News Developer Sperasoft joins Halo Infinite development effort.

[Jigsaah]

You remember the employee complaints people were talking about...how they over-utilize contractors?

Boom well there you go. Proof is in the pudding. These guys better be awesome.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

After this 343 needs to be taken away from Halo.

Game needs to be delayed but than MS won't have anything for launch.

Maybe delay the XSX launch and it's biggest budget game till spring?

 

[McCheese]

Imagine fucking up so bad that one month from going gold you have to bring in the Mass Effect Andromeda animation team to save you. Thank fuck the main character never takes his helmet off.

 

[Portugeezer]

Citing Shigeru Miyamoto: “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.” ...

Miyamoto also released StarFox Wii U.

 

[NoLootBoxDev]

Miyamoto also released StarFox Wii U.

I never played the game or know the score, but I guess was a terrible game. Maybe he had to delay it to make it better.

 

[Leyasu]

Holy shit there's a bunch of drama queen, under developed, arm chair devs in this thread. WTF is going on??? lol

GAMERS: "Holy crap Halo Infinite looks like shit! They need to fix this dumpster fire before it releases. "

343i brings in more devs to assist.

ALSO GAMERS: "Holy crap! Their bringing in more devs to assist in actually making Halo Infinite better due to our feedback??? Its gonna be a dumpster fire anyway. What's the point???"

Lol. Never change GaF...

GTFO with that noise. With the leads leaving last year and what was shown, a troubled development is pretty much guaranteed. I ain't no arm chair dev, by I do manage projects, and anticipation and getting on top of things when deadlines loom is primordial. Waiting til the last minute or after it is possible to meet your deadline before getting support is a prime example of poor project management.

I'm one of the biggest halo fanboys there are, but I will criticise a poorly managed halo if I see it.

 

[Leyasu]

Responsibility lies at the top, Satya should axe Phil Scheister and Matt Incanbooby. Maybe take a studio head from Turn10 or Playground to save this sinking ship.

They should have put Rod Ferguson on it

 

[Sony]

Whew, now that you've gotten that out, go ahead and reply to the substance of my post whenever you're ready.

I did. To which your reply was "DiD yOu rEaD mY pOstS".

 

[kuncol02]

I never played the game or know the score, but I guess was a terrible game. Maybe he had to delay it to make it better.

No delay would make it better. It was broken in it's core.

 

[Leyasu]

This post is funny and ironic seeing how 343i built the engine and gave Halo the look it has based on feedback they got from gamers themselves. The classic look and style it has is literally based on what Halo fans asked for.

You guys are fantastic. Lol

5 yrs to build the engine and the game. Perhaps they massively overshot on the engine development (apparently NX gamer is claiming that it is the same engine by the way), and only left themselves two yrs for the game itself. If that was the case, then why not get support earlier on in the project?

 

[Keihart]

first class first partying.....yikes.

 

[PropellerEar]

They should have put Rod Ferguson on it

Not a bad choice.

 

[Hendrick's]

Who's the guy from Pulp Fiction??

Someone should edit Phil's face on to Quentin.

 

[VALCON 82]

Someone should edit Phil's face on to Quentin.

YYYEESSSS!!!

 

[Laconian Sword]

Man, I empathize with you Halo fans, but it's hard to overstate how bad this looks to anyone with experience in software engineering.

More than a few professionals in here reinforcing this; ignore at your own peril of massive disappointment. Nothing to do with fanboyism at all.

Let's hope for the best but temper expectations.

 

[Balducci30]

Man, I empathize with you Halo fans, but it's hard to overstate how bad this looks to anyone with experience in software engineering.

More than a few professionals in here reinforcing this; ignore at your own peril of massive disappointment. Nothing to do with fanboyism at all.

Let's hope for the best but temper expectations.

Huh? Like graphically? I expect it to look the same as what they showed

 

[Hezekiah]

You're fighting a losing battle trying to make people understand this.

The game IS and Xbox One game. It's not in any way, shape, or form, an Xbox Series X game. In the same way that Gears of War 5 isn't a Xbox One X game, rather a Xbox One game that has an Xbox One X update available, Infinite is an Xbox One game that will have an Xbox Series X update available.

Yes but Gears 5 looks good on Xbox One, and amazing on PC at 60 fps. Yet Halo Infinite a few months from launch running on PC looks like crap.

 

[Bar81]

Huh? Like graphically? I expect it to look the same as what they showed

To bring in additional help suddenly 3 months from gold.

 

[BadBurger]

I never played the game or know the score, but I guess was a terrible game. Maybe he had to delay it to make it better.

Shit I loved the Wii U and didn't even know they released a Star Fox for it.

 

[NullZ3r0]

People panicking at this need to watch the credits after every major movie and game. Contract talent everywhere.

 

[MrFunSocks]

Yes but Gears 5 looks good on Xbox One, and amazing on PC at 60 fps. Yet Halo Infinite a few months from launch running on PC looks like crap.

Halo Infinite isn't "running on PC" though, it's a dev machine version of an xbox one game running on Series X specs. It's still a Xbox One game.

Gears 50 isn't 60fps on Xbox One (outside of multiplayer) nor open world.

 

[Dr Bass]

People panicking at this need to watch the credits after every major movie and game. Contract talent everywhere.

That's not what this is. This is a bad deal for a software project this large and this close to release.

 

[NullZ3r0]

That's not what this is. This is a bad deal for a software project this large and this close to release.

You have no idea what they're contracted for. Its most likely QA work or fit and finish stuff that just needs bodies.

 

[ZehDon]

Clearly we disagree, old or new balls dropping. I see the 2 years ago teasers that were in engine targets wildly different to the in engine gameplay of last month, none of which were running on a XSX or XSX dev kit, all confirmed on PC. We know key studio heads left at the same time, that's not a good sign for a project that should have vision and passion throughout. We know every single game release of 343 has lacked content, been broken for some and has taken years to sustain via GaaS style development. To suggest I don't base my own perspective on things from direct observations to false.

Your idea that Sperasoft has been working with them for a long time is also false. The article quoted below is from July 2019 and uses terms such as "will" not "is", Sperasoft wasn't yet working with 343 during middle of last year. They were predominately hired for mocap and other small elements. So we can see late 2019 they did some work, now we have a new press release for them to work again, not just extend their work but multiple mandates (generic term, hiding any real insight to the new collaboration requirements). That's all I need to read into when/what/who/why of this development being behind and that Sperasoft don't have the experience with 343 or a new Halo engine that perhaps the previous 4 years could have provided them with. Covid has already been stated by MS/Xbox as PR damage control as well. Everyone seems to think 3 months of dev time means a lot. What of the 4+ years to date, they've factually demonstrated the teaser to gameplay is nowhere near the same quality.

You should also know outsourcing your work takes longer to get incoming talent up to speed, engine/code/design/testing etc. You should also realise the majority of this time is during Covid as well, not exactly easy to do remotely. Sperasoft hasn't worked on Halo before at all, so to herald them like some saviour company that just sweeps in on a "massive scale", as you put it, is utopian levels of ideal development.

I still want the game to be good, I'll play the shit out of any Halo game but right now the gamer and working professional in me knows better. 343 shot themselves in the foot again so far, it's on them to prove that false going forward. How about some other metrics?

• MCC was their previous heavily outsourced game, literally a broken piece of shit that took years to correct.
• I love bees commenced 5 months prior to Halo 2 game release.
• Halo 3 public beta was 7 months in advance of game release, live action trailers for Halo 3 were 3 months before release.
• Marketing for Halo 4 kicked off 6 months prior to game release.
• Hunt the Truth commenced 7 months prior to Halo 5 game release.
• There have been zero ViDocs apart from some sound bites for Halo Infinite.

You get the picture, the development isn't going well IMO.

I think we disagree on the markers of troubled development, because I'm not assuming 343i are the worst developers in the industry.

Downgrades occur all the time - this is not necessarily a sign of troubled development. The most famous of early-gen cases of massive downgrades would be the original Watch_Dogs. There's not much in the way of corroborating evidence to suggest its development was troubled. From there, you're spring-boarding into leads leaving the project before completion, using this as sign of doom and bloom. However, look at the facts. The project was massively delayed to react to Halo 5's disastrous reception. The lead franchise writer, who helmed the story for Spartan Ops in Halo 4 - the least enjoyed segment of that game - and helmed the story for Halo 5 - the least enjoyed game in the franchise - was one of the leads who left 343i and Halo Infinite. Is this a sign of troubled development, or development becoming un-troubled?

Virtually all of your comments on Sperasoft are assumptions that spiral into the negative position. We could quite easily assume the positive position: Sperasoft's work thus far on Infinite was absolutely top-tier, and so 343i reached out to them to have them return to assist during the final stretch to help get Infinite to the quality level they want to deliver. This is just as likely. You don't re-enlist people who do bad work.

Your comments on out-sourcing, though, are absolutely dead-on. It always takes extra time to get externals up-to-par with your in-house, and during COVID, that's going to be quite the task. It's likely that 343i's management was weighed this against the work that needs doing and deemed it necessary. Not being involed, no one can comment further. However, I'm not positioning them as a saviour company. I'm positioning them exactly as their press release stipulates: contract labour enlisted to assist 343i. I try not to make baseless assumptions about things I don't know. Which is why I'm not prepared to say Infinite's development is "in a dark place".

1. 343i owned the disaster that was MCC's outsourced development, and have worked tireless in-house to fix it. This is a positive for 343i, a lesson hard-learned, not a negative.
2. Marketing timelines for the game are irrelevant to its progress. Remember: Aliens: Colonial Marines had a pretty good marketing campaign.
3. You're actively seeking to find negative markers, not finding markers that actually exist.

The development is neither going well or un-well. It is merely progressing. No one on this forum knows the state of Halo Infinite's development - people are just parroting click-bait articles and YouTubers.

So far, all we have are underwhelming graphics from a cross-gen gaming targeting an OG Xbone and a press release about contractors in an industry famous for contractors. As I said in my previous post - when there's a proven narrative, I'll gladly follow it. No one's proven a thing yet as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Hezekiah]

Halo Infinite isn't "running on PC" though, it's a dev machine version of an xbox one game running on Series X specs. It's still a Xbox One game.

Gears 50 isn't 60fps on Xbox One (outside of multiplayer) nor open world.

Yes representative of XSX specs and it still looks terrible for a current gen game.

I didn't say Gears was 60 fps Xbox One, I'm referring to the PC version and I'm running the game with a 1070ti, whereas the GPU in XSX is on par with a 2080 according to Digital Foundry.

I see people reaching for the open world excuse, but that really isn't good enough. All indications are that it's semi open world anyway - Gears 5 is a current gen game with large semi open world environments and looks far better. Microsoft has been hyping up their 12 teraflops to all and sundry for months now. Halo is supposed to be their tentpole franchise - but 343i's development skills, and Microsoft's strategy is very likely going to make themselves look ridiculous.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

I think we disagree on the markers of troubled development, because I'm not assuming 343i are the worst developers in the industry.

Downgrades occur all the time - this is not necessarily a sign of troubled development. The most famous of early-gen cases of massive downgrades would be the original Watch_Dogs. There's not much in the way of corroborating evidence to suggest its development was troubled. From there, you're spring-boarding into leads leaving the project before completion, using this as sign of doom and bloom. However, look at the facts. The project was massively delayed to react to Halo 5's disastrous reception. The lead franchise writer, who helmed the story for Spartan Ops in Halo 4 - the least enjoyed segment of that game - and helmed the story for Halo 5 - the least enjoyed game in the franchise - was one of the leads who left 343i and Halo Infinite. Is this a sign of troubled development, or development becoming un-troubled?

Virtually all of your comments on Sperasoft are assumptions that spiral into the negative position. We could quite easily assume the positive position: Sperasoft's work thus far on Infinite was absolutely top-tier, and so 343i reached out to them to have them return to assist during the final stretch to help get Infinite to the quality level they want to deliver. This is just as likely. You don't re-enlist people who do bad work.

Your comments on out-sourcing, though, are absolutely dead-on. It always takes extra time to get externals up-to-par with your in-house, and during COVID, that's going to be quite the task. It's likely that 343i's management was weighed this against the work that needs doing and deemed it necessary. Not being involed, no one can comment further. However, I'm not positioning them as a saviour company. I'm positioning them exactly as their press release stipulates: contract labour enlisted to assist 343i. I try not to make baseless assumptions about things I don't know. Which is why I'm not prepared to say Infinite's development is "in a dark place".

1. 343i owned the disaster that was MCC's outsourced development, and have worked tireless in-house to fix it. This is a positive for 343i, a lesson hard-learned, not a negative.
2. Marketing timelines for the game are irrelevant to its progress. Remember: Aliens: Colonial Marines had a pretty good marketing campaign.
3. You're actively seeking to find negative markers, not finding markers that actually exist.

The development is neither going well or un-well. It is merely progressing. No one on this forum knows the state of Halo Infinite's development - people are just parroting click-bait articles and YouTubers.

So far, all we have are underwhelming graphics from a cross-gen gaming targeting an OG Xbone and a press release about contractors in an industry famous for contractors. As I said in my previous post - when there's a proven narrative, I'll gladly follow it. No one's proven a thing yet as far as I'm concerned.

Of course we're in disagreement and it's all speculation, I concede that as do you.

To further detail my speculation I base it on results by comparing the downgrade difference, as you put it, and the results achieved in their gameplay reveal itself. I don't see simulation systems such as wind or physics, I don't see dynamic geometry or texture work based on events in the game interactions, I don't see advancements in AI, I didn't see creativity in the classic Halo loop, with the exception of the grapple that's been a thing since HL2 etc, I don't see ray tracing for a flagship title built with a new engine for a new console built for RT, I don't see dynamic level geometry that would be lore based and classic, I didn't see any differing environments. I could keep going but I don't just assume things based on things that don't exist. I read the meaning behind what is missing or PR speak. They showed so little.

At the end of the day I'm going to play this game a lot, I love all Halo games. It does not give developers a free pass from critique or to strive for what could have been developed for each title. Simple logic dictates I'll prefer the project that went on time and budget over the project that hired more contractors in the 11th hour. I truly hope this ends up being a Halo 2 scenario (launch a great campaign and fix multi over 6 months) and not a MCC scenario (broken for years before fixing). It certainly ain't a Halo 3 scenario (full blown development blowing the doors off theatre, forge, campaign and more) from what they've disclosed so far. Of course that could change but why wouldn't they lead with that then?

I’m fine with the graphics because I understand that it’s *not* a next gen game, it’s a 60fps open world Xbox one game with a fully dynamic lighting and time of day system. Name me even 1 other game that does that this generation. Just 1.

The Halo that everyone always holds up as the epitome of halo, halo 3, was not a looker on release in 2007.

If you look at most of my other Halo posts (negative ones) I rarely even complain about the graphics. Games like Star Citizen, Metro Exodus, MS Flight, Forza series/Horizon, Horizon Zero Dawn etc. Also if you look at titles like God of War or Spiderman on PS4 why choose a marketing dot point of 4K/60fps when you could checkerboard or another technique such as baked lighting and achieve vastly superior results. Only the hardcore give a shit what DF videos details about a game, if the game looks and plays great with a solid FPS the mass of gamers will enjoy, masses care very little about the tech or dot points. They simply want great looking and great playing games.

Why do I have to stick to this generation? Xbox touted their next gen world's most powerful console ever and flagship game but then did not show off anything even remotely close to what a top of the line PC can do with the existing generation e.g. GTAV or Witcher III, now add mods to those. Yep I judge Halo Infinite by PC standards now, not just console.

Here's Horizon Zero Dawn on PC at 4K, not sure about the lighting systems but the end result of dynamic weather and more complex things like hair or cloth physics are represent, not sure how much dynamic geometry is present though. However its an example of what can be accomplished with more complex visuals and simulation systems running e.g. wind, particles, cloth etc.

 

[ZehDon]

Of course we're in disagreement and it's all speculation, I concede that as do you.

Ok cool, as long as we're all in proper speculation mode. I see some posters making factual statements - not a fan of that.

To further detail my speculation I base it on results by comparing the downgrade difference, as you put it, and the results achieve in their gameplay reveal itself. I don't see simulation systems such as wind or physics, I don't see dynamic geometry or texture work based on events in the game interactions, I don't see advancements in AI, I didn't see creativity in the classic Halo loop, with the exception of the grapple that's been a thing since HL2 etc, I don't see ray tracing for a flagship title built with a new engine for a new console built for RT. I could keep going but I don't just assume things based on things that don't exist. I read the meaning behind what is missing or PR speak.

Ok, so you feel that the underwhelming visual presentation is the marker of a troubled development cycle - those systems don't exist yet, for a game four months from launch, and that's not good. Could it be that those systems, with the exception of the AI - which I think is hard to get a feel for in what we've seen - don't impact gameplay so they're the last to come online? Ray tracing is pure visuals, and it's coming in a patch. Given the backlash, I suspect we might see it brute-forced onto the master disc. But, don't misunderstand my comments: I was as disappointed with the presentation as everyone else. Gameplay looked fun, and it's good to see them ditch the Power Rangers asthetic they went with in 4 and 5, but I expected a hell of a lot more from the world's most powerful console.

Are there any other markers you might expect to see if development was a shit show that perhaps we haven't seen, or at least, haven't found yet?

At the end of the day I'm going to play this game a lot, I love all Halo games. It does not give developers a free pass from critique or to strive for what could have been developed for each title. Simple logic dictates I'll prefer the project that went on time and budget over the project that hired more contractors in the 11th hour. I truly hope this ends up being a Halo 2 scenario (launch a great campaign and fix multi over 6 months) and not a MCC scenario (broken for years before fixing). It certainly ain't a Halo 3 scenario (full blown development blowing the doors off theatre, forge, campaign and more) from what they've disclosed so far. Of course that could change but why wouldn't they lead with that then?

Good questions, that ultimately I can't answer. I'm inclined to think 343i has built a game in two years, but it took three years to find what that game actually was, making up the five years they've taken. They took the time to figure out how they wanted to evolve Halo, and what Halo ultimately was to them. And to them, it was exploration and a return to the wonder of the original CE. If they showed us everything, that wonder wouldn't hold up. Of course, I said the same thing about why Destiny 2 was as close to the chest as it was, and it turned out it was because they literally didn't have anything to show - they built a shallow game, and they had actually showed off everything they had. I hope I'm wrong, because there's nothing out there that tops Peak Halo for me.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

 

[Hawking Radiation]

Imagine fucking up so bad that one month from going gold you have to bring in the Mass Effect Andromeda animation team to save you. Thank fuck the main character never takes his helmet off.

LMFAO

 

[MrFunSocks]

Yes representative of XSX specs and it still looks terrible for a current gen game.

I didn't say Gears was 60 fps Xbox One, I'm referring to the PC version and I'm running the game with a 1070ti, whereas the GPU in XSX is on par with a 2080 according to Digital Foundry.

I see people reaching for the open world excuse, but that really isn't good enough. All indications are that it's semi open world anyway - Gears 5 is a current gen game with large semi open world environments and looks far better. Microsoft has been hyping up their 12 teraflops to all and sundry for months now. Halo is supposed to be their tentpole franchise - but 343i's development skills, and Microsoft's strategy is very likely going to make themselves look ridiculous.

Gears 5 is a much narrower scope than Halo Infinite. That demo alone had bigger levels than Gears. Why are you talking about the PC version of Gears 5? We haven't seen the PC version of Infinite, we've only seen the Xbox One version. Gears 5's campaign on XB1 is 30fps. Halo Infinite is 60.

Would throwing 12TF of power at the NES version of Tetris just magically make it look better? No? Why not? Because it's not made for a 12TF machine, it's made for the NES. Infinite is made for the One, all 1.3TF of it. Games don't just get better textures, models, lighting, animation, shaders, and raytracing simply because the console has 12TF of power lol. Halo Infinite is not a Series X game, it was not made with 12TF of power in mind. All we saw was it running at a higher resolution due to dynamic resolution.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Ok cool, as long as we're all in proper speculation mode. I see some posters making factual statements - not a fan of that.

Ok, so you feel that the underwhelming visual presentation is the marker of a troubled development cycle - those systems don't exist yet, for a game four months from launch, and that's not good. Could it be that those systems, with the exception of the AI - which I think is hard to get a feel for in what we've seen - don't impact gameplay so they're the last to come online? Ray tracing is pure visuals, and it's coming in a patch. Given the backlash, I suspect we might see it brute-forced onto the master disc. But, don't misunderstand my comments: I was as disappointed with the presentation as everyone else. Gameplay looked fun, and it's good to see them ditch the Power Rangers asthetic they went with in 4 and 5, but I expected a hell of a lot more from the world's most powerful console.

Are there any other markers you might expect to see if development was a shit show that perhaps we haven't seen, or at least, haven't found yet?

Good questions, that ultimately I can't answer. I'm inclined to think 343i has built a game in two years, but it took three years to find what that game actually was, making up the five years they've taken. They took the time to figure out how they wanted to evolve Halo, and what Halo ultimately was to them. And to them, it was exploration and a return to the wonder of the original CE. If they showed us everything, that wonder wouldn't hold up. Of course, I said the same thing about why Destiny 2 was as close to the chest as it was, and it turned out it was because they literally didn't have anything to show - they built a shallow game, and they had actually showed off everything they had. I hope I'm wrong, because there's nothing out there that tops Peak Halo for me.

Sure I understand some posters take things way too seriously or factual. I may come across that way but I'm pretty passionate about Halo and what it could be given "a perfect development lifecycle with vision and creativity". I'd kill to head a studio and push the leads to do my bidding /megalomaniac daydream.

Perhaps those systems are "toggled off" for the gameplay reveal because they wanted a solid 4K+60fps as they have really targeted high performance as a studio for a long time now. They should just communicate such things if that's the case. However, that should not affect campaign in such a way, multiplayer I can understand that mantra. Ray tracing can be far more than visuals though, it can be dynamic audio or bullet path tracing and other creative uses. I'm guessing here but I feel the 4K+60fps+RT is in a real broken state currently e.g. it's running so bad that the RT update post launch was announced, they're not able to optimise it enough before launch, they must have been developing with RT for at least 1+ year(s) by now given we've know what XSX was targeting in hardware for that amount of time. Gameplay looks fun but very much the snippet they chose was just a "greatest hits highlight reel" of that core 30 seconds Halo loop. Guns, grenades, melee (now + grapple/throw). By the prophets why the hell didn't they show a couple of environments without spoilers or a new brute enemy type or a large scale battle or a new vehicle. Something to get Halo fans hyped. I expected more graphics wise from XSX/PC, I also expected far more creativity or reveal information than what we got.

Regards to Destiny 2 I was really hoping Halo's gameplay reveal was going to showcase campaign and PvE content. I truly want a mode of play where my buddies and I can progress our Spartans as well as enjoy PvE style networking. The art and quality contained within Destiny 2 and Bungie is unparalleled. To date 343 have not shown anything with regard to a world map with activities such as D2 e.g. strikes, raids, raid lairs, open areas/events, loot/progression. This could have been a huge moment for Infinite, again it's what is missing. They showed so little gameplay wise. Hopefully this changes with what they reveal prior to launch but why are we not getting monthly ViDocs or weekly bulletins diving into this game that releases in a few short months?

Ultimately I think what 343 chose to show highlights how little they did show simulation wise, gameplay wise, environment wise, character wise. This reinforces negative speculation about their development, it was their big Halo reveal moment and the XSX big title reveal, that's the best gameplay they could have shown? The return to classic art is extremely well received, what they chose to show and the lack of what they didn't show was extremely poorly received. Whether Sperasoft was onboard long ago, whether they can "assist" in fixing or brute forcing the work required prior to launch is too small of a window with far too much to do IMO.

 

[digoutyoursoul]

Responsibility lies at the top, Satya should axe Phil Scheister and Matt Incanbooby. Maybe take a studio head from Turn10 or Playground to save this sinking ship.

In a way I think Satya is part of the problem and as for Phil, I’d be amazed if he was axed, not saying I’m a fan as I’m definitely not but he’s got a lot of backing it seems and the Xbox fans in the main seem to think he’s golden so...

This current Xbox regime is poor IMO really disappointed however I’m someone who wants Xbox to be a more traditional platform like it was and that’s not happening going forward.

 

[Hezekiah]

Gears 5 is a much narrower scope than Halo Infinite. That demo alone had bigger levels than Gears. Why are you talking about the PC version of Gears 5? We haven't seen the PC version of Infinite, we've only seen the Xbox One version. Gears 5's campaign on XB1 is 30fps. Halo Infinite is 60.

Would throwing 12TF of power at the NES version of Tetris just magically make it look better? No? Why not? Because it's not made for a 12TF machine, it's made for the NES. Infinite is made for the One, all 1.3TF of it. Games don't just get better textures, models, lighting, animation, shaders, and raytracing simply because the console has 12TF of power lol. Halo Infinite is not a Series X game, it was not made with 12TF of power in mind. All we saw was it running at a higher resolution due to dynamic resolution.

You don't know what the overall scope of Halo is, you've only seen a small slice of gameplay. And it was one level.

And no we haven't seen the Xbox One version of Halo. You can use semantics as much as you like but the devs themselves have said the demo was running on a PC.

I can't believe this is that difficult for you to understand. Do you honestly believe they are just working on the Xbox One version with no scalability? The engine is designed to be scalable so no it's not magic, but it should run and look a lot better when running a 12 teraflop platform compared to a 1.3 teraflop platform.

I have no idea why this is so difficult for you to understand. And I have idea why you're playing forum spin-doctor as if you're on Aaron Greenberg's payroll. The game should look much better than it does, that's why it's getting trashed by gamers and techies across the globe, no amount of slippery bullshit from you is going to change that.

 

[REE Machine]

They called in the cleaner.

 

[REE Machine]

Holy shit there's a bunch of drama queen, under developed, arm chair devs in this thread. WTF is going on??? lol

GAMERS: "Holy crap Halo Infinite looks like shit! They need to fix this dumpster fire before it releases. "

343i brings in more devs to assist.

ALSO GAMERS: "Holy crap! Their bringing in more devs to assist in actually making Halo Infinite better due to our feedback??? Its gonna be a dumpster fire anyway. What's the point???"

Lol. Never change GaF...

Smoke started when they lost their creative director months and months ago.

 

[MrFunSocks]

You don't know what the overall scope of Halo is, you've only seen a small slice of gameplay. And it was one level.

And no we haven't seen the Xbox One version of Halo. You can use semantics as much as you like but the devs themselves have said the demo was running on a PC.

I can't believe this is that difficult for you to understand. Do you honestly believe they are just working on the Xbox One version with no scalability? The engine is designed to be scalable so no it's not magic, but it should run and look a lot better when running a 12 teraflop platform compared to a 1.3 teraflop platform.

I have no idea why this is so difficult for you to understand. And I have idea why you're playing forum spin-doctor as if you're on Aaron Greenberg's payroll. The game should look much better than it does, that's why it's getting trashed by gamers and techies across the globe, no amount of slippery bullshit from you is going to change that.

All games are made on PC. Literally every single xbox and playstation game you've ever seen was made on PC. Most, if not all, of the demos you've seen for PS5 and XSX were running/captured on PC. They didn't demo the PC version of Halo Infinite, it was the Xbox One version, which is literally the only version that they've shown so far. There is no Series X version of Halo Infinite by the way, it's the same version that the One runs but in backwards compatibility mode.

The game has been in development as an Xbox One game for 5 years. They aren't including 4K assets for a game made for a 1080p console. "Scalability" isn't some magic catch-all that means you can make a game for a 1.3TF console and it will look completely different on a 6TF console or a 12TF console.

The game is a 60fps dynamic resolution Xbox One game, and they simply showed it playing on a dev machine with a performance profile of the Series X. Nothing more.

 

[Hezekiah]

All games are made on PC. Literally every single xbox and playstation game you've ever seen was made on PC. Most, if not all, of the demos you've seen for PS5 and XSX were running/captured on PC. They didn't demo the PC version of Halo Infinite, it was the Xbox One version, which is literally the only version that they've shown so far. There is no Series X version of Halo Infinite by the way, it's the same version that the One runs but in backwards compatibility mode.

The game has been in development as an Xbox One game for 5 years. They aren't including 4K assets for a game made for a 1080p console. "Scalability" isn't some magic catch-all that means you can make a game for a 1.3TF console and it will look completely different on a 6TF console or a 12TF console.

The game is a 60fps dynamic resolution Xbox One game, and they simply showed it playing on a dev machine with a performance profile of the Series X. Nothing more.

"We're able to do more than 10 times the processing power per pixel that we were able to do in Halo 5, which just allows us to create this experience that's unlike anything that we've had in Halo before. In Halo Infinite we've really harnessed a lot of advanced rendering techniques, but also the immense power of the Xbox Series X."

Straight from the horses mouth. They're harnessing the power of XSX, they're just not doing a very good job of it. Think I'll go with the actual devs over some dude on GAF.

 

[Jerm411]

The entirety of Halo Infinite could be summed up with...

 

[VALCON 82]

Imagine fucking up so bad that one month from going gold you have to bring in the Mass Effect Andromeda animation team to save you. Thank fuck the main character never takes his helmet off.

Or will he???

 

[Balducci30]

To bring in additional help suddenly 3 months from gold.

I mean, I remember what a shitshow Halo 1 and 2 were at their gameplay debuts - so maybe I'm optimistic on the gameplay front. But this looks far and away better an the other shit 343 put out. Halo 5 was fucking terrible. Halo 4 was meh. This at least has couch co op and open levels.

EDIT: Not graphically though, graphically it looks like shit compared to newer games. But I don't care that much as long as its fun really.

 

[Balducci30]

Sure I understand some posters take things way too seriously or factual. I may come across that way but I'm pretty passionate about Halo and what it could be given "a perfect development lifecycle with vision and creativity". I'd kill to head a studio and push the leads to do my bidding /megalomaniac daydream.

Perhaps those systems are "toggled off" for the gameplay reveal because they wanted a solid 4K+60fps as they have really targeted high performance as a studio for a long time now. They should just communicate such things if that's the case. However, that should not affect campaign in such a way, multiplayer I can understand that mantra. Ray tracing can be far more than visuals though, it can be dynamic audio or bullet path tracing and other creative uses. I'm guessing here but I feel the 4K+60fps+RT is in a real broken state currently e.g. it's running so bad that the RT update post launch was announced, they're not able to optimise it enough before launch, they must have been developing with RT for at least 1+ year(s) by now given we've know what XSX was targeting in hardware for that amount of time. Gameplay looks fun but very much the snippet they chose was just a "greatest hits highlight reel" of that core 30 seconds Halo loop. Guns, grenades, melee (now + grapple/throw). By the prophets why the hell didn't they show a couple of environments without spoilers or a new brute enemy type or a large scale battle or a new vehicle. Something to get Halo fans hyped. I expected more graphics wise from XSX/PC, I also expected far more creativity or reveal information than what we got.

Regards to Destiny 2 I was really hoping Halo's gameplay reveal was going to showcase campaign and PvE content. I truly want a mode of play where my buddies and I can progress our Spartans as well as enjoy PvE style networking. The art and quality contained within Destiny 2 and Bungie is unparalleled. To date 343 have not shown anything with regard to a world map with activities such as D2 e.g. strikes, raids, raid lairs, open areas/events, loot/progression. This could have been a huge moment for Infinite, again it's what is missing. They showed so little gameplay wise. Hopefully this changes with what they reveal prior to launch but why are we not getting monthly ViDocs or weekly bulletins diving into this game that releases in a few short months?

Ultimately I think what 343 chose to show highlights how little they did show simulation wise, gameplay wise, environment wise, character wise. This reinforces negative speculation about their development, it was their big Halo reveal moment and the XSX big title reveal, that's the best gameplay they could have shown? The return to classic art is extremely well received, what they chose to show and the lack of what they didn't show was extremely poorly received. Whether Sperasoft was onboard long ago, whether they can "assist" in fixing or brute forcing the work required prior to launch is too small of a window with far too much to do IMO.

I don't buy that shit was "toggled off" for this. Why would they even show it if that was the case?

 

[anothertech]

Cause that's a normal thing to do. 2 MONTHS BEFORE GOING GOLD

 

[MrFunSocks]

"We're able to do more than 10 times the processing power per pixel that we were able to do in Halo 5, which just allows us to create this experience that's unlike anything that we've had in Halo before. In Halo Infinite we've really harnessed a lot of advanced rendering techniques, but also the immense power of the Xbox Series X."

Straight from the horses mouth. They're harnessing the power of XSX, they're just not doing a very good job of it. Think I'll go with the actual devs over some dude on GAF.

PR gonna PR.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

I don't buy that shit was "toggled off" for this. Why would they even show it if that was the case?

because they wanted a solid 4K+60fps as they have really targeted high performance as a studio for a long time now.

I'm guessing they just didn't have enough of the systems optimised and working in unison to hit performance targets for the reveal. Alternatively their dev is way behind the 8 ball and it's a shit show worse than that.

 

[Balducci30]

I'm guessing they just didn't have enough of the systems optimised and working in unison to hit performance targets for the reveal. Alternatively their dev is way behind the 8 ball and it's a shit show worse than that.

Obviously speculation. But I don't think they woulda hyped it up the way they did if they had a bunch of shit turned off - I don't think they would've chosen a vertical slice to show. Cut together a long gameplay trailer of the best moments.