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Halo Reach Reveal Thread - Matchmaking/Multiplayer Details Revealed

SpudBud

Member
All I ask for is dynamic lighting. Other then that, the game looks fine to me.

Oh and the skirmishers look stupid.

AR still looks hawt.
 

kylej

Banned
Metroidvania said:
While I know that's an exaggeration, love it or hate it, Halo's always been more of a "sterile" FPS than Uncharted, which has been focused on Indiana Jones style Exotic locations.

While it would be kickass to see Lone Wolf stealthing through a dark themed jungle section that looks as good as Uncharted 2's, that's not what the focus has been on since the first game, and I can't really see Bungie changing it that much for their last foray (at least for a long while) through the series.

Yeah but Halo always has really linear and short campaigns. Why should Assassin's Creed 2 have an enormous environment that looks substantially better than anything out of Halo 3 or Reach? Bungie has Microsoft paying the bills and a studio so large that they had to buy an abandoned movie theater complex to hold all their employees. Why are their games so behind the curve? Why do people not expect the latest and greatest from Reach? If Reach is yet another 5 hour long campaign that funnels you down hallways and tight outdoor environments from beginning to end then it should not have plastic tires on vehicles and static structures. Excusing ugliness by claiming it's a design philosophy makes no sense.
 
SpudBud said:
All I ask for is dynamic lighting. Other then that, the game looks fine to me.

Oh and the skirmishers look stupid.

AR still looks hawt.

My first impression was that a jackal had an affair with Marty Feldman, and was eaten by a velociraptor. Or something. Should be more fun to play than space rhinorilllas, though.
 

big ander

Member
Dax01 said:
Not old. This is the first time I'm hearing about it.
Yeah, I didn't look at the timestamp at first. Urk just posted that 2 hours or so ago.

So that's nice, hopefully that means Shishka will go back to having more playlists require all maps.
And we've finally got another community map playlist coming up the 4th of February too. Wonder if it will have updated versions of the maps (i.e. Ber Ber not broken).
 
I think all that needs to be said based on the new pictures graphics has been said. Bungie would find it difficult to avoid these criticisms since they are running rampant by now. Everyone has proved their poing when it comes to the recent screens.

Point 1: The environments are lackluster to say the least.

Point 2: We hope bungie makes the environments looks much closer to the VGA trailer.

Now we can move on to other Reach topics :D lol

Very Large ODST/CE-esque environments? If you checked out the first person image from game informer you can see a compas(or whatever its called) above the health.. That suggest you would need to travel in certain directions in order to reach your checkpoints... Only CE and ODST was like that, H2 and H3 were too linear to need a directional compas... dont know if this has been pointed out yet.
 

Metroidvania

People called Romanes they go the house?
kylej said:
Yeah but Halo always has really linear and short campaigns. Why should Assassin's Creed 2 have an enormous environment that looks substantially better than anything out of Halo 3 or Reach? Bungie has Microsoft paying the bills and a studio so large that they had to buy an abandoned movie theater complex to hold all their employees. Why are their games so behind the curve? Why do people not expect the latest and greatest from Reach? If Reach is yet another 5 hour long campaign that funnels you down hallways and tight outdoor environments from beginning to end then it should not have plastic tires on vehicles and static structures. Excusing ugliness by claiming it's a design philosophy makes no sense.

Personally, I'm not going to equate sterility with "ugliness" without seeing more footage, but I digress.

To clarify, what you're saying is that IF Reach is a "shorter" campaign again compared to other FPS titles, they should be spending more time on graphics, no?

Now we can move on to other Reach topics

Things don't work like that around here, lol.
 

Frenck

Banned
Demoncarnotaur said:
I really hope they do. That is about the only main thing lacking from these pictures. It will go a long way to really show off the game and its art. As posted recently with the spike announcement I really hope to see fields of grass like that, rather than mostly flat ground. It also helps hide the sharp contrasting changes like from a cliff face to ground.

I do also hope to see some additional atmosphere effects, although nothing over the top like what is in so many shooters.

I cant wait to see more guns. So far the guns look really, really nice.

It's almost always the last thing that gets added to the environments in the polish phase before the game reaches gold status. The decorators went through pretty substantial changes in the latter stages of Halo 3's dev cycle. The grass for example could originally get burned down (or at least charred) with flame grenades and the flame thrower and I remember that beta Valhalla was missing a lot of decorators compared to the final version.

Other random objects like chairs, tables, trash, boards and stuff like that will get added too at some point. Right now Bungie's most important task is to make sure the game plays well and to tweak encounters and fundamental gameplay elements. Who knows, maybe the current build of Reach has more decorators in it but I doubt it since they are still working on things like the water tech thatsurely have priority over decorators or littered random objects.
 

soldat7

Member
Why For? said:
Only just picked up Game Informer yesterday and man, the scans aren't done justice online.

This game is going tolook amazing.

Judging by the cinema we've seen, yes, it could look amazing. Judging by the GI article? Eek. Very hard to say...doesn't look a lot different than Halo 3 pics in those small images. I want so see some gameplay.
 

Nutter

Member
soldat7 said:
Judging by the cinema we've seen, yes, it could look amazing. Judging by the GI article? Eek. Very hard to say...doesn't look a lot different than Halo 3 pics in those small images. I want so see some gameplay.
That is an opinion shared by many, including myself.
 

kylej

Banned
Metroidvania said:
Personally, I'm not going to equate sterility with "ugliness" without seeing more footage, but I digress.

To clarify, what you're saying is that IF Reach is a "shorter" campaign again compared to other FPS titles, they should be spending more time on graphics, no?

Absolutely. Not just shooters but all games. Perspective shouldn't affect fidelity. Environments in a short campaign should not look significantly worse than a sprawling open world.
 
those pics show a pretty massive drop in quality from the trailer shown last month. it was expected but i'm still a bit disappointed.

hopefully it'll look a bit better upon release.
 
Hey, all. I just got my Neogaf membership approved the other day. *pumps fist*

This thread is the main reason why I wanted to join GAF in the first place. I'm a huge fan of the Halo franchise (logged in around 4000 XBL Halo 2 matches!) and besides, where else on the internet can one get into spirited debates about the AR vs. BR?
 

Gui_PT

Member
Why are you people complaining about such early screenshots?

The Beta isn't even out yet! The game is months away from completion!

Gawd
 

Mr M33

Neo Member
WickedLaharl said:
those pics show a pretty massive drop in quality from the trailer shown last month. it was expected but i'm still a bit disappointed.

hopefully it'll look a bit better upon release.
The trailers always look better than the game itself.
 

Frenck

Banned
WickedLaharl said:
those pics show a pretty massive drop in quality from the trailer shown last month. it was expected but i'm still a bit disappointed.

hopefully it'll look a bit better upon release.

I still don't know where the trailer is supposed to fit in. If it is indeed the opening of the game, why does the GI preview mention that Noble team was investigating possible Insurrectionist terror attacks on the communications array until the Covenant revealed themselves to them?
 

Sai-kun

Banned
gibonez said:
I can't help but wonder if Bungie dropped the split screen mode from the multiplayer and the sp would it be possible for much better graphics ? Is that the reason Halo 3 did not look all that impressive ?

fuck that.

I wouldn't buy Reach if it didn't have split screen, I can promise you that. Halo is one of the last amazing games to actually have 4-player splitscreen. Fuck. :|
 

Metroidvania

People called Romanes they go the house?
kylej said:
Absolutely. Not just shooters but all games. Perspective shouldn't affect fidelity. Environments in a short campaign should not look significantly worse than a sprawling open world.

But at the same time, the entire focus on that sprawling overworld is to explore it, which is why you NEED to make everything look damn good.

While I certainly want improved environments in Reach, no matter how you disguise it, unless it's an open world shooter like Far Cry or Crysis, all environments in an FPS or a TPS are designed to funnel you from encounter to encounter. Some more inventive than others, yes, but if we're bringing up Uncharted, it's not just a third person shooter, it's equal parts platformer, which also revolve heavily on interacting with the environment, thus, a higher need for better graphics.

In any Corridor Shooter, the window dressing of the environment, no matter how pretty, is still window dressing.

Again, don't get me wrong, I want to see improvement as much as you, especially this late in the 360 Life cycle, but at the same time, I can see why it might not be getting as much focus as, say, designing the enemy encounters.

Will I be disappointed if the screenshots posted earlier are what the final game looks like?

Hell yes.

Will I still enjoy the game if the encounters are well developed and the combat enjoyable.

Yep.

Personally, I'd say Halo's immersion factor comes more from the enemy encounters and immediate story developments than its background environment, though I do wish the latter would be more developed.

But like has been said, I'll wait until the beta for more analysis.
 
Frenck said:
I still don't know where the trailer is supposed to fit in. If it is indeed the opening of the game, why does the GI preview mention that Noble team was investigating possible Insurrectionist terror attacks on the communications array until the Covenant revealed themselves to them?
One of the Bungie podcasts mentioned that the VGA trailer doesn't actually make sense in the game's continuity, and thats on purpose. They took some liberties to get it up and running and communicating what they wanted for the VGAs, so expect the actual game cinematic to be different.
 

Frenck

Banned
NullPointer said:
One of the Bungie podcasts mentioned that the VGA trailer doesn't actually make sense in the game's continuity, and thats on purpose. They took some liberties to get it up and running and communicating what they wanted for the VGAs, so expect the actual game cinematic to be different.

A bit like the Halo 3 reveal then?

That makes sense.
 

Sean P.

Member
bobs99 ... said:
Is that the UK imax event your talking about? - That was awesome but seemed really limited, was lucky to get tickets, I really hope theres something similar for Reach.

I think the Halo dead body physics for spartans are really well done, perhaps a little stiff but you kind of expect that with those kind of suits.

I was talking about the one they held in Seattle. They extended it to two showings from original one since so many people showed up, and as we were leaving the first one we got tickets into the second as they had just enough extras, good times, good times.
 

Domino Theory

Crystal Dynamics
Metroidvania said:
Lol, I'm not going to cry about it, I'm into Halo for the gameplay.

The post I responded to had to do with Halo's visuals, not its gameplay.

You're into Halo for its gameplay? Damn, no wonder you play it so much. :lol

/
 

big ander

Member
Hey urk, for the Haiti thing, does it matter if the circle that's part of the Heart emblem is toggled? I already have the heart background enabled, but will I be counted/not counted for having the emblem secondary toggled or not?
 
I just want Bungie to fix the boosters and new accounts and I'll be happy. its imposible to play doubles anymore. Everybody has a new account or a booster.
 

Domino Theory

Crystal Dynamics
big ander said:
Hey urk, for the Haiti thing, does it matter if the circle that's part of the Heart emblem is toggled? I already have the heart background enabled, but will I be counted/not counted for having the emblem secondary toggled or not?

To be safe, I'd toggle it off. Just have the Heart with the circle background.
 

Zabka

Member
It looks pretty good, although the character lighting reminds me a lot of Gears 2. The characters sometimes stood out a bit from the environments in that game.
 

Metroidvania

People called Romanes they go the house?
Domino Theory said:
The post I responded to had to do with Halo's visuals, not its gameplay.

You're into Halo for its gameplay? Damn, no wonder you play it so much. :lol

/

U mad?

Tell you what, let's get on, and get our hearts out there for Haiti.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Just painted a giant oil pastel canvas of OONSK chasing Mister Chief. It's horrific. It's like your soul crawled out of your butt and punched you in the face.
 

CrunchinJelly

formerly cjelly
Gui_PT said:
Why are you people complaining about such early screenshots?

The Beta isn't even out yet! The game is months away from completion!

Gawd
Because unfortunately the people complaining about the screenshots won't actually be able to play the Beta for obvious reasons.

Complaining about screenshots is there one chance to moan.
 
OuterWorldVoice said:
Just painted a giant oil pastel canvas of OONSK chasing Mister Chief. It's horrific. It's like your soul crawled out of your butt and punched you in the face.
Goddam it, I want a job like yours. I fucking hate having to pretend to work where I do.
 

big ander

Member
OuterWorldVoice said:
Just painted a giant oil pastel canvas of OONSK chasing Mister Chief. It's horrific. It's like your soul crawled out of your butt and punched you in the face.
Make a series of oonsk paintings. I'd love to look at the gallery.
 
Man that cortana cut-in was such a break in pacing

Sai-kun said:
fuck that.

I wouldn't buy Reach if it didn't have split screen, I can promise you that. Halo is one of the last amazing games to actually have 4-player splitscreen. Fuck. :|

Im sure it has split screen features. They already comfirmed, Full feature parity to Halo 3. And im sure you wouldve still bought it LOL
 
cjelly said:
Because unfortunately the people complaining about the screenshots won't actually be able to play the Beta for obvious reasons.

Complaining about screenshots is there one chance to moan.

yup you got it all figured out! everyone complaining about those screenshots do not own a 360!

:lol
 

see5harp

Member
kylej said:
Yeah but Halo always has really linear and short campaigns. Why should Assassin's Creed 2 have an enormous environment that looks substantially better than anything out of Halo 3 or Reach? Bungie has Microsoft paying the bills and a studio so large that they had to buy an abandoned movie theater complex to hold all their employees. Why are their games so behind the curve? Why do people not expect the latest and greatest from Reach? If Reach is yet another 5 hour long campaign that funnels you down hallways and tight outdoor environments from beginning to end then it should not have plastic tires on vehicles and static structures. Excusing ugliness by claiming it's a design philosophy makes no sense.

I do not disagree that Halo is one of the more standard looking shooters going back to Halo 3. I don't think that their design resources are somehow being wasted though. Look at the tech and the greatness of the multiplayer maps and you'll see why most still consider it the benchmark. Uncharted 2 is the only game since Halo 3 to implement the game save tech, and even then it's not close to having the same implementation. Graphics aren't the reason I play Halo.
 
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