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Halo 5: Guardians revealed - more at E3 - Fall 2015 [Box Art person is new guy]

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They have to deliver 60fps. They announced it twice now. If don't, backlash will be bad.


Released on a 7 year old hardware, it looks fantastic. A game has to be looked at it in motion. Posting stills from it doesn't do justice. Furthermore, you can find bad looking screenshots like the ones you posted in every game. I can post screenshots of Uncharted 3, Gears Of War 3, God Of War 3 etc where those games look bad as well. Yes. I agree, texture skyboxes weren't great.

Btw. it is funny, you are posting screenshots from the Digital Foundry article where they stated:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-halo-4

At the end, it is a personal matter, but I was mostly impressed by Halo 4's graphic and cannot wait to see what 343i is capable of with X1.

I never thought a single fan taken screen of Gears of War (that wasn't an off-screen picture of it running on an HDTV) looked anything other than terrible, but the games themselves look amazing in motion. Stills don't do this games justice. This is a medium in which the content is regularly moving. This is why devs have to bullshot, or else their games are being done a huge disservice. They may never be that clean or crisp, but the best looking games tend to come close enough to not be blatantly misleading imo.

And this here is a gameplay shot.

Halo-4-GI-screenshot-3.jpg


It may not be so super clean, but it really does look that good in action. Forward Unto Dawn level looks absolutely mindblowing, especially when you get outside in the zero gravity fight with weapons floating around.
 

Madness

Member
Aside from the fact I hated some of the lighting and filters, I thought Halo 4 looked breathtaking on such ancient hardware. I'd have preferred more color and more greens/purples, because a lot of the colors looked washed out. But you have to admit it was probably the best Halo has ever looked so far.

As for the story, I thought it was horrendous and that Chief really shouldn't have been humanized as much as he was. He is after all a Spartan-II and these guys don't become emotional wrecks in a sense. I can see why others wanted it, but I felt it strongly went against his character and who these guys are.

As for the rest, this next game really is make or break for Halo. They can't have another Reach/4 where the majority of the fanbase dislikes the game and doesn't really play it much. Halo 4, within a few months, was out of the top 5 played games on Xbox Live and by the end of the year was barely in the top 15.
 

HTupolev

Member
It may not be so super clean, but it really does look that good in action.
No it doesn't. The actual game has a fairly soft look due to the FXAA, also quite a lot of aliasing on thin details due to the FXAA doing pretty much nothing about that (and this can often actually look far worse in motion than it does in screenshots, since it manifests as shimmering).

T69A5JB.jpg


And incidentally, this is what the game's cutscenes actually look like:

DsS76.jpg


Not that Halo 4's image quality is bad for the series, but I get extremely confused by people acting like it's somehow amazing. It's your typical seventh-gen 720p FXAA smear 'n shimmer cocktail.

But you can't deny it wasn't perhaps the best Halo has looked.
Oh, I would never deny that it wasn't the best Halo has looked!

;)
 

ryan299

Member
Aside from the fact I hated some of the lighting and filters, I thought Halo 4 looked breathtaking on such ancient hardware. I'd have preferred more color and more greens/purples, because a lot of the colors looked washed out. But you can't deny it wasn't perhaps the best Halo has looked.

As for the story, I thought it was horrendous and that Chief really shouldn't have been humanized as much as he was. He is after all a Spartan-II and these guys don't become emotional wrecks in a sense. I can see why others wanted it, but I felt it strongly went against his character and who these guys are.

As for the rest, this next game really is make or break for Halo. They can't have another Reach/4 where the majority of the fanbase dislikes the game and doesn't really play it much. Halo 4, within a few months, was out of the top 5 played games on Xbox Live and by the end of the year was barely in the top 15.

THey can humanize Chief without making him an emotional wreck. Its a balancing act that they're going to need to get a hold of.

Totally agree that Halo 5 is make or break. My friends have said they won't play 5 unless it goes back to Halo 2/3 multiplayer. They tolerated Reach but 4 took it further and drove them away. I think this fall will be a huge sign for Halo 5. If Halo 2 anniversary has multiplayer then I think its a good sign that Halo 5 will go back to the original formula. If H2A is the same as Halo Anniversary with maps in Halo 4 then a lot of people are going to be done with the series.
 
It was patchy, that level was no looker for sure. I didn't think the engine handled scale very well at all and the bigger open levels suffered because of it. Any environment that didn't require detailed textures, but relied primarily on lighting I thought looked fantastic though. Some of the forerunner interiors, were just simply stunning.
M40_12.jpg

Halo 4 was the first Halo in which interiors looked just as good as the outside areas, if not better. I was really pleasantly surprised by that.
 

HTupolev

Member
Halo 4 was the first Halo in which interiors looked just as good as the outside areas, if not better. I was really pleasantly surprised by that.
3/ODST/Reach have a surprising degree of consistency, but CE and Halo 2 seem to vary graphical snazziness by scene demand.

Off the top of my head, Halo 1 interiors typically have a greater proportion of surfaces with dynamic specular response, the texel density seems on average much higher with interior surfaces, the environmental lightmap tends to do a better job representing small-scale subtleties and doesn't suffer from the obvious pixelation that the exterior lightmaps do on large shadow boundaries. Square meter for square meter, the halls of Truth and Reconciliation look far more impressive than the exteriors on Assault on the Control Room.
 
3/ODST/Reach have a surprising degree of consistency, but CE and Halo 2 seem to vary graphical snazziness by scene demand.

Off the top of my head, Halo 1 interiors typically have a greater proportion of surfaces with dynamic specular response, the texel density seems on average much higher with interior surfaces, the environmental lightmap tends to do a better job representing small-scale subtleties and doesn't suffer from the obvious pixelation that the exterior lightmaps do on large shadow boundaries. Square meter for square meter, the halls of Truth and Reconciliation look far more impressive than the exteriors on Assault on the Control Room.

I generally found interiors relatively simplistic and plain looking in all previous Halo games (well, not in terms of scale, of course). There have been some exceptions (Cortana in Halo 3. for instance; Crow's Nest looked quite bad, though), and Reach was an improvement, but only Halo 4 genuinely impressed me on that front. The art and the tech just came together better than before.
 

Feindflug

Member
No it doesn't. The actual game has a fairly soft look due to the FXAA, also quite a lot of aliasing on thin details due to the FXAA doing pretty much nothing about that (and this can often actually look far worse in motion than it does in screenshots, since it manifests as shimmering).

http://i.imgur.com/T69A5JB.jpg

And incidentally, this is what the game's cutscenes [I]actually[/I] look like:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/DsS76.jpg

Not that Halo 4's image quality is bad for the series, but I get extremely confused by people acting like it's somehow amazing. [B]It's your typical seventh-gen 720p FXAA smear 'n shimmer cocktail.[/B]


Oh, I would never deny that it wasn't the best Halo has looked!

;)[/QUOTE]

Now you are clearly exaggerating. I can understand the criticism about the smaller scale, toned down particles, simple skyboxes e.t.c. but the IQ is by far the best along with Halo Anniversary (which has one of the best PPAA implementations I've seen last gen), sure it's on the soft side because of FXAA but it's much better and consistent than Halo 3 which was really rough and especially Reach with the temporal AA that introduced more problems (ghosting) to the IQ than it solved.

Halo 4 visuals were more inline with your average AAA title - focus on a good IQ and be polished as fuck while putting aside the small things. This philosophy was the complete opposite of the previous Halo games on the 360 where Bungie sacrificed IQ and an overall polished look for things like advanced HDR, complex skyboxes or crazy particles. This clearly didn't work since most of the people (from forums to journalists) bitched about the lack of AA consistently for example. 343i delivered what people wanted while cutting corners (which is inevitable) and some people still complained, 343i was clearly in a lose-lose situation because some people couldn't understand that 360 was an old ass system that we shouldn't expect miracles from - you can't have the Halo Reach particles or the Halo 3 scale with the Halo 4's IQ and overall polish...if this was possible I am sure that Bungie would've already achieved that. The thing that 343i did wrong IMO was that they probably listened to the complaints too much (and to a point that the Halo 4 engine may influenced the overall design of the game), I'd say that 343i should make the game that they really want and ignore the average joe that has no idea of what is going on on the screen and just calls Halo 3 for example a jagfest.
 

monome

Member
Now you are clearly exaggerating. I can understand the criticism about the smaller scale, toned down particles, simple skyboxes e.t.c. but the IQ is by far the best along with Halo Anniversary (which has one of the best PPAA implementations I've seen last gen), sure it's on the soft side because of FXAA but it's much better and consistent than Halo 3 which was really rough and especially Reach with the temporal AA that introduced more problems (ghosting) to the IQ than it solved.

Halo 4 visuals were more inline with your average AAA title - focus on a good IQ and be polished as fuck while putting aside the small things. This philosophy was the complete opposite of the previous Halo games on the 360 where Bungie sacrificed IQ and an overall polished look for things like advanced HDR, complex skyboxes or crazy particles. This clearly didn't work since most of the people (from forums to journalists) bitched about the lack of AA consistently for example. 343i delivered what people wanted while cutting corners (which is inevitable) and some people still complained, 343i was clearly in a lose-lose situation because some people couldn't understand that 360 was an old ass system that we shouldn't expect miracles from - you can't have the Halo Reach particles or the Halo 3 scale with the Halo 4's IQ and overall polish...if this was possible I am sure that Bungie would've already achieved that. The thing that 343i did wrong IMO was that they probably listened to the complaints too much (and to a point that the Halo 4 engine may influenced the overall design of the game), I'd say that 343i should make the game that they really want and ignore the average joe that has no idea of what is going on on the screen and just calls Halo 3 for example a jagfest.

Halo is just too big for that.

I think Halo will be good/serviceable until 343i/MS eventually decide on a new economic model. Until then the devs cost will keep rising while the profits won't forcing devs to accomodate their games to average Joe's tastes.
 

Eoin

Member
Man even this would create a massive backlash. They have to deliver 60fps for both now.
Yeah you're no doubt right. I've just never felt Halo suffered from having a 30fps framerate and would prefer that extra time per frame be used in some other way to enhance the game. Probably not a popular opinion here, but whatever.
 
Yeah you're no doubt right. I've just never felt Halo suffered from having a 30fps framerate and would prefer that extra time per frame be used in some other way to enhance the game. Probably not a popular opinion here, but whatever.

I don't think that Halo ever suffered for being 30 fps, but it does feel a bit sluggish. I always presumed that was by design - after all, you're playing a huge guy in body armor - but I'm curious to see what 60 fps will mean for the gameplay. I want fps 60 in the campaign as well.
 
I like the prequel trilogy just bc of the lightsaber fights. I was young when episode 1 came out and I just liked the fights bc I always thought it was a missed part of the original films. Yes I know the special effects weren't good enough to have epic duels lol.

The things you mentioned about Vader are the same problems MS would have making a Halo movie. In a video game you can portray yourself into a character. You have a controller and you get to control Chiefs actions. On film, its a completely different beast. Body language is so hard to portray.

I was actually pitching my idea for a Halo movie to my friend not too long ago. We had a long conversation about how to make Chief a relatable, like-able character without showing his face.

You completely missed my point. I was comparing complaints about MC being a helmeted emotionless character to Darth Vader. People say MC can never be a good main character because you can't see his face and he has trouble with emotions, but Darth Vader was one of history's beloved cinematic characters. It's possible. It's just more difficult.
 

eso76

Member
Halo is one of those games which never needed 60fps, i hope that doesn't mean they are going to make it faster and turn it into a more frantic shooter.

They probably are.
 

Eoin

Member
I don't think that Halo ever suffered for being 30 fps, but it does feel a bit sluggish. I always presumed that was by design - after all, you're playing a huge guy in body armor - but I'm curious to see what 60 fps will mean for the gameplay. I want fps 60 in the campaign as well.
They should just give us a melt your eyes 30fps option as well. Cap the framerate and chuck on some extra effects. One good thing about 60fps is splitscreen IQ should get a lot better, they can just cap it at 30.
 
Halo is one of those games which never needed 60fps, i hope that doesn't mean they are going to make it faster and turn it into a more frantic shooter.

They probably are.
I am so glad they are putting a priority on frame rate, because they never have before.

Many on disc maps in Halo 4 were almost unplayable because of FPS issues.

They should just give us a melt your eyes 30fps option as well. Cap the framerate and chuck on some extra effects. One good thing about 60fps is splitscreen IQ should get a lot better, they can just cap it at 30.
That's a good point.
 
It's really weird. I stopped giving a shit about Halo after Halo 3. I felt I was done. I had paid my dues, time to move forward.

But what has happened since 2007 and now, has been that all other shooters have been a disappointing, mostly. The good ones, where good for other reasons than tight amazing FPS gameplay.

Call of Duty, Crysis, Battlefield. They all just pissed themselves down the drain, and suddenly what we really need is getting a shooter that just gets those 20 seconds of fun back again.
I really hope Halo 5 could be the start of something new for the series, but with really, really good gameplay. The vibrant colors has always been one of the things that has made it stand out.
 

SatansReverence

Hipster Princess
Halo is one of those games which never needed 60fps, i hope that doesn't mean they are going to make it faster and turn it into a more frantic shooter.

They probably are.

60fps has nothing to do with the pace of the game. It simply makes everything feel significantly more responsive and smooth.
 

Chettlar

Banned
You and your articulate, well thought out retorts. I understand and get what you're trying to say, believe me, I do. But we are just in total disagreement that they gave us all the answers. Wanting to dig deeper into a universe that has many mysteries left, and that can have mysteries created out of the blue because, hey, this is a work of fiction after all, is just as necessary as not wanting to give it all away thus making it appear small. It's okay for it to evolve and grow and branch off into entirely new directions we never thought possible.

They didn't give us all the answers, but they gave us, I believe, necessary context for future stories they intend to tell. I don't have a problem with that. I think they just showed us a bit of leg and dropped a couple of promising hints. You, on the other hand, are of the impression that you scored on the first date, and that there's nothing more to look forward to, nothing left to excite or intrigue you. It'd be almost like saying Halo 2 went down a bad road by delving as far into the Covenant Hierarchy as they did. You might not think what Bungie did with Halo 2 is the same as what 343i are trying to do with Halo now, but you would be incorrect. Don't use the past of this series, or the past trilogy as an anchor to hold back where the series has the ability to go. There's much more we can learn and experience without running out of things to make the world seem like a big and mysterious place still. One might say 343i's willingness to tackle this history is the only way we'll truly be able to move well beyond it and create entirely new mysteries and intriguing storylines.

Let's not anchor the series so much to the relics and the lost histories of the past, we're now ready to move beyond all that. If the first trilogy was about the Halos and the history there, this new trilogy (well, saga) is about understanding an entirely different aspect of the Halo universe. What is this whole reclaimer business about? I think Halo 4 was even once titled the start of the reclaimer trilogy.

So, I at least agree that it's a psychological thing. We both have strong views and there isn't really a right or wrong exactly, but I want 343i to continue down the road they've paved with Halo 4, and not hold anything back. I thought Bungie was appropriately aggressive in Halo 2 after CE, and then pulled back way more than necessary for Halo 3. I don't want to see that in this new Halo saga.

Don't have much time to respond now, but my main deal is pacing. Halo 2's delving into the Hierarchy made sense, and was only a small part of the puzzle. Plus, we already knew about the covenant, and we were about to deal with them more, so it made sense to see how they worked.

343's problem isn't so much that they answered the questions, but that they answered them too quickly. It's as if they tried to find all the loose ends and tie them up, and they shouldn't have. They also really should have refrained from doing that in the books rather than the games. Halo 4, as has been said numerous times, had a really poor story because of this. There's a rule in writing that goes "Every episode/chapter/season/game/entry/etc. is the consumer's first." In other words, I should basically be able to jump into any game in a series and be able to figure out what's going on. It's an established rule that I've had writing professors tell me. It's about making each episode/chapter/etc. independent while also related. It encourages the writer to do a much better job (good first impression --- every time). There's always going to be things the person doesn't know, obviously. I mean, you're really dumb if you go right into the middle of a TV series or whatever. It's not about that. It's more about the writer and the quality of writing. There's also an established rule of writing that says that you should be able to get the entirety of a story from one medium. Cross-medium stories are simply a bad idea. Movies that rely on people having read the books are always downright awful. I should be able to read all the Halo books OR play all the Halo games, and either way know what's going on. There's nothing preventing either from having content the other doesn't. But the core idea is that each stands alone. Halo 4 did a very poor job of that.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
There's a lot more to the term than just that, however. The humans on Onyx weren't seen as "reclaimers" In fact, they were viciously hunted down by the sentinels there. Are they not also inheritors of the mantle? Are they not the same species as the Chief

Those sentinels were dumb AIs (I mean that literally, not that they were stupid, they're not smart AIs like Cortana or Guilty Spark) who asked them for a certain phrase to stop the attack, having scanned them as likely reclaimers. The humans of course did not know that phrase because no one had told them.

One other example, at the end of Halo 4 Ur-Didact makes a very strange comment regarding reclamation. He makes it sound like something terrible is coming.

Well yeah, the Didacts whole point is that he does not want humanity to claim the Mantle and reclaim everything forerunners built....
 

HTupolev

Member
Now you are clearly exaggerating. I can understand the criticism about the smaller scale, toned down particles, simple skyboxes e.t.c. but the IQ is by far the best along with Halo Anniversary (which has one of the best PPAA implementations I've seen last gen), sure it's on the soft side because of FXAA but it's much better and consistent than Halo 3 which was really rough and especially Reach with the temporal AA that introduced more problems (ghosting) to the IQ than it solved.
Err, so where did I exaggerate? I said Halo 4's IQ wasn't bad for the series (implying that I'm fully aware that 3 and Reach have some IQ issues), while pointing out that it's nothing special for an end-of-gen seventh-gen AAA game.
It's not the claim that Halo 4's IQ tends better than its predecessors that bothers me, it's the claim that Halo 4 sets some kind of glorious high bar for AAA seventh-gen games despite being extremely average. We're not looking at a Forza Horizon or a Ridge Racer 7 here.

I agree that Anniversary has a pretty good ppAA implementation for a 360 game. Actually, I think it looks far better than Halo 4's; it's feels less aggressive, but most major edges get cleaned up nearly as well. Despite the lower resolution, it looks sharper than Halo 4 does, while also often looking less annoyingly aliased due to scene composition tending to contain less extreme high-frequency high-amplitude detail.

I disagree that Halo 4's IQ is more consistent than Halo 3's. Halo 3's IQ is extremely consistent, though you'll cut your eyes on the jaggies. Halo 4 cycles about between scenes that look alright, scenes that look soft and smeared, scenes that look blotchy, and even some scenes that alias worse than Halo 3 courtesy of Tron Lines.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
This is interesting, found it on twitter and posted in OT but here you go:
XgSeUwO.png

A ranking system would be great, hopefully the game itself can match it.

And as for visuals, on a technical level Halo 4 is well done. Solid 720p, decent IQ, etc. Other than that, I feel Reach and even Halo 3 are the prettier games. I don't care for 4's pastel color palette at all, and the textures and skyboxes are seriously lacking compared to Bungie's efforts.

I will say that whoever's designing rocks at 343 deserves a promotion. Good lord

iJBOODJSRgXD0.gif
 

Mix

Member
A ranking system would be great, hopefully the game itself can match it.

And as for visuals, on a technical level Halo 4 is well done. Solid 720p, decent IQ, etc. Other than that, I feel Reach and even Halo 3 are the prettier games. I don't care for 4's pastel color palette at all, and the textures and skyboxes are seriously lacking compared to Bungie's efforts.

I will say that whoever's designing rocks at 343 deserves a promotion. Good lord

iJBOODJSRgXD0.gif

HNNG @Vic Deleon
 

Caayn

Member
Like I said, it doesn't mean all of them are gone or in flood form. Not sure why everyone is so sure all of them turned into Flood, not all of them even powdered themselves.

Besides, the Primordial was dead set on fucking with everyone.
Agreed. The primordial even stated once that not all Precursors are dead. And the fact that Precursors existed in many galaxies, not just ours or Path kethona.

"Most were extinguished. A few fled beyond your reach. Creation continued." - Primodial. Primordium p.364
"Evolved over and over again, died away, were reborn, explored, and seeded many galaxies." - Librarian. Silentium p.321
 

RoKKeR

Member
I too would love Neil back, but I contacted him via Facebook and he said Kazuma Jinnouchi would be doing Halo 5. Him and Davidge did the Score for 4 together. Though one song was done by him alone I believe and that was this masterpiece.

I think it's in good hands. :) Halo 4's score was superb and I listen to it on a regular basis (like now in fact).

Edit:

Quote from his facebook page.

"So, this is the game I've been writing music for. "Halo 5: Guardians" coming Fall 2015 to Xbox One."

Nice.
Woah, hold up! Jinnouchi is doing the entire score?

YES.

117 was the best song on the entire soundtrack. Hype levels increasing.
 
I'm really tempted to pick up a 360 and catch up on the games I missed out on after my last one bit the dust. I haven't played Halo since ODST so I missed Reach and 4. I've really missed that series.
In terms of enemy engagement within the campaign, Reach is superior. In terms of sheer looks, Halo 4 is the clear winner. Both have faults but, in my humble opinion, Reach wins for having the most bad-ass ending in a Halo game.
 

OldRoutes

Member
In terms of enemy engagement within the campaign, Reach is superior. In terms of sheer looks, Halo 4 is the clear winner. Both have faults but, in my humble opinion, Reach wins for having the most bad-ass ending in a Halo game.

Dude, that sequence will forever be marked in my head. I had no idea what to do.

Kudos for who ever came up with this idea.
 

abadguy

Banned
In terms of enemy engagement within the campaign, Reach is superior. In terms of sheer looks, Halo 4 is the clear winner. Both have faults but, in my humble opinion, Reach wins for having the most bad-ass ending in a Halo game.

Personally i thought Halo 4 had a great campaign but Reach was better on that front. Best Halo SP after the original game in my opinion.
 

tasch

Banned
In terms of enemy engagement within the campaign, Reach is superior. In terms of sheer looks, Halo 4 is the clear winner. Both have faults but, in my humble opinion, Reach wins for having the most bad-ass ending in a Halo game.

probably one of the best endings in any game, let alone a halo game. It was smart, well thought out, and directly told the story through the game, few games manage to accomplish that, and i've yet to see a game do it as well as that last mission.

I'd love another halo game featuring jun, since he was the only survivor.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Halo is one of those games which never needed 60fps, i hope that doesn't mean they are going to make it faster and turn it into a more frantic shooter.

They probably are.

60FPS doesn't have to mean anything gets faster. Your eyes and brain will perceive it as faster maybe, but that's just because there's more data within the same time slice. In absolute time there doesn't have to be a change in how fast you move or anything. It will just be more precise.

I don't think Halo NEEDS 60FPS, but it will be nice. You can feel the difference nicely on a PC, especially games like Halo CE where you can cap the FPS to 60 or 30. Whether or not you can see the difference, you can feel it, 60FPS feels so much more connected to your own movements, going back to 30 feels like the character is moving through something thicker than air.
 

PusherT

Junior Member
First time post in this thread. Played and beat Spartan Ops in H4. Will I be able to finish the fight with Hasley and Juel M'dama that renagade Sanghlli. I hope Halo 5 has spartan ops and Sanghelli terrorism missions.
 

rrc1594

Member
MC is a Spartan II right, is he still better then other Spartans would they be smart and stronger then him? What would be difference between II and IV Spartans, or does it not matter cause MC is a BOSS?
 

Fuchsdh

Member
yup id take a 30 FPS halo 5 campaign w/ multi being 60

I think bifurcating the feel of the Halo experience is just a bad idea. The same frame rate should be throughout the entire game (I think you're going to see more dips in campaign, where it's obviously tolerated.)
 

Gestault

Member
MC is a Spartan II right, is he still better then other Spartans would they be smart and stronger then him? What would be difference between II and IV Spartans, or does it not matter cause MC is a BOSS?

Master Chief wasn't the strongest, fastest or smartest. Not all Spartan IIs (or IIIs for that matter) were created equal.
 
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