Digital Foundry: Hands-on with Halo: The Master Chief Collection

God damn the 360 was a beast. Its architecture must be some of the most developer friendly for any console ever.

Amazing what it produced in its near decade long existence.
 
omonimo said:
I don't get the quote about cpu weakness. I mean, cpu are weak compared to the pc counterpart, but it's definitely more efficient and powerful of the older 360 hardware. Games are older, how can limit a remaster? I don't see what's wrong to the xbone cpu for handle games like this series. Isn't it more matter of the bandwith bottleneck?
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Oh, well then. Someone should obviously tell Digital Foundry this
 
dark10x said:
You really think so? The texture work, per-pixel lighting, and shader quality was all a step up but the dodgy frame-rate, very simplistic geometry, and mediocre animation bring it down. From that same period in 2001 I think Metal Gear Solid 2 stands the test of the time much better with superior animation, 60 fps, an an incredible attention to detail. Obviously it's much smaller in scope but it looks less dated to my eyes.

Halo 2, though, is quite ugly by today's standards.
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Yeah, Halo 1 always looked better to me than Halo 2.

On the other hand, you're probably right about MGS. It's probably the overall color palette's harmony and the art direction which makes it so appealing to me. I also like how "heavy" and weighted the game feels. To me, the feel of shooting the plasma rifle is still unmatched by any game, including every other Halo game.
 
omonimo said:
I don't get the quote about cpu weakness. I mean, cpu are weak compared to the pc counterpart, but it's definitely more efficient and powerful of the older 360 hardware. Games are older, how can limit a remaster? I don't see what's wrong to the xbone cpu for handle games like this series. Isn't it more matter of the bandwith bottleneck?
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These are games originally developed and optimized exclusively for very specific hardware. These games probably dont scale that well or very easily. TLOU was apparently quite an undertaking getting it remastered for the PS4, for example.
 
sounds a little upsetting especially halo 1 with drops and halo 2 with some lower res horizontal action.

I'm in the group where a black screen fade change would have been preferred if it allowed full 1080 halo 2 anniversary, I never had an issue with the fade in H1A on 360.
 
Miles Quaritch said:
Halo 4 seems to be between 50/60 at least one sustained drop to 40 based on the footage.
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Thanks

I watched the vids and it ain't nothing. If it was like bf4s headache inducing framerate, then that would be catastrophic.. What I saw will be unnoticeable to me.
 
FeiRR said:
Ground textures as an example of uncanny valley, right...
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Pretty sure that was being used metaphorically.

In that Halo 4 looks almost, but not quite, like a game that was designed for current-gen from the ground up, and you can almost forget that it's a port-up until you spot some particularly egregious low-res texture that reminds you that hey, this game was actually designed for a system with 1/10 the available memory of the new ones.
 
Like TLOU, I find it really telling and odd that there are framedrops in games that were built for decade old hardware.

It does make you wonder how a theoretical halo5 will look and run if these old games arent exactly 60fps always.
 
It's a shame they couldn't get that framerate locked down a bit more. But, it all sounds good. Never a huge halo fan, but enjoyed the campaigns. Won't be getting an xbone any time soon, if at all :-(
 
Dictator93 said:
Like TLOU, I find it really telling and odd that there are framedrops in games that were built for decade old hardware.

It does make you wonder how a theoretical halo5 will look and run if these old games arent exactly 60fps always.
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Shouldnt be as much of an issue for a game built from ground up for new hardware.
 
Dictator93 said:
Like TLOU, I find it really telling and odd that there are framedrops in games that were built for decade old hardware.

It does make you wonder how a theoretical halo5 will look and run if these old games arent exactly 60fps always.
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They were optimized for specific hardware and ported to new hardware in around 6 months in the case of TLOU, it's not easy porting something that was optimized specifically for one set of hardware to a completely different set of hardware.

Games written from the ground up for the PS4/XB1 will perform better.
 
Dictator93 said:
Like TLOU, I find it really telling and odd that there are framedrops in games that were built for decade old hardware.

It does make you wonder how a theoretical halo5 will look and run if these old games arent exactly 60fps always.
Click to expand...

Halo 5? The game that's being built on a new engine specifically designed for current-gen hardware?
 
Expecting halo 3 looks the best. With its beautiful lightning and open levels with AA will be a delight to watch
 
Another aspect shared with The Last of Us is a more inconsistent frame-rate, certainly in comparison with the more solid Halo 3. When we hit the magic 60, the experience is phenomenal, but the dips beneath are quite noticeable
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Except you said it yourselves TLoUR stays at 60 most of the time and that most dips are completely unnoticeable.

But, gotta make technical charity, I guess.
 
All that 1080/60 talk was irritating. I knew why wouldn't get stable 60fps. I hope there's another patch on the way. :/
 
lukeskymac said:
Except you said it yourselves TLoUR stays at 60 most of the time and that most dips are completely unnoticeable.

But, gotta make technical charity, I guess.
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Even a poster named globalisateur has called them out on it:

I am sorry but that's not true. TLOU RE had improved textures (4x up-res), characters from the cut-scene models and full 16x AF almost everywhere.

Here it's the real last gen game directly ported with no improvement (low AF that you even acknowledged it in this article, low characters models) except for the better resolution.

Have you conveniently forgotten that TLOU RE use 16x AF almost everywhere + high characters model + 4x better textures so that you could shit on TLOU in passing?

And you are supposed to be the best world expert about those matters?
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Halo 4 looks strange to me.

omonimo said:
I don't get the quote about cpu weakness. I mean, cpu are weak compared to the pc counterpart, but it's definitely more efficient and powerful of the older 360 hardware. Games are older, how can limit a remaster? I don't see what's wrong to the xbone cpu for handle games like this series. Isn't it more matter of the bandwith bottleneck?
Click to expand...

The CPU cores for the 360 are clocked at around 3 GHz and the Cores on the Xbox One are at 1.7 GHz.

Even though the Xbox One has 8 cores multithreading is hard to program for when it comes to games. 343i obviously didn't have enough time to optimize MCC for the Xbox One.
 
Problem is that even all 8 Jaguar cores aren't quite as powerful as a desktop Ivy Bridge or Haswell Core i3. This doesn't bode well moving forward in the generation. Devs will have to implement new tricks.
 
is it possible for improvements via day one patch or future patches? personally i'm ok not happy but not annoyed. also why hasn't this thread exploded yet?
 
king grimlock said:
is it possible for improvements via day one patch or future patches? personally i'm ok not happy but not annoyed. also why hasn't this thread exploded yet?
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There's already one person in here shitting it up with console wars bullshit. Give it time.

DonMigs85 said:
Problem is that even all 8 Jaguar cores aren't quite as powerful as a desktop Ivy Bridge or Haswell Core i3. This doesn't bode well moving forward in the generation. Devs will have to implement new tricks.
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And they will.

Remasters are a different case than games built for the ground up for the new hardware.
 
g7IsB.gif
 
All these issues with porting last gen games makes you appreciate gems like MGS HD Collection and ICO/SOTC HD even more. Both were not easy ports, I am sure.
 
So the Gamersyde single player footage is from the shipping game.

Halo CE performance and image quality is plain embarrassing.
Halo 2A's spoiled by bad image quality and low-res alpha transparency.
Halo 3 and 4 look much closer to what I'd expect apart from the lack of anisotropic filtering.

iJHsRB20p5n3M.png


And some elements of the HUD would greatly have benefitted from higher res art.

ibsf48uHUyUWSD.png
 
Dictator93 said:
Like TLOU, I find it really telling and odd that there are framedrops in games that were built for decade old hardware.

It does make you wonder how a theoretical halo5 will look and run if these old games arent exactly 60fps always.
Click to expand...

Decade old hardware that developers knew like it was the back of their hands. They are probably using some obscure coding tricks specifically tailored to the 360 (and PS3) that could not be just copy-pasted on the new console. Either you bruteforce it (like, you emulate it) and you lose a ton of perfomances, or you try to rewrite it and you lose time and money. And even if you do, it might not run as well because you don't know the new console in full.

I doesn't tell us much, IMHO.
 
Here's the important question. What is the framerate when I take the Elephants onto the crashed Phantom on Sandtrap in Halo 3?
 
It's kind of baffling that performance is wasted constantly for a switching feature that you benefit from so rarely in comparison.

edit: I mean, is it really too much to expect the original (and best) Halo in 1080p60 with ANY anti-aliasing and 16xAF?

iC7Dg2XekevgF.png


I'm not talking about asset replacement, although the HUD could really use another update. Just the very basics of a remaster.
 
Shin-Ra said:
It's kind of baffling that performance is wasted constantly for a switching feature that you benefit from so rarely in comparison.
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343 had a vision they wanted and went for it. It is pretty much a gimmick though but I'll probably use it pretty frequently because it's neat tech. Is it necessary? Absolutely not, is it worth the trade off? Maybe? An option to toggle it off for full 1080p would be great for those who won't use it though.

I never got to play through Halo 1-3 because I was on my PS3 until the PSN hack and never got them.
 
Dictator93 said:
Like TLOU, I find it really telling and odd that there are framedrops in games that were built for decade old hardware.
Click to expand...


well that decade old console had a PowerPC CPU with 3 cores at 3,2Ghz, those games were designed, tailored, for that hardware, and I guess it's not an easy task to get a 1080/60fps version on the current consoles, which have a very different CPU (x86, more cores but lower freq)
 
ShinUltramanJ said:
I don't see the need for it. Halo 2 is clearly ugly as sin, so no idea who would want to replay it in Xbox mode.
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I don't think its meant for that purpose. Seeing how ugly it is in 2014 but was such an amazing game graphically in 2004 and along with the nostalgia factor. That's what its there for.
 
Really disappointed about the framerate dips, i mean, these are really old games double engine or not.

I'm still getting it of course, but i was expecting better, it worries me cause i plan to play couch coop with my son :(

I wonder what the sacrifices will be for that mode.
 
So solid'ish but with definite rough edges? Little surprised at that. If they could have totally solid FPS by dropping the switch feature they should have IMO.

It's a cute but ultimately redundant feature and I do worry it's part of what's eroding the solid performance I expected.
 
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