Truant said:
You seem upset, and I'm sorry if I offended you, that was not my intention at all. You obviously know more about this than I, and I have made no claims at all to be proficient in either coding or graphic design.
I'm exclusively talking about what I'm seeing and experiencing when I play the game, and how other games look and perform in comparison. I don't really care how the framework is set up, or what it's doing under the hood, because it could be a technical marvel, doing revolutionary stuff, but if the end result doesn't look good, that's really what I'm seeing.
I understand that this is the compromise Bungie had to live with given their ambitions for the AI, or the social features, but if other games can give me the illusion of the same quality, then why would any gamer care about what's really going on? To me, the AI in Half-Life 1 seems more impressive than the Halo 3 AI, but it's probably just a simple calculator to what Bungie is doing. It's all in the way you experience something, and I don't care what developers do to achieve that.
Upset? :lol Nah, but dude I strongly disagree with some of your points and your argument. Nothing wrong with a robust and healthy rebuttal. =)
You talk about what the end user experiences and sees, and when a player plays GTA and COD next to Halo, Halo can't stack up? Am I right that this is your argument?
Well, if it is, then the only area you make a valid point in is the resolution and graphical details such as lack of AA, however using this as the weight of your argument debases your point.
Let me explain. When Halo 3 came out, the graphics were substantially more impressive at the time of release. It wasn't the "best" looking game, but it was still strong however with time and other games coming out, it hasn't aged too well.
You say it's all down to the end user experience and I agree, however the end user experience is not just about graphics.
In Halo 3, you could be put up against 20-30 enemies, you have dozens of ways to engage them in the encounter, differant tactics, strategies and for the first few times you play it out, things can go differantly, enemies behave and react and changes things up. Then after this encounter, you can jump into a vehicle and engage against ground vehicles, thanks, turrets, ghosts, infantry.
Then you move to indoor sections, corridor fighting waves of enemies, each with their own method and strategies to take your down, then afterwards your high in the air dogfighting dozens of aerial banshees and a larger Phantom ship, then afterwards you are fighting from the air against tanks and other ground based infantry, switch back to more corridor shooting, then more ground vehicle combat in a tank going across spiral, mountainous roads fighting dozens of vehicles and infantry.
Then you reach the end of the level, dozens of vehicles on the ground and the air and you have to take down two scarabs at the same time, each one a mountain of death with a more than dozen of enemies inside and out, with a battle raging overhead in the sky and beneath on the ground.
That's all just a single level. The scale on that level is just crazy. You have all the traditional dynamic AI and physics going on all around you. More importantly you can do this with two player spliitscreen (3 players if you know a special glitch) or with 4 other co-op over Live. You can save the film and rewind the entire mission, look at it from every angle, every frame. You play a meta score game at the same time too, with or against your buddies. Amazing gameplay, scale, everything.
Does COD or GTA provide an end user experience compared to that? Hell no. So what if the resolution is a few pixels less than the other games or it has less bump mapping or AA or some other graphical feature.
Halo 3 provides a unique playing experience that no other game has come close to matching. When you are having so fun, a few pixels don't really subtract from it.
This is why I have confidence in Bungie, they can nail down amazing game experiences unlike any other. Additionally, look at the evolution of graphics in the Halo series, they will not disappoint. I don't really care if it has less pixels (or specific graphical feature) than COD, GTA or Killzone.
Reach will look better than Halo 3, that's certain, they have built a new engine for it, the last time they did that (new engine for a sequel on the same console as the previous game) we had the jump from Halo 1 to Halo 2. If they can make the same graphical jump from 3 to Reach, keep all the great gameplay features and stat tracking they themselves standardised, I'll be more than happy.
Relix said:
It's not like the Halo 3 AI is that smart and advanced. It goes beyond what COD does of course.
IMO..
Halo 3 is a technical beast. So many things under the room, but graphics that generally look lackbuster.
COD is more of a thrill ride, and the graphics usually look better than Halo 3... and at 60FPS... and a sightly superior resolution. Dumber AI, no "movies" option, but to the end user COD looks more impressive than Halo.
Really, I was so, so disappointed with Halo 3 graphics. There's barely been a moment where it has wowed me... and don't show me game pictures, those have a shitload of AA and post-processing added to it. Without those the game looks bad. Really, the ending mission I could feel the jaggies about to slice my arm off or something =P.
Hopefully Halo Reach looks like that trailer they released long ago =)
Halo 3'S graphics were far from lacklustre when it was released. It just wasn't the most visually impressive and it hasn't aged well. I haven't seen a 3D game (bar Crysis) that didn't start to look worse over time.
Some of the things in Halo are amazing and still stand today, such as the lighting and the skyboxes, but some things like the lack of AA really hurt the game 2 years later when comparing it to recent releases (not that I think that's a fair comparison to make though =P).