenty of going back 20+ yrs).

 

So yeah, bad for xbox

[Maf]

This adds to what I was saying yesterday that in terms of graphics and specs and whatnot I don’t have the mind or eye for it. When I saw Halo I didn’t think it looked amazing but it also wasn’t my concern. The thing that left me shook was when Chief blasted that Grunt with the Assault Rifle and jumped in a Warthog and I thought to myself oh no. It just looks so ordinary. 
 

And then when they got to the new stuff like open world map, grappling hook and throwing red barrels at people I thought oh no. It’s so derivative and dull.

 

And then they ended it with a big monster talking a whole lot of out of context shit to the human race and I thought oh no. I don’t care.

It wasn’t until jumping online after and people said man those graphics are shit. I was like ?

 

I mean they’re not shit. It didn’t look mind blowing but I’ve seen worse looking games. 
 

But it was all the gameplay that had me saying oh, no. This is not good.

I suppose if the game did look brilliant graphically then I would of saw ordinary shit looking amazing and that would of helped. But honestly it’s not the first place my mind went too. Not trying to stick the boot in but for me, personally, this game still needs to look a lot more interesting gameplay wise and I don’t think fancy lighting is going to change that. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I had the same reaction to the gameplay but everyone tells me I hate everything so I doubt my own reactions with these things, so it was reassuring to see others underwhelmed by it too

 

But the thing about visuals is it was supposed to look mindblowing as the next gen showcase, it did not therefore it appears shit by default. 

 

Think tho at this point it's getting clear that this game was troubled pre-COVID, C19 is the accelerant for whatever fire this game may be in

[mmmark]

Stray was my fave looking concept and it turns out that is coming to PS4 as well. 

[Maryokutai]

Good decision to delay this. I won't buy either system this year so that actually is a good thing for me.

 

I hope they straight up delay this for a year and ditch the One version to be honest.

[DisturbedSwan]

9 hours ago, Nag said:

I'm of the opinion that neither company has shown anything mind blowing so far... Horizon was probably the closest thing but that wasn't gameplay shown.

 

Ratchet and Clank is by far the most 'next-gen' thing I've seen so far. Even if the game itself isn't your jam I think the gameplay shown was actually mind-blowing, for me anyway.