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[geordiemp]

Employee Spotlight: Ani Shastry

Ani Shastry shares how his love for stars, science fiction and pixels led him to work for his all-time favorite game franchise.

www.343industries.com

But while it’s easy to get carried away about the prospect of playing Halo Infinite, it’s worth taking a minute to think about the enormous work put into this playable preview of Halo Infinite. While this is just a section of the final game, it took a herculean effort to make sure this little corner of our Ringworld was polished and pretty enough for its premiere! The art, lighting, design, environment, graphics, production and engineering teams involved in carving out and curating this little slice, are nervous and excited to show people a glimpse of what we’re building.

Does anyone else think Halo gameplay demo was polished ?

 

[MMaRsu]

That entire blurb is absolutely pathetic.

 

[The Cartographer]

They're talking like this game was 343's first collective effort...

 

[OutRun88]

Sorry 343i employees, but sounds like you’ll have zero free time these next few months.

 

[Psykodad]

Let's see the spin on this.

They have only 4-5 months to optimise and polish the game for 4 different systems.
And it isn't even ready to be shown on XSX yet.

 

[Cyber_hunter026]

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Making excuses for your own 'work in progress' demo is one of the biggest system-launch fumbles I've seen yet.

 

[Thugnificient]

Jesus Christ, another spin?

How many? Early build. COVID-19. It's polished.

Show a good product and you won't have to say shit Microsoft.

 

[Freeman]

Imagine the rest of the game then...

 

[Topfuel]

Jesus Christ, another spin?

How many? Early build. COVID-19. It's polished.

Show a good product and you won't have to say shit Microsoft.

Relax, step away from the GAF and play some Ghost like I do at the moment. Buy a few Tesla stock, by the time it reach 2000 USD both consoles have launched and Halo is fixed and you can buy both consoles.

 

[Thugnificient]

But while it’s easy to get carried away about the prospect of playing Halo Infinite, it’s worth taking a minute to think about the enormous work put into this playable preview of Halo Infinite. While this is just a section of the final game, it took a herculean effort to make sure this little corner of our Ringworld was polished and pretty enough for its premiere! The art, lighting, design, environment, graphics, production and engineering teams involved in carving out and curating this little slice, are nervous and excited to show people a glimpse of what we’re building.

The door to 343 Industries' building must be a time warp to 2012.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Will they just shut up for once please... stop giving interviews, stop updating blogs, put up a “we got it, working hard, will update when we made it up to you gamers” sign and get back to work on a single coherent company vision.

 

[PapyDoc]

I trusted them.
I mean they manage to ruin the Bungie's game on the MCC and took 3 or 4 year to fix the MCC. I know these passionate but utterly incompetent folks give their all in it.

 

[marcincz]

I must admit at 343 works funny people.
343 will be first studio closed by ms in next few months/years or something else?

 

[Hobbygaming]

Let's see the spin on this.

They have only 4-5 months to optimise and polish the game for 4 different systems.
And it isn't even ready to be shown on XSX yet.

Exactly and 4-5 month's in game development ain't shit lol

 

[Psykodad]

Exactly and 4-5 month's in game development ain't shit lol

I wonder if we'll see an outcry about 343 crunching.

Somehow I doubt it. Lol

 

[Portugeezer]

16 hour crunch days incoming.

 

[Graciaus]

343 continuing to ruin Halo shouldn't surprise anyone. Hopefully after another embarrassment Microsoft gets rid of them and reboots the series.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Those waiting for something very different in 4 months are in for a rude awakening.

Halo is now a 2nd tier franchise.

 

[geordiemp]

Will they just shut up for once please... stop giving interviews, stop updating blogs, put up a “we got it, working hard, will update when we made it up to you gamers” sign and get back to work on a single coherent company vision.

Maybe its not 343s fault. Did some digging

The leaked MS documents that apparently mentioned the lockart, also meantioned performance issues with the dev kits due to the hardware decompression / SSD according to B3D mod.

Leaked Microsoft document hints at second next-gen Xbox

Microsoft has still not publicly acknowledged its Lockhart plans

www.theverge.com

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

This is common sense to anyone who posts on videogame message boards.

They had this date circled on their calendars for a long time. This was their big debut. All eyes on Halo Infinite. No one actually believes this isn't representative of final gameplay, which is basically locked in to go gold in THREE MONTHS. THREE.

With that being said, those graphics are completely passable if the open world is interesting/unique. But to show a gameplay segment that doesn't show us that, and instead shows us the basic gameplay loop of the last 7 Halo game...man that's not inspiring much confidence right now.

Hopefully they just thought the more interesting aspects of Halo Infinite wouldn't show well in this presentation.

 

[II_JumPeR_I]

They love their own farts

 

[Slings and Arrows]

There's a simple fix here:

Offer Halo:Infinite 'beta' on Xbone and 1X as a free download. People will know it's a beta, they get to play around in a level, build hype and get excited to buy a XSX at the end of the month. Good-will is zero at this point, so at least doing this will win them some points

 

[Panajev2001a]

Maybe its not 343s fault. Did some digging

The leaked MS documents that apparently mentioned the lockart, also meantioned performance issues with the dev kits due to the hardware decompression / SSD according to B3D mod.

Leaked Microsoft document hints at second next-gen Xbox

Microsoft has still not publicly acknowledged its Lockhart plans

www.theverge.com

This would indicate that their HW is still far from being final/bug free for some key features so so late in the game... and people accuse Sony of being the likely one to be reacting to MS's 4D chess with last minute clock boosts, RDNA 2 features sprinkled in, etc...

In the real world one system is showing tons of games running on real HW and even the Epic demo was running in real time on a real PS5 HW/dev kit while the other one is showing CG trailers and games running on PC's... and the dev kits have major bugs that are still waiting to be fixed a few months before launch and thus developers are still showing the games off on their dev PC's... .

 

[Fart Knight]

 

[Deleted member 775630]

This is common sense to anyone who posts on videogame message boards.

They had this date circled on their calendars for a long time. This was their big debut. All eyes on Halo Infinite. No one actually believes this isn't representative of final gameplay, which is basically locked in to go gold in THREE MONTHS. THREE.

With that being said, those graphics are completely passable if the open world is interesting/unique. But to show a gameplay segment that doesn't show us that, and instead shows us the basic gameplay loop of the last 7 Halo game...man that's not inspiring much confidence right now.

Hopefully they just thought the more interesting aspects of Halo Infinite wouldn't show well in this presentation.

Do you think that's passible for a 12TF machine? Graphically this should be looking amazing. RDR2 looks 10times as good on a 6TF machine.

 

[LostDonkey]

it looked underwhelming on the show but after watching the higher quality 4k 60 I can dig it.

 

[Psykodad]

This would indicate that their HW is still far from being final/bug free for some key features so so late in the game... and people accuse Sony of being the likely one to be reacting to MS's 4D chess with last minute clock boosts, RDNA 2 features sprinkled in, etc...

In the real world one system is showing tons of games running on real HW and even the Epic demo was running in real time on a real PS5 HW/dev kit while the other one is showing CG trailers and games running on PC's... and the dev kits have major bugs that are still waiting to be fixed a few months before launch and thus developers are still showing the games off on their dev PC's... .

Don't overlook the fact that hardware limitations are also mentioned.
It's not just bugs.

 

[Hobbygaming]

I wonder if we'll see an outcry about 343 crunching.

Somehow I doubt it. Lol

Lol "343 worked harder to polish the game for us" Lol

 

[Panajev2001a]

Don't overlook the fact that hardware limitations are also mentioned.
It's not just bugs.

Sure, but the HW being buggy and so late in such a way that is keeping tools behind and developers do not use it to show the games off would be telling in and of itself... how much was it MS that actually reacted to Sony (SSD + I/O complex and other bits) instead of the other way around and how much was it MS's chasing the 12.x TFLOPS victory so bad that is causing the design to be finalised so long after PS5?

 

[Hobbygaming]

This would indicate that their HW is still far from being final/bug free for some key features so so late in the game... and people accuse Sony of being the likely one to be reacting to MS's 4D chess with last minute clock boosts, RDNA 2 features sprinkled in, etc...

In the real world one system is showing tons of games running on real HW and even the Epic demo was running in real time on a real PS5 HW/dev kit while the other one is showing CG trailers and games running on PC's... and the dev kits have major bugs that are still waiting to be fixed a few months before launch and thus developers are still showing the games off on their dev PC's... .

Remember people tried to give Jason Schreier crap for saying the Xbox Series X was behind schedule

Maybe he was right after all

 

[Psykodad]

Sure, but the HW being buggy and so late in such a way that is keeping tools behind and developers do not use it to show the games off would be telling in and of itself... how much was it MS that actually reacted to Sony (SSD + I/O complex and other bits) instead of the other way around and how much was it MS's chasing the 12.x TFLOPS victory so bad that is causing the design to be finalised so long after PS5?

I totally believe that has been the case, MS chasing Sony and desperately trying to one up them.
Sony is a hardware company at it's core, Cerny is one of the leading system-architecs in the world. Only idiots think Sony would be knee-jerking to XSX and panicking.

 

[pesaddict]

Polished turd more like

 

[Psykodad]

Remember people tried to give Jason Schreier crap for saying the Xbox Series X was behind schedule

Maybe he was right after all

People gave crap to everyone who talked bad about XSX or good about PS5.

In hindsight, all the reports about insiders, saying devs didn't like designing for XSX and how well-designed and easy to develop for PS5 is, seem to be accurate.

 

[BlueXImpulse]

This is real?

 

[Handy Fake]

I have to admit, I'm starting to feel a bit sorry for the 343 employees...
Something somewhere has gone terribly wrong and nobody will be able to say why.

 

[Hobbygaming]

Maybe its not 343s fault. Did some digging

The leaked MS documents that apparently mentioned the lockart, also meantioned performance issues with the dev kits due to the hardware decompression / SSD according to B3D mod.

Leaked Microsoft document hints at second next-gen Xbox

Microsoft has still not publicly acknowledged its Lockhart plans

www.theverge.com

The Velocity engine hit a speed bump lol just kidding

 

[Alan Silvestro]

It reminds me Tiertex arcade conversions on Amiga on the 90s... Maybe they are not really the right devs to make games. Let they make apps or other 3d tools for business. They are not good for videogaming.

 

[sublimit]

The problem is not what 343,or Aaron Greenberg or Matt Booty or Phil Spencer says. They will always have an excuse to say. They will continue to promise things that are obviously either very early in development or things they haven't even started actual development.

The real problem IMO is that as long as Xbox fans keep pretending that they are satisfied and happy with shows like the one yesterday MS will never feel the need that they have to improve. I 'm seeing a lot of Xbox fans saying that they are happy with half-baked graphics like the ones we saw from Halo 5,and that they are happy by seeing trailers with zero gameplay.

If i was MS and i heard those reactions from my fans i'd never feel the need to get better.

 

[Hobbygaming]

People gave crap to everyone who talked bad about XSX or good about PS5.

In hindsight, all the reports about insiders, saying devs didn't like designing for XSX and how well-designed and easy to develop for PS5 is, seem to be accurate.

Yep, and then there was the rumblings about developers not wanting to develop games for Lockhart

And remember that GDC survey? Way more developers were interested in developing games on the PS5 for a reason

 

[Jokerevo]

People gave crap to everyone who talked bad about XSX or good about PS5.

In hindsight, all the reports about insiders, saying devs didn't like designing for XSX and how well-designed and easy to develop for PS5 is, seem to be accurate.

I don't think it's a question of accessibility, it's about a mandate from MS that your game needs to run on every configs because gamepass. From Xone to PC. How can anyone optimise for all of that?


So the problem is this: do you target the higher install base to ensure you recoup your investment or do you go XsX and harness that SSD but risk selling nothing..

 

[BlueXImpulse]

Maybe its not 343s fault. Did some digging

The leaked MS documents that apparently mentioned the lockart, also meantioned performance issues with the dev kits due to the hardware decompression / SSD according to B3D mod.

Leaked Microsoft document hints at second next-gen Xbox

Microsoft has still not publicly acknowledged its Lockhart plans

www.theverge.com

Fairly worrisome.

 

[Hendrick's]

it looked underwhelming on the show but after watching the higher quality 4k 60 I can dig it.

The game has a ton of potential. Sadly, them stating that RT is coming post launch tells me that potential isn't going to be met at launch.

 

[Paps Guattro]

 

[Kamina]

So polished that even shadows had no chance

 

[Captain Hero]

 

[Musky_Cheese]

If I am Phil, I am going thru every 343 social media accounts. Stalking the shit out of them. Every time they post something I am replying...

“Oh! You got time for this? You sure bitch?”

 

[Coolwhhip]

Doesn't that mean 1-2 years delay?

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

It was the opposite of polished. Even simple things were struggling like close up grass pop in and hyper aggressive LOD on the trees.

The Series X / PC is more than capable of doing these things better so that tells me the game is nowhere near ready or polished. And it should be less than 5 months from launch. These last few months should be finishing a few things off, not still working on the sub standard graphics.

 

[the_master]

I see it very clearly now.
They just need more time.
Most of the problems we see are graphical bugs or polish tasks.
Lod logic, grass popping out, phantoms not animated to fly, this is just polish.

The demo showed they are far behind. They needed a big effort to make it look like this because they are not done.
All games look like shit till the end of developement when it all comes together (or when they spend months on a beautiful corner for a demo with scripted gameplay, which does not seem to be the case of halo at all, they could have baked the gameplay and fix the visual issues on top)

The question is how much time do they need to finish it up. I'd say one year.

Also, I am starting to see many things I like from the reveal, gameplay wise.