Seriously, it was one game demo. No, the Xbox is not underpowered, no Phil spencer isn't lying, no this isn't proof that the old consoles are holding things back. The only thing the demo proved was that it wasn't polished enough to show. There's still time for the game to improve, and it has a huge team involved so it will move quickly. Pop-in, textures, clipping, lighting/particle fx will be fixed before launch. The only thing missing for launch is ray-tracing which would get them a number of visual improvements.
Despite the state it was in, we saw a few things we have never seen in a Halo game before:
- Open world exploration through the entire game ( you can explore the entire ring with it being bigger than the last two games combined)
- Targetting of enemy body parts that effects animations ( headshot kills )
- actual verticality in combat. using the grappler to get on top of objects is new and less linear than all previous halo games
- some new weapons are interesting
Other items we didn't see but were mentioned after:
- 2 - 4 player split-screen is back
- Upgrades to master chief throughout the game is also new
There were a number of things missing from that demo which seem pretty obvious, but 343 is probably already aware of. If anyone here has worked on a game before, every game hits the stage of "crunch time", and during that phase, it takes the biggest leaps forward in how it looks and plays. Halo 1 was in a similar state before it first launched the original Xbox months before release. Gameplay wise, that demo was pretty solid. They just need to clean up the visuals and polish.
Anyway, I wish they would have held off showing it until more was in there ( at the very least ray tracing to show off what it would look like. its a big miss), but it is what it is. What is isn't though is the end of the world. Most people don't care about the stuff others were complaining about in the forums yesterday. People here need to relax.
This is lalmost all wrong:
1- Phil Spencer Liedseveral times bragging about the power, the show itself and the quality he was going to show, he should step down after this.
2- Xbone is holding it back
3- They DO NOT have time to improve, it is 4 months away, you cant' polish the whole game in 3 months
4- They will need to be patching bugs after lunch for years to come, this game is not ready even to be shown in an E3 show, ray tracing will be another problem when performance starts going down.
5- NOBODY has claimed that there is the whole ring to explore, they don't even say it is an open world, they say that the world is open and expansive, but not have claimed that it is really an open world (They better come out soon with the truth before people gets the hopes up)
6- Shooting body parts has always affected the animation, (maybe Except in Halo 4/5) so this was a good improvement, certainly appreciate that in the demo. Especially, shooting at the legs and making the brute stumble. That is reeeally good for the game. kudos when deserved
7- We didn't see any verticality in combat cause the grappling hoojkll was moving the MC in a straight line usually forward.
8- Some new weapons where interesting indeed, can't wait to try them
9- Splitscreen is a great thing that came back. Kudos
10- Upgrades can be also very cool indeed.
11- No, not every game enters crunch time. And games risk it when they do, it can end well for the game, or it can end really bad. They are probably swimming in bugs and won't have time to do any major upgrade to the game if they don't postpone it. They would have to have fixed the open world tech (streaming, keeping character and item data alive on non visible terrains in different level of detail so they can be queried when not loaded, etc...) Months ago so they can build the gameplay and level design around it. What hapens now is that if they fix this tech, the level design is already done to work as best as possible with the current tech, meaning the game is already clamped by its own tech and they won't have to change all the levels layout.
Basically it seems that they fucked up their tech and art direction (bland colours, poor lighting...)
They can still come out with great gameplay feel and that is the most important and the only thing that I have hopes towards.