I hope for Halo Infinite’s sake that they will
Ok, I’m not going to candy coat this; The visuals we saw from the upcoming Halo Infinite left much to be desired. While the developers, 343 Industries, promised that the game will see a silky smooth and constant 60 frames per second, it doesn’t mean much if the visuals aren’t on par. Adding to this, Microsoft is keenly away that Halo Infinite has been the submit to several memes since its showing and has started to do some damage control.
According to Xbox’s Marketing General Manager Aaron Greenberg, COVID-19 has made development more challenging than ever before. This of course is true and we’ve heard multiple studios state the same thing, with several of them delaying their upcoming titles due to this.
He also asked that people should check out the 4K/60 version of the Halo Infinite debut as it looks better than what was shown during the Xbox Games Showcase. Citing that trying to show off the visuals via a stream simply wouldn’t do the game justice and that they showed a less graphical intensive showing because of that.
“Listen, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic,” Greenberg explained. “It’s July, we’re far from [launch in] Holiday, you’re seeing a work-in-progress game.”
“Go back and look at the game at 4K/60, we did that deliberately,” he continued. “It’s very hard to show the full power and graphic [sic] fidelity of what Xbox Series X will be able to deliver for you over a stream.”
There’s no denying that Halo Infinite is far from finished and is still in “work-in-progress”, however, the concern here is that the gaming audience has seen several games in the same situation, but looking vastly better. So far, I’ve seen multiple personalities stating that Halo Infinite looking cartoonish, hardly a next-generation game, and others that I’d rather not comment on. No matter how you look at it, currently, fans of Halo are upset over what was shown
Aaron Greenberg states that the game will look better as development continues and that we’ll see a visual improvement before the game being launched this Holiday 2020. Though until we see that, I’m sure the memes will continue.
Personally, I feel that Microsft may have shot its self in the foot with committing to supporting cross-gen titles for the first two years after the launch of the Xbox Series X. Mainly because now you’re developing games for the console, and then having to down-scale them for the Xbox One and Xbox One X, which will also affect the visuals and possibly framerate for those consoles. Sadly, people will pick up on that and call that a weakness of Xbox. I don’t know why Aaron stressed watching a 4K video of a game that will be played on 1080p for the Xbox One and Xbox One X, as well as PC. That is the only piece that is worrying me.
Outside of the visuals, I liked what I saw of Halo Infinite’s debut. The game is giving off vibes from both Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, while the art design is walking the balance of bringing something from the past while adding a look at the same time. The addition of the grappling hook will add to the vertically and as we saw during the gameplay, will be handy during combat for closing the distance between enemies and pulling them closer.
The world crafted for the new game also has my interest. Just going by the few minutes of gameplay, this new environment looks ripe for exploration and immersing players into this new playing area. From the video we saw, the world is full of mountains, valleys, while featuring a huge and beautiful looking skybox. I want to see more of the game, and hopefully, the next time we see Halo Infinite again, it will be rocking some updated visuals as well.
Halo Infinite is currently slated to be released this Holiday 2020, alongside the Xbox Series X, and will be playable on the Xbox One and Windows 10 PC as well.
