VAL0R
Banned
MS made Halo Infinite the tentpole of their game showcase and that proved to be a blunder. Yes, the Halo Infinite reveal sorely disappointed many of us, myself included. 343 overpromised with the Slipspace Engine and E3 trailer and fell woefully short of the visuals we all reasonably expect from the XSX. HI is said to have suffered in a dev Hell that included critical staff departures, a late story rewrite after a negative fan reaction to Halo 5's Locke narrative, and en entire engine overhaul. The fact that fans must wait for a post-launch ray tracing patch, despite HI having an undoubtedly monstrous budget and a 5+ year dev cycle, is very revealing.
Now that we got that out of the way, here are my personal highlights of the reveal:
- Halo Infinite. Whaaat!? Yes. This game still has huge promise and the gameplay loop looked as fun as ever. I liked the open-world gameplay, the emphasis on exploration with Halo's awesome vehicles, Halo 3 style equipment options, the grapple shot allowing new tactics and traversal, and so on. And remember that we haven't seen the multiplayer or additional gameplay modes 343 has cooking. They will continue to work on this game and improve it after release, making it, essentially, a work-in-progress. However I do believe the launch offering will be fun and AAA in scope and features, even if not graphically. And make no mistake about it, 343 is going to slave away on visual improvements from now until launch and post-launch, after the stinging criticism they received. The next time we see it, it should look noticeably better (especially if the "months old build" story is true). At any rate, you can bet your last req pack that the gorilla face starring in all the hilarious memes will be upgraded, haha.
- The Forza Motorsport in-engine reveal looked stunning. Rumors swirl that the game is being reimagined in a big way and the lack of a sequel number for its reveal makes sense if true.
- Everwild is absolutely gorgeous:
- Undead Labs revealed State of Decay 3 is in the works. SoD 2 is my guilty pleasure and I've logged way too many hours into this zombie survival sim series.
- Obsidan revealed Avowed, a AAA first-person fantasy RPG ala Skyrim.
- Obsidian's family-friendly survival game Grounded looks really cute and I'm looking forward to hunting bugs and building bases with my six-year-old.
- PlayGround Games revealed they are rebooting Fable into a AAA fantasy RPG. This game should be quite the stunner given Playground's mastery of open-world environments seen in their Forza Horizon series.
The show revealed that Xbox is quickly becoming an RPG powerhouse with AAA RPGs in the works from Obsidian and Playground (InExile's exists too, but was not shown). It revealed the photorealistic return of our beloved and best-in-class racer in Forza Motorsport. It revealed Halo Infinite will have an ambitious open-world scope. It revealed current-gen games like Ori will enjoy huge upgrades (4K 120fps in Ori's case) on the XSX for FREE and a bunch of other great looking Game Pass content, including formerly elusive to Xbox Japanese additions.
What do Xbox fans have to look forward to?
- More first-party titles. MS didn't show anything from 6 of their 15 studios. There is a lot of content being made that was not revealed, Including AAA content from The Initiative and The Coalition.
- Content. When you consider all the games that have been revealed for the XSX at this early stage, it's got to be one of the most content-rich launches in history.
- Optimized for XSX current-gen games for no additional cost.
- Game Pass. The absolute glut of high-quality content heading to Game Pass for the XSX is insane. The entire showcase is all coming to Game Pass. The value there is just stupid good and gets better every month.
- The most powerful hardware. Yes XSX hardware remains the most powerful console hardware and will be the best console to play 3rd party games in their highest fidelity.
At the end of the day, the (largely unjustified outside of Halo) negativity from this presser will make MS more likely to be aggressive with their XSX pricing. They will want positive PR and huge sales to further develop the Xbox Game Pass ecosystem going into this next-gen and they will be willing to bleed for it. Relax fellow Xbots, our future looks very bright indeed and the Halo monkey meme might have just saved us $50.00 to boot!
I'm going to post this here so nobody else has to:
Now that we got that out of the way, here are my personal highlights of the reveal:
- Halo Infinite. Whaaat!? Yes. This game still has huge promise and the gameplay loop looked as fun as ever. I liked the open-world gameplay, the emphasis on exploration with Halo's awesome vehicles, Halo 3 style equipment options, the grapple shot allowing new tactics and traversal, and so on. And remember that we haven't seen the multiplayer or additional gameplay modes 343 has cooking. They will continue to work on this game and improve it after release, making it, essentially, a work-in-progress. However I do believe the launch offering will be fun and AAA in scope and features, even if not graphically. And make no mistake about it, 343 is going to slave away on visual improvements from now until launch and post-launch, after the stinging criticism they received. The next time we see it, it should look noticeably better (especially if the "months old build" story is true). At any rate, you can bet your last req pack that the gorilla face starring in all the hilarious memes will be upgraded, haha.
- The Forza Motorsport in-engine reveal looked stunning. Rumors swirl that the game is being reimagined in a big way and the lack of a sequel number for its reveal makes sense if true.
- Everwild is absolutely gorgeous:
- Undead Labs revealed State of Decay 3 is in the works. SoD 2 is my guilty pleasure and I've logged way too many hours into this zombie survival sim series.
- Obsidan revealed Avowed, a AAA first-person fantasy RPG ala Skyrim.
- Obsidian's family-friendly survival game Grounded looks really cute and I'm looking forward to hunting bugs and building bases with my six-year-old.
- PlayGround Games revealed they are rebooting Fable into a AAA fantasy RPG. This game should be quite the stunner given Playground's mastery of open-world environments seen in their Forza Horizon series.
The show revealed that Xbox is quickly becoming an RPG powerhouse with AAA RPGs in the works from Obsidian and Playground (InExile's exists too, but was not shown). It revealed the photorealistic return of our beloved and best-in-class racer in Forza Motorsport. It revealed Halo Infinite will have an ambitious open-world scope. It revealed current-gen games like Ori will enjoy huge upgrades (4K 120fps in Ori's case) on the XSX for FREE and a bunch of other great looking Game Pass content, including formerly elusive to Xbox Japanese additions.
What do Xbox fans have to look forward to?
- More first-party titles. MS didn't show anything from 6 of their 15 studios. There is a lot of content being made that was not revealed, Including AAA content from The Initiative and The Coalition.
- Content. When you consider all the games that have been revealed for the XSX at this early stage, it's got to be one of the most content-rich launches in history.
- Optimized for XSX current-gen games for no additional cost.
- Game Pass. The absolute glut of high-quality content heading to Game Pass for the XSX is insane. The entire showcase is all coming to Game Pass. The value there is just stupid good and gets better every month.
- The most powerful hardware. Yes XSX hardware remains the most powerful console hardware and will be the best console to play 3rd party games in their highest fidelity.
At the end of the day, the (largely unjustified outside of Halo) negativity from this presser will make MS more likely to be aggressive with their XSX pricing. They will want positive PR and huge sales to further develop the Xbox Game Pass ecosystem going into this next-gen and they will be willing to bleed for it. Relax fellow Xbots, our future looks very bright indeed and the Halo monkey meme might have just saved us $50.00 to boot!
I'm going to post this here so nobody else has to:
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