Halo Infinite

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't think they showed enough of it, tbh. The mp trailer was a bit fast and the stream i watched had the contrast on it a bit too high or something. Like it had lots of crushed black so not very good for spotting out detail

 

I think the screenshots of it though have looked pretty decent. The first video there where they're showing the environment looks fine I think. But that was maybe the most impactful shot cause the rest was just cortanq talking

[mmmark]

4 hours ago, DisturbedSwan said:

Didn't look much better than last year to me, interesting to see they didn't show any actual gameplay out of cutscenes, just wide sweeping shots of the Landscape which still looked quite ropey.

No way, looked way better. 
 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

7 minutes ago, mmmark said:

No way, looked way better. 

 

Cutscenes look better for sure. 

 

Gameplay on the right definitely looks better but is MP gameplay though.

 

I need to see SP gameplay, that's the one I'm worried about, I think the MP will be fine (albeit a little uninspired).

[mmmark]

It’s all in game cut scenes or no cut scenes. The overview of the halo / forests etc way better. It literally had pop in last time. Also I think they’ve dropped the one(?) which is why it looked like a switch port last time. 

[Sly Reflex]

Consider me whelmed.

[one-armed dwarf]

I mean they're cutscenes but they look like in-engine cutscenes.

 

But even on mmark's video it's hard to reach any kind of judgement, I really don't think the showcase tells you enough about how it looks. I bet it'll look great though, just because at this point it kinda has to

[Maf]

I think yesterday was a good course correction for Halo. Beyond just the graphics there was a lot more wrong with Halo last year than that. Watching MC pick up another assault rifle, and jump in another warthog, shooting more grunts, talking to that guy no one cares about. Layer that flat presentation on top it was like oh no this is boring. 
 

Yesterday Halo felt more alive. Happy there was no bearded nobody or non-stop talking comic book alien bad guy in the trailer. Just Chief talking in his short, cool sentences while saying a lot about the story. Picking back up the Cortana storyline is something they really needed to do. 
 

Then they jumped straight in to multiplayer and that looked fun. Maybe it was just a well edited trailer but it worked for me. I was feeling it and really hoping they were going to drop the multiplayer yesterday. 

I know it didn’t show anything “new” but I happy just to see Halo looking fun and exciting again. 

[Maryokutai]

I also wonder whether that "10 year plan" is still in effect or not. The way they put the multiplayer and the campaign next to each other seems me like they want to show that those are two different things and while the MP will surely be supported for years to come, maybe this means that they're going the classic route for the campaigns and will follow-up with another standalone release four or five years or so into the generation.

 

In any case, they kind of have my trust back. I know there was still a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes of this game that doesn't just evaporate simply because the world now has fog and no pop-ins but still, I'm looking forward to this again.

[Maryokutai]

The lack of a release date is supposedly because MS just wants to avoid launching this on the same as another big shooter, like some people already speculated. Spencer mentioned it in this show.

It's interesting to see a game like Halo dodging competition. Fifteen years ago it would have been the other way around.

[DisturbedSwan]

I know this is coming from me so it'll get an eyeroll from some but I really don't think the franchise is the juggernaut it once was.

 

Back in my school and college days I remember the palpable excitement at Halo 2 coming out that year and Halo 3, it was a real event like a CoD or FIFA, something seemingly everyone is talking about. 

 

Now it's just another shooter, and it's probably the worst in Xbox's burgeoning stable. Give the franchise to ID I say, they'll know what to do with it.

[one-armed dwarf]

In the Noughties Halo was the brand to beat, now it's Fortnite

[mfnick]

I basically said the same in the Microsoft thread leading up to E3. It used to be the leader now it’s playing catch up. And there’s a lot more big MP shooter competition out there now - Fortnite, PUBG, Apex, mainstays like CoD and BF. I reckon the big mainstream market has moved on to this kind of thing and I honestly think Halos going to struggle to get anywhere near that kind of market again. 
 

Hope they succeed though, fed up of BR games so a standard shooter succeeding will be nice. & the recent article on EG highlighting how they’re doing battle passes sounds so much better than how others do it. They deserve to succeed from this much more consumer friendly business practice alone. 

[HandsomeDead]

It was last a juggernaut with Halo 3 so it's hardly a bold observation.  Obviously it still has a decent sized audience but no, of course it isn't what it was.  I'd even say CoD isn't where it was now.  Time moves on and the mantle gets passed.

 

But the audience is still big enough to sustain it so what's the big issue?

[one-armed dwarf]

The issue is we're all boomers for still liking Halo ?

[HandsomeDead]

Halo totally is a boomer game now, fuck, time is too fast, slow it down for a minute.

[Maryokutai]

It will certainly be interesting to see how the multiplayer fares, it being f2p and on PC as well from day one. the two-platform setup gives it an edge compared to other exclusive MP games, though it's arguably hard to find a point of comparison since Sony doesn't do games like that and Nintendo is existing in a bubble full of Splatoons and Smash Brothers.

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, but there's a still a difference between not struggling to find a match and Call of Duty. The coalition had to enforce cross-play on Gears 5 a couple of weeks/months ago because the playerbase was declining too much IIRC.

[DisturbedSwan]

I do think the MP a could be a return to form if it goes back to the Halo 3 template with a few modernisations, I don’t want the CoDified travesty Halo 4 was or the Warzone thing that was 5. 
 

Regardless, I think it’ll make more a dent then the SP. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Poggers

 

 

It's only fair, I'm the biggest Halo fan on this forum after all

[DisturbedSwan]