Topic: The everything Xbox thread

Eh, I think a lot of it's a stylistic choice too. They're making an open-world environment that they're trying to have running at 60fps. You need to make some sacrifices to achieve that. So one way is to just go for a bit more stylized visuals. Even in the previous trailer, that male character doesn't look that realistic. He already looked a bit cartoony.

@Dezzy Also that they're supporting a much weaker console, with supporting much weaker consoles you sometimes have to decide whether to compromise the performance of the much weaker console or scale back the whole experience. Gears 5, Forza Horizon 4, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, etc. chose the former meanwhile it seems Halo Infinite chose the latter.

Yeah and they've been working on it for like 4 or 5 years, so chances are they probably intended it to be just an Xbox One game for a large part of development. Which probably has held it back to some extent.

@Dezzy I haven't played Gears 4....that's interesting they changed the art style so much. I also didn't realize that. I'm kind of glad though. The originals were too "brown", or really they had too narrow a color palette and it made everything blend in with each other unnaturally. They were a product of their time...but that time did kind of suck.

@BlueOcean It's funny how fickle consumers are. When people talk about what they want in "next gen graphics" they say "more realistic" - yet what they apparently mean is hyperrealism that doesn't exist in the real world designed to maximize appearances artificially. Like when they boost the saturation of TVs in the store to make one brand look "better" because it looks entirely fake.

I still find it depressing though on a level that makes me really take a step back from the gaming scene in general. If the big argument that comes from the XBox show is "oh good those horrible graphics just need ray tracing and then all will be right with it", something is really broken in gaming. And it's not new. Yokoi said it would happen 25+ years ago. Bad graphics can break a good game, but it seems like all the market really cares about is how the screens and trailers look, gameplay be darned. It basically means EA has been right all along. I lived through that in my PC era as well....Crysis and the like. Having 2 (or 3!) the latest $700 card in linked SLI mode, liquid cooled, to run the newest tech demo with mediocre afterthought gameplay in max settings, smooth 60fps, and 1600x1200 res was all that really mattered to much of the player base. Console was much better...until now.

Death Stranding looks like a PS3 game outside the cutscenes, but nobody notices because the cutscenes wow everyone. Halo Infinite looks like an X1X game all the time and everyone gripes because the cutscenes don't wow. Spiderman 1.5 looks "true next gen" running at current gen refresh and everyone applauds the power of "next gen." Ratchet & Clank doesn't look different in my head to the PS4 Ratchet....I adore that game entirely....but the graphics were already good. I don't see what people are going on about.

On PC at the time, gaming wasn't about games, it was a p$$$$$g contest between rich boys over who could buy the most expensive rig, and between insecure tech nerds who needed to prove they could tune x% more performance out of the hardware. Running the same level for 5 minute demos of the graphics became "gaming." Now that's moved to console.

@Dezzy I don't think that the dynamic lighting is an artistic choice and I haven't mentioned anything else. The dynamic lighting is better by definition but gameplay trailer takes place in the shadow out of the sunlight and without artificial light. Once they use ray tracing it will get better. I didn't mention it but yes, the art style is different, it's a little part of the video.

@Grumblevolcano It looks like they aren't pushing the graphics as much as other titles so performance isn't a big issue on Xbox One but, at the same time, the environments are huge and the game looks good all things considered. I think they will polish the graphics, especially on Series X, and ray tracing should change the look drastically.

@NEStalgia Death Stranding looks better outside of cinematics than Halo Infinite ever does, based on what I've seen. Ghost of Tsushima looks better than both. And The Last of Us Part II? Even gameplay footage looks next-gen, IMO. It's seriously impressive.

I think the bigger problem with Halo is that it's a shooter with bland art design that has never really evolved aesthetically. There's a lot more to how visually impressive a game is than what resolution it's running at.

The Medium is pretty gorgeous, and has the sort of visual presentation I'd expect from a next-gen title.

I don't think Halo Infinite looked bad per se. It looks like an Xbox One game. That's not a bad thing at all, since it's coming to Xbox One. But may not be the best way to showcase the Series X. About the lighting; dynamic lighting can explain why it looked a bit flat. It's just weird that they didn't have the ray-tracing enabled to show off the Series X version.

@BlueOcean

Dynamic lighting is definitely not "better by definition". I don't know where you're getting that idea from. It just depends on what type of scene is being rendered.
It's generally better for open-world games, because they tend to have a moving directional light (day and night cycles) and also tend to be quite large in size, meaning that baking any kind of lighting at high quality would require a huge amount of extra memory.

@Octane Ray-tracing isn't available at launch, it's a post-launch update.

@Grumblevolcano Like a 2021 update? It feels a bit like the opposite of BOTW. A game that was held back for next gen. Halo Infinite looks like it was in development for Xbox One, but instead of being held back, it feels like they're rushing it to get it out on Series X day one. That's the feeling I'm getting, but maybe I'm wrong.

@Octane No specific timeline given but yes, Infinite does seem like a case of Microsoft's solely relying on it for the launch.

@Grumblevolcano nothing wrong with xbox wanting halo out at launch. But clearly they should have grabbed some talent from their other studios to help them meet this tight time frame.

I really wish sea of thieves was available on switch.

@Dezzy Dynamic lighting is better, the only reason to use static lighting is because is not expensive in performance terms and you can create impressive static scenes without loading the GPU.

@Ralizah In spite of clever static lighting, The Last of Us II doesn't look next-gen, neither do Ghost of Tsushima or Death Stranding but the art style can make certain games look subjectively better. We have many examples on PS4 but also on Xbox One, Gears 5, Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 4, Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition...

@NEStalgia I totally agree. What leaves me baffled is that Nintendo fans are complaining about graphics now. Ratchet & Clank looks basically like the PS4 game indeed and it's 30 FPS on PS5. Spider-Man cutscenes at 30 FPS are going to look impressive, no doubt. Looking at Halo Infinite again, it looks fun and it looks good and it's not even the final build yet. It has a big campaign, it has great 60 FPS gameplay, it has great music made by Curtis Schweitzer and Gareth Coker and yet people can't stop complaining about the graphics everywhere. I mean, does anyone really think that it will have pop-in on Series X? Does anyone really think lighting won't change the look? If graphics is the only thing that matters, why judge Series X by an early build of the cross-generation game for Xbox One, Xbox One X, Series X and xCloud? I think it's totally disproportionate. Perhaps wait for the final build or another Series X game that is not a cross-generation game, Valhalla, Cyberpunk or the first Microsoft game that is Series X-exclusive? Halo is a cross-generation huge open world game at 60 FPS.

@Octane I don't think that Halo Infinite has be chosen to be a Series X showcase because they know they have more impressive Series X games like Hellblade II. However, I think like you do that they are rushing the game for a simultaneous release on current and next generation. Proof is the ray tracing patch is coming after launch.

@Ralizah Tsushima is beautiful. Death Stranding seriously looks like a PS3 game. That's not a knock on Playstation, that's a knock on Kojima's Patent-Pending Money Incinerator. And agreed on TLoU2. The visuals are exceptional in quality. Too bad about the game....

Halo is a "smart" series. It's an art style originally designed for X-BOX. It was "updated" into an iconic for its time style for 360. But if you change it too much, it doesn't look like Halo anymore. Kind of like why Starfox always looks like Starfox 64, and the roots are always Starfox SNES. If it changes too much, it's not recognizable as being Starfox anymore. The style is part of the brand, for better or worse.

I agree with @Octane. It looks like an X1X game. It is an X1X game overall, and leading with it as a console showcase wasn't the best plan. Not least of which because it's not that relevant an IP anymore. Better to lead with new IP than a stale-but-fan-favorite IP. Then agian, I can't tell what Sony's leading with. They have a number of interesting projects but none seem to be the platform showcase at all.

@Octane If I were to guess, the ray tracing is very early in development and not yet optimized, and probably tanks the frame rate for now. It was a choice between show it smooth or show it well lit, not both.

I'm not sure if Halo is being rushed for XSeX, or if Halo is coming out on time and it's promotion and SeX patch is being rushed. In a way I feel that XSeX is being rushed to try to match Sony. They just came out with 1X and probably should have run on that a little longer and done a new console in a year or two... Not that the hardware doesn't seem ready, but the whole launch feels forced....like a new box is not where they really needed to be right now, but Sony forced it, which is why they're doing the "we have a power comparable machine to Sony for Ubisoft to play with, but our games are still for 1X" feeling.

@BlueOcean

Yes but creating the effect of advanced lighting for a lower cost IS what "better" means in this context. You're using the term "better" to mean something like "closer to reality". But that's a meaningless standard if no-one can tell the difference! And it's not something people obviously care about. I mean pretty much every video game ever made has allowed you to change the direction of a jump in mid-air. That's not something you can do in reality, but no-one cares. Everyone's just decided it's more fun if you can do that, so we'll all happily go along with it.

@BlueOcean What's really frustrating is it feels like consumers have been so well trained, they get disappointed when told they don't have to bend over. It's corporate Stockholm Syndrome.

MS seems to have gone out of their way to showcase that they're including all their customers, that everyone gets to enjoy this big new project, and you can pick your hardware for the level of performance you want. And instead of thinking "this is awesome, this is a scalable product they're not holding hostage until I buy more other things on command" the community backlashes and says "see, SONY knows how do to it right, THEY know how to gatekeep their best games until I splash out half a grand on their new box so the game only runs at max settings.

How has console gone BACKWARD into PC of the past?

@BlueOcean Oh, I agree TLOU Part II clearly isn't next-gen. It's designed with modern tech in mind. But advanced lighting doesn't matter if it doesn't affect the visual presentation dramatically. TLOU Part II looks incredible. It LOOKS like what I'd expect a next-gen game to look like. Is most of that smoke and mirrors? Sure. But I don't think that takes away from the achievement.

People don't care about what technologies are powering Halo. They just want a new game on their $600 Xbox Series X to look gorgeous, and, regardless of what it has going for it, it's a very 'blah' looking game. I've heard people give the excuse that it's an open world title, but open world games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and Horizon Zero Dawn are gorgeous as well.

@NEStalgia Maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for stale franchises like Halo and Star Fox to mix things up? I don't care how good the texture quality is: if you're designing games with the aesthetics of an original Xbox game, they're not going to shine on more powerful hardware.

My point is that I think addressing ray-tracing, texture quality, etc. is only going to have a limited impact on this series.

@Dezzy Now I see what you mean . Yes, if you have a game with small rooms, it could work but I still think that dynamic works much better because static lighting has too many inconsistencies and doesn't interact with the models and moving objects.

@NEStalgia Nah. Death Stranding doesn't look like a last gen game to me. At first sight the environments can be quite empty or even bland. But they are incredibly detailed. The draw distance is incredibly, and the level of far distance rendering is great as well, as are the ground textures. It's just not the ''here's a pretty forest'' type of game.

Tsushima is the complete opposite actually. Looks great on screenshots, but if you're looking close, you can see the seams and tell how it's falling apart. Not trying to knock the game, but it lacks a lot of the small details that some other games have. Clipping, collision problems like characters walking an inch or two off the ground, etc.

Both are valid approaches for a game, it just depend what they focus on.

@Dezzy @BlueOcean Static lighting vs dynamic lighting completely depends on what the game is trying to achieve. Open world games can benefit from dynamic lighting, but if there's no active day-night cycle, static lighting can save a lot of memory. It requires a lot more work as well, but it can make scenes look better. Like, there's no point in the next 3D Mario game having dynamic lighting for example. It probably looks a lot better without it too.

@Ralizah Yes and so does Uncharted 4 because Naughty Dog can do impressive visuals but they're not alone as Crystal Dynamics, Playground and The Coalition do as well. I don't think that Halo Infinite looks bad and I'm not even a Halo fan. Texture quality is actually good, it's the current lighting that makes them look flat. I wish people watched the video I posted! 343 Industries still have some work ahead and the they admitted that. Art style? Yes, it can be divisive.

@NEStalgia That and also that it's much easier to have Spider-Man ready for launch which is ironically a PS4 semi-sequel with half the content. Sony is rushing a game to sell PS5 later this year while Microsoft is probably rushing the new Xbox so it has a chance against PS5.