goldenpp72 said:
Yeah, but bungie says a lot of things, didn't they say the halo 2 8 minute trailer was 'real' and halo 3s reveal would be how it would look when we played?
I love halo, aside halo 2 (god the trailer destroyed all of halo 2s campaign) but bungie itself has a shakey relationship when it comes to honesty imo. Any dev might aim to be somewhere or think they can do this or that, but I like to KNOW what it will be before being lead to believe it will be something much greater.
If halo reach looks AS IMPRESSIVE as the trailer, as in, I can walk around in areas that huge with that detail without jaggies and shit, i'll be impressed, seriously.
I think it's entire unfair to use the previous games reveal trailers to make a comparison.
Halo's original reveal was propped up big time. Many of the final features were not in place so shortcuts were taken to make a better presentation of what they had at that point in it's development. If I listened correctly to the podcast, their major E3 reveal with Microsoft went down like a lead balloon and forced Bungie to re-approach media outlets at a later date with a more polished build so that they could get a better idea of what Bungie were aiming for (and ending up succeeding).
For Halo 2's initial reveal, Bungie diverted a substantial leg of the Halo 2 development team to work on it, not only did that translate to less hands on deck for the Halo 2 ship, the well documented fact that serious issues cropped up in Halo 2's development certainly didn't help to improve things. According to various reports, rumours, etc, Bungie had scrapped a significant portion of the game at some point in the development. How this affected the end product is anyone's guess.
The original demo, whilst obviously heavily rigged, had a detrimental impact on people's perceptions of the final product, especially when the majority of the content featured never materialised in the boxed and shipped game.
Halo 3's reveal demonstrated a much more careful approach, especially in contrast to Halo 2. Clearly Bungie did learn their lesson. It was much less bombastic, more down to Earth in terms of setting player's expectations (which in terms of content the final shipped game far more than exceeded IMO). The main picking points some have with the reveal trailer is on the almost pointless area of technical output specifics.
The trailer had so many additional pixels, the textures looked better for the main character model, the reflections in the visor was different, et al. The majority of the game buying public couldn't care less about such things. However, Bungie was more than generous enough to explain the minor technical differences. The improved the lighting model, the saved films, the four player online co-op and even purely artistic choices, are more than reasonable explanations for the differences, at least ones that I am personally happy to accept. I didn't feel there was any baiting and switching going on.
Halo Reach I feel is even more conservative in it's reveal compared to any of the previous Halo titles, maybe this has to do with the fact that we got our first look at the VGA Awards rather than the media whore house of E3. I'm pretty sure that Bungie was aware of the technical shortcomings of Halo 3 and at this point that have already promised technical additions such as AA. If the new engine can full 720p, 30FPS, AA, contain the existing Halo feature set we've come to expect and still have additional surprises in store, I do not see how anyone could complain or even expect any less of Bungie in this regard.
