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First Halo 4 GI information (Spartan OPs, multi, etc) [Update: Campaign/More Details]

Those arn't really "scans" but yeah they are not allowed.

Its game informer material i think it would be better if he just deleted the link before he gets banned.


And im still skeptical these magazine prints usually rendered at very high res.
Come on Game informer and 343I just give me a Multiplayer in a lossless compressed file so i can have something to drool over :p
 
imgur.. why? WHY?

If that bothers you, there are other sources. If it's your destiny, you will find them.


what did 343i give up for that graphical fidelity. Bungie made us believe it is impossible to do this what did they do different?

Different people, more time to develop the tech from the already solid foundation that Bungie has built.


Come on Game informer and 343I just give me a Multiplayer in a lossless compressed file so i can have something to drool over :p

What's the point? The game is far from being finished and the visuals lack the final polish.
 
Corrine Yu brah.

Seriously these graphics+720p+FXAA=Amazing.

they had to give something up. the game must not be a direct sandbox anymore. it has to be cut up sections. If they did what bungie did with those graphics I am beyond impressed. heck the multiplayer looks way better than i thought.
 
If that bothers you, there are other sources. If it's your destiny, you will find them.


Different people, more time to develop the tech from the already solid foundation that Bungie has built.

What's the point? The game is far from being finished and the visuals lack the final polish.

Uugh why didn't he used abload.

yep and it should help and free up some memory not having to deal with temporal anti aliasing. And the 3~4 years worth of optimization and feature implementations should also help. Now it just makes me wonder how Bungie's next game is going to look like.

A lot if that footage can impress me then the finished game can too.
 
did they really say that? If so man Bungie lose some points for that.

Dont think that is true.
I mean you only need to save those weapons you can have on the map.
So you could easily switch out the DRM/Needle rifle from a gametype and replace them with the BR. And diskspace how much can a model take probably not much 2~3mb or something.

Edit: See it like you can have 7 different weapons in memory they could just create a playlist which has BR instead of DRM/NeedleRifle. Its not like BF 3 where you can have 24 players wearing other stuff.
 

Orayn

Member
The new footage and details are great, but this game still has me super worried.

I don't know how I'm going to fit it into my Fall 2012 video game schedule with all the MechWarrior Online, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, and Borderlands 2 I'm going to be playing. TOO MUCH VIDYA!
 

Kibbles

Member
did they really say that? If so man Bungie lose some points for that.

Yeah, I can't remember where/when it was mentioned, I believe a podcast. I think they were just joking around, but there were members of the community standing by that and defending Bungie on that and getting all pissed off at the 360s RAM, lol.

Surely someone else can remember this better than I can?
 
Yep, looks great..but honestly should anyone be surprised at how good it looks?

A team like 343 building upon an already solid (Reach) engine would have to yield nothing but positive results...
 

TheOddOne

Member
The new footage and details are great, but this game still has me super worried.

I don't know how I'm going to fit it into my Fall 2012 video game schedule with all the MechWarrior Online, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, and Borderlands 2 I'm going to be playing. TOO MUCH VIDYA!
First world problems, eh?

:p
 
The new footage and details are great, but this game still has me super worried.

I don't know how I'm going to fit it into my Fall 2012 video game schedule with all the MechWarrior Online, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, and Borderlands 2 I'm going to be playing. TOO MUCH VIDYA!

No diablo 3 infidel
=)
 

Scapegoat

Member
Wooooah Cortana looks great. I wonder why there are no crosshairs.....? (ironsights confirmed??? lol).

Can't wait to see the different assassinations the mocappers/animators have come up with :).
 

Sibylus

Banned
Missed all this Halo 4 news over the weekend, fascinating stuff. Thoughts on guns and other toys:

- Armor Lock: Short of breaking and remaking the ability from the ground up, removing it was the only other good option. I liked what it was intended to add on paper, annoyed to high heaven with how flawless it was at its job in practice, and would have preferred to see it return with notable counters and a significantly longer recharge time. Plasma Grenades, Frags, Rockets, vehicle impacts, or any other fatal increment of damage = 100% depleted Armor Lock reserve. One reprieve from death and that's it, no popping it thrice in a field to juke Needle Rifle shots from yonder field. Even so, killing the thing fixes it pretty soundly. All I know is that I'll miss the occasional Hail-Mary save.

- Dual Wielding: I may be a member of a minority in this, but I'm not going to miss it. It was a mere novelty to me in Halos 2 and 3, an excuse to spray a few hundred rounds into an encounter before I got serious and settled back into my two-handed standbys. I didn't blink to find it gone in Reach.

- Bouncy HUD: I like the concept, will wait to see it in action. Grounding game elements like this in a character and a world can really add something to an experience, subtle reinforcement of where you are and what you're doing.

- New enemy "cabal": This is something the new trilogy really needs, a decade of Covenant does not lightly and effortlessly become two. Hoping 343i really knocks it out of the park with the new face to the opposition. We're going to be seeing them for some time to come. All the same, I'm glad our old friends the Elites and their Grunty minions will feature in some way or another.

- Assault Rifle: Not my most favored weapon by far, but it's a series staple and fills its niche much more visibly than the SMG ever did (which I personally regard as something of a carryover from Halo 2 and its emphasis on dual-wielding, more of a feature showcase than a valuable tool in the arsenal).

- Battle Rifle: The classic medium-range headshotzooka. Glad to see it back, and always glad to have some punchy weapons in this class.

- DMR: Ah, interesting, we'll have this little guy in the game alongside the BR? If it shoots anything like its predecessor in Reach, I think the BR will have some serious competition (though circumstances permitting, I'd seriously tote both into battle and rotate as needed).

- Assault Carbine: Eh, wot's this?

- Covenant Carbine: Oh for the love of god no. I have no philosophical hatred for this weapon, but it was a less-than notable Covenant counterpart to the Battle Rifle. The Needle Rifle of Reach was far and away the superior replacement, it was intensely satisfying to fire and chain enemies up to the point of a needle detonation. If this Carbine is a Needle Rifle in all respects save name, I'll be completely fine with it (also will be fine with the NR slipping in alongside).

- Innate Sprint: Something I've been long accustomed to anyway, unperturbed.

- Jetpack: I could not care less about the other mentioned abilities, JETPACKS! I hope this means a campaign chapter or two that take full advantage of the movement possibilities, as well as some appropriate multiplayer maps (no need to insert it into all of them a la Reach, it added a lot to maps like Paradiso, and was something of a negative on focused infantry maps).

- Firefight: I enjoyed it, but not enough that I feel particularly robbed for its absence. My interest with these sorts of modes has more or less waned, if they are to remain simply wave upon wave and point upon point.

- Procedural Weapons Spawning: I like the concept, but as with some of these, I'll wait to learn more before passing judgment. If it's less random and more adaptive to how each team is doing and how well they're controlling the map, it could have a lot of merit to it.

- Instant Respawns: Depends on how they do it. If they stick you into a pod and drop you into the map (or some similar entrance mechanism), I could really get behind something like that, given it'd attach a significant visual cost to that instant respawn.

- No Elites in Multiplayer: I hope this wasn't done for story reasons. Elite Slayer and Elite BTB was a really enjoyable section of Reach's multiplayer for me. They had their own class loadouts with accompanying weapons, grenades, abilities, it just set itself apart from the Spartan side of things in a clear and compelling way. Not pleased.

- Joining In-Progress Games: About damn time.​
 

Allonym

There should be more tampons in gaming
Now my jaw didn't hit the floor but I am extremely impressed. I think Halo can finally be safely mentioned with the best looking games on consoles. The art direction seems to have matured as well as enemies and allies no longer have that previous Halo trademark cartoon like look. Jesus I really wanna see Metroid Prime running on current gen hardware now. Please Resistance don't go my sci-fi fantasies can't die with you
 

Satchel

Banned
There is absolutely no way that Halo 4 will look that amazing.

No fucking way.

If it looks like that on release, then 343 are gods. On screens alone, that's the best looking console shooter I've seen. Be interesting to see in motion.

The lighting, the detail, FUCK FUCK.
 

monome

Member
Hummm..

on the scans, there is one which is a drawing which depicts the Chief as he's gonna get into contact with a group of blue shields wielding people.

Zooming takes away most of the details, BUT I would be hard pressed to admit these are jackals behind the shields looking at the non elegated faces. it is just a painting, and those people look rather abstract, yet...I WANT TO BELIEVE these are Forerunners holding position.
 
There is absolutely no way that Halo 4 will look that amazing.

No fucking way.

If it looks like that on release, then 343 are gods. On screens alone, that's the best looking console shooter I've seen. Be interesting to see in motion.

The lighting, the detail, FUCK FUCK.

As always, take what you see add some jagies, maybe some obvious LOD phasing as you move around, hopfully nothing as bad as Reach's 'blur effect'.
It will still look nice though.
 

monome

Member
Hummm..

on the scans, there is one which is a drawing which depicts the Chief as he's gonna get into contact with a group of blue shields wielding people.

Zooming takes away most of the details, BUT I would be hard pressed to admit these are jackals behind the shields looking at the non elegated faces. it is just a painting, and those people look rather abstract, yet...I WANT TO BELIEVE these are Forerunners holding position.
 

TUROK

Member
they had to give something up. the game must not be a direct sandbox anymore. it has to be cut up sections. If they did what bungie did with those graphics I am beyond impressed. heck the multiplayer looks way better than i thought.
Maybe they went back to a forward render path, or dialed down the lighting precision, or maybe they just found a more efficient way of doing Reach's deferred shading without having to reduce the horizontal res.

These are of course just uneducated guesses, as they are not based on anything at all. Just thinking out loud.

Also, yeah, the game looks really nice, but compare Reach's Spartans to Halo 4's Chief. The difference seems more artistic than technical. Ditto for the Elites. The Halo 4 Elites have more rough features, but poly-wise, it seems like they're in the same ballpark. I think people forget how good the Elite models in Reach are.
 

Yo Gotti

Banned
Why doubt those screens? The 360 is more than capable of creating visual like that. Gears 3 isn't exactly a small scale game either but it's packed with a tremendous amount of detail and at times the firefights are comparably hectic.

Good art direction goes such a long way. And unlike Reach this game has good, inspired art. I always felt that Halo games from 2 onward lost a huge sense of what made the art direction in the original so special. Not that they were graphically bad games, but in quite a few ways they were all bad looking games even at the time of their release. Bungie always had some excuse as to why they had to sacrifice AA, or dynamic lighting/shadows. For every game they sacrificed something that pretty much killed the games overall image quality.

343i seems to have a very solid art direction for Halo 4, engineers that can push the system further than Bungie would, and they seem to have solid goals like delivering actual 720p and a decent amount of AA that they're going to stick to.
 

teraMEL0S

Member
So excited to see more. It is practically a given that there will be a campaign demo at E3. But the truth of the matter is: being surprised is always better. Too much goodness to handle.
 

Tzeentch

Member
-- Looks like Halo will finally have graphics that don't look dated at release (Halo 1 looked amazing at the time, Halo 2 onwards not so much). I'm liking the art direction, although I'm not sure about the Cortana redesign. Certainly it appears they finally got some artists who've actually looked at a gun for once (always amazed me the ODST and Reach stuff was laughable from a military standpoint yet supposedly Bungie hired that former Marine dude as an advisor -- what did he do all day?)

-- As far as jaw dropping graphics ... not seeing it. Looks good, but this is a generation where we have Crysis 2 and BF3 as real standout performers. Now, if Halo 4 had Crysis graphics and BF3 destructibles count my jaw dropped :)

-- Given the various comments from the Anniversary terminals, I suspect the big enemy in this one are going to be Sentinel variants leading up to some sort of reveal of the Didact or his proxies. Should be interesting!
 

NBtoaster

Member
Its says wrong. Frankie said they took Halo 3 engine and totally rebuild it. Anniversary is made on Reach engine.

Where does he say? Why would they use the less optimised and generally ugly engine as a base? There's been more than enough time to incorporate the Reach upgrades.
 

szaromir

Banned
Frankie described Halo 4 engine as "evolution of Halo engine", so I imagine it has tech from previous games refined and or replaced wherever possible. I liked tech in previous games and it's going to be better now, so it doesn't bother me at all.
I don't know how I'm going to fit it into my Fall 2012 video game schedule with all the MechWarrior Online, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, and Borderlands 2 I'm going to be playing. TOO MUCH VIDYA!

I'll be playing Halo instead of lesser games, problem solved.
 

DarkChild

Banned
Where does he say? Why would they use the less optimised and generally ugly engine as a base? There's been more than enough time to incorporate the Reach upgrades.
Because they started development in 2008? Reach engine is overhauled Halo 3 engine (which is overhauled Halo 2 engine). So in time Reach development started, H4 was already in pre production. They got all engines because thats MS property, but Halo 3 is base.
 
Its says wrong. Frankie said they took Halo 3 engine and totally rebuild it. Anniversary is made on Reach engine.

AFAIK there's only one Halo engine. Same engine through 3, Reach, and now on to 4, improved all the while.

So it's direct predecessor should be Reach.

Also 3 used some weirdass double framebuffer HDR lighting system that really was cutting off the nose to spite the face imo. It looked harsh anyway, and sapped a ton of performance. 3 also was the most sub HD of the bunch. Reach closer to 720, now 4 is 720p.

I'm inclined not to believe you without a link. Even the MP footage in the first vidoc looks very related to Reach. And even if Frankie sad that, it doesn't actually go against what I said above and I'm sure he didn't mean it that way, since in a sense both Reach and 4 would have their roots in 3.
 
AFAIK there's only one Halo engine. Same engine through 3, Reach, and now on to 4, improved all the while.

So it's direct predecessor should be Reach.


Also 3 used some weirdass lighting system that really was cutting off the nose to spite the face imo. It looked harsh anyway, and sapped a ton of performance. 3 also was the most sub HD of the bunch. Reach closer to 720, now 4 is 720p.

What people are describing would be a spilt from 3.

So Reach and 4 would be parallel to not progressive from.
 
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