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[TUROK]

That's the one thing I don't like. These soft kill barriers that won't allow you to explore.
I still remember Delta Halo in Halo 2. Driving on the mountains, around the back of the entire level with a ghost.

Guess it's a sacrifice you have to make if you want this kind of graphic quality.

What sucks is that they added that "get back to the battlefield" nonsense in Halo Reach as a balancing issue for MP, because of the jetpack (although you can bypass them with glitches).

Halo 3 never had that limitation. You could do some crazy exploring in that.

Doesn't Just Cause 2 do something like this with landscapes in the distance? Looks phenomenal.

I've never played it, but judging by the screens, I don't think they do. Everything seems polygonal, but with a very efficient LOD system.

 

[GodfatherX]

Halo 3 impress me in some ways (art direction/lighting) but I really haven't felt Halo was graphically the best in its class since Halo. While making constant progress to the engine, its still felt like incremental increases, where from what 343i has shown has been a drastic improvement across all areas. Halo 2 had a 3 year dev cycle, Halo 3 had a 3 year dev cycle, Halo reach had a 3 year dev cycle, Halo 4 has had a 3 year dev cycle. The gap in talent on the technical side (from what we've seen) has been huge.

But to expect Frank, or 343i as a whole to come out and bash Bungie or gloat over this is unrealistic. These are professionals that have a lot of respect for the other team on both sides. I'm sure Frank is still friends with many people from Bungie from the time he spent there and vice versa.

 

[Karak]

Just ask Frankie.
Frank could you tell us what had to go from previous Halo to make H4 so pretty?............I dont think he will answer this one
Edit. Well there is a nice artice on digital foundry http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-tech-analysis-halo-4-at-e3

From Corrine Wu(spelling probably incorrect) details and interviews, she is the one who worked primary on the lighting engine(or appears to have obviously tons of people did), many of the changes turned out to give optimizations and didn't hamper it. Thats what a good deal of time can do for ya.

Also concerning large areas. They already stated that it has larger areas than any previous Halo game. Video brief a couple months ago I think where they alluded to game level size. So I don't think anyone needs to worry about that either.

Also I was pretty surprised how amazing Halo 3's lighting was. Sure they used some tricks but...god damn amazing all the time.

 

[feel]

Didn't they (sadly) make the FOV narrow again? That could be one of the tradeoffs to have this look better than reach.

 

[Karak]

Didn't they (sadly) make the FOV narrow again? That could be one of the tradeoffs to have this look better than reach.

WHAT? That would suck and from the play videos no they didn't. But that would suck.

 

[KageMaru]

But to expect Frank, or 343i as a whole to come out and bash Bungie or gloat over this is unrealistic. These are professionals that have a lot of respect for the other team on both sides. I'm sure Frank is still friends with many people from Bungie from the time he spent there and vice versa.

Frankie already addressed the jump:

Nothing's really gone, at least from my somewhat ignorant technical perspective, if anything we've added a bunch of stuff. Scale, perf, etc, all "Halo" with improvements across the board.

The main difference, apart from the folks working on it, is time - in that Bungie had to ship game after game after game, and never had the luxury of prototyping and overhauling tools etc etc, or at least as much as they probably wanted to. So the Halo games got better and better looking anyway, under Bungie's watch and Halo 4 is simply an extension of that process, not really a deviation from it. I expect Bungie's next game to be a technical beast.

And what Kage said.

 

[Striker]

Halo 3 never had that limitation. You could do some crazy exploring in that.

Not really any different than 2, ODST, or Reach. Although 2 was probably way more easier than any of them (Scarab Gun), but still none of those were as fun as CE did in that respect.

 

[Seance]

Didn't they (sadly) make the FOV narrow again? That could be one of the tradeoffs to have this look better than reach.

No way. At worst a 70 degree fov, but it looks to be the same as reach to me. I would hate to go back to 60 degrees.

 

[Karak]

No way. At worst a 70 degree fov, but it looks to be the same as reach to me. I would hate to go back to 60 degrees.

Checked on another tech forum. It appears to be the same. Wooo. Ok. Feeling better now. Cramped FOV makes me a bit seasick at times.

 

[Demoncarnotaur]

I noticed one possible trade-off during the E3 trailer.






Look at the sky pillars and the far away hillsides. They look 2D. The 3D skyboxes seem like they have been massively downscaled in comparison to Halo Reach.




Same thing here for the far away mountains and foliage. Looks 2D as well.

What was awesome about Halo Reach is that far away elements like these would be 3D, giving the game a MASSIVE feeling of scale.








Yep, the texture work was phenomenal. Halo 3 would have looked much better with some AF.

Well, if that is indeed the tradeoff, I am happy with it. That said, I do hope they continue the tradition of phenomenal textures, I just hope they are managed better that they can be appreciated more.

 

[Exuro]

Nobody ever seems to mention how absolutely fucking amazing the textures in Halo 3 and Reach are. So much effort into the tiniest of details that aren't even noticable without zooming in. I will be sad if Halo 4 doesn't deliver similarly impressive textures.

This was one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced in a game tbh. I remember messing around in Forge in Halo 3 and moving upclose on some objects and realizing how amazing the textures work, only for them to look much worse viewed a small distance away.