Halo Infinite Campaign - The Digital Foundry Tech Review
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ธ.ค. 2021
- Halo Infinite's campaign can finally be fully revealed and the news is good. 343's take on the open world is great, combat is the best it's been in years and audio is sublime. Problems in the tech department take off some of the sheen, but 343 tell us that key issues are already being fixed for a post-launch patch. And ultimately, even as it stands, the developers have delivered one of the best first-person shooters of the last decade.
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The fact that 343 got back to you guys and already have tracked down the problem along with a fix that is being tested and in the works makes me so grateful for the work you guys do.
Do you have a timestamp to that?
@@cynthiaandoh9575 around 6:50
Just shows how valuable a resource DF is and how much clout it has.
I do worry about series X stuttering in some games it's not in all games but it's been in a few. It has never been properly addressed I wonder if it's a hardware thing I hope not
@@hemandy94 Appreciate it
This is what I call a review! You even helped 343 fix their cut scenes 👍. I haven't been so excited for a game since I lined up at midnight as a teenager for Halo 2 and 3.
Never knew you're halo fan
@@kmcarno9323 i think he said that he was an xbox guy
@@MustafaKhan-hz5mr I'll watch video where he said that.
Best thing about this is 46 minutes
@@kmcarno9323 it's my favourite game of all time ☺️ I love Xbox. I play all the PS exclusives too though.
Knowing how many players and critics play games with TV sound, I always appreciate John's focus on the audio design and music in games he covers - don't stop championing surround sound, it's truly a game changing experience. One I'd argue is more impactful than the jump you get in video quality going to a more expensive TV (coming from somebody who recently got a C1 OLED)
This is something that I can’t agree with enough. For me it was Ghost of Tsushima. The moment I calibrated my surround sound system properly and started playing it, it was just a whole new experience. Once you have tasted the surround sound of a properly integrated game, the other games with poor sound design just feel lacking.
Agreed that's why I am very happy that the next-gen consoles have dedicated hardware for audio and hopefully devs actually take advantage of it like Returnal's 3D audio. People made fun of Mark Cerny when he said they could ask for a picture of our ear to make personalized HRTF profiles but that would actually be revolutionary!
I use 11.1 yamaha amp with Dali danish speakers for Atmos and in general Xbox games haven't had a sound delay on my set up. I would assume his issue is his sound bar is not processing the sound fast enough. You should be able to allow for any delay in m/s with a decent sound set up anyway so it should be a non issue then.
@@sora6573 The animation for that game is poor though outside of combat. The character can't properly negotiate height in the environment. Just a bad flaw in the engine design in that regard.
I’ll put it on my list.
Man, John is so good at his craft. DF is lucky to have him.
good at shilling predatorial AAA games? yeah...
@Gaea11$1000+ in microtransactions before even being out of beta. What other word is there for it? Yes I know you don't have to buy anything, but they are counting on it, a company with ethics would not have any microtransactions until the game is out of beta and all their planned multiplayer changes are added, and to have I dunno an HDR toggle for AMD gpu users so it doesnt look washed out on non-hdr screens. Performance tweaks etc. Its got the smell of a Perfect World MMO
@@Healcraft No one if forcing you to pay for Micro transactions, just play the game do the weekly's and you will level up and get the gear. ( there are no pay wall guns and no Pay wall gear)
All you young players are the same, want to play three games and end the night with a Golden gun, Rose Skin and Gallahorn - Halo is the real deal for FPS no gimmicks no god guns, no god gear - get good or get gone.
Looks like your leaving.
The rest of the DF team absolutely shits on Xbox vs PS5 reviews lol
@@gamerspeaks711 well said.
They imo really need to fix those shadows or the lack of any shadows on objects from large distances at least as a PC option. It really ruins the visual fidelity which is a shame because the textures and models in this game r quite incredible. They also have to fix the weird framerate miss match on animations compared to the fps the player is getting like when reloading a weapon.
It's an open world game with loads of assets.
@@mindrover777 So is horizon zero Dawn. I played that on PC and get higher framerates and it looks far better in terms of lighting with those higher framerates. Here’s hopping they do a metro exodus in terms of full raytraced global illumination for PC at least and this raytracing update that’s planned fixes those lighting issues. If not… well I can continue to say the visuals r dull and disappointing from a distance (clearly in smaller spaces like the interior it looks great thou). DLSS would be nice too.
You can set the FPS of first person animations to max on PC.
@@dustraider2940 Where? I didn’t see that option. All my graphics settings were on max as far as I was aware and at 120FPS the animation looks like it’s going at 15FPS (probably cause my monitor hates this mis matched framerate and it’s tearing in a single position or something).
Forgot to mention it feels like the colours r off as well. Guess it’s because that blue hue they talked about every object glowing with kinda like how crysis 2 had this issue.
I love the sound in this game. The music is amazing and the sound of trees moving with the wind is amazing!
Just a John appreciation comment: you are a wonderful, professional and very talented presenter/storyteller. I hope we'll get to enjoy your work for many years to come.
What we've really discovered here, more studios need to get DF to critic the game before release during development so they can get all this stuff ironed out. DF, you guys are truly the professionals.
They'd be a great consultancy but I'd rather them keep making great videos for us!
-_____________________________-
It's sad that the devs can't even do that themselves!!!
@@Andrew-wb2zq they could do both!
If studios are relying on feedback from TH-camrs to fix their game AFTER it's been launched then they aren't doing their jobs properly.
Very simply: Im excited for 99% of the this game. The 1% is reserved for the disappointment that there isn’t a snow biome.
Yeah it really is a shame they didn't at least give us like, 2 or 3 biomes for this campaign, I bet they'll add them in expansions
My dissapointment is lack of co op and forge and it's much larger than 1% unfortunately. That being said I will play the campaign through for sure on PC and am keen.
@@malazan6004 Yeah, the lack of Co-op is quite unfortunate.
The subtle way his pistol pivot with every step is so dam satisfying, as is the way enemies respond to taking bullets. Can't wait to play this.
They basically lied about this if it's so limited, they said in an article on halo waypoint it would have different environment types
Wobbling textures bring back PS1 memories
It’s pretty weird that Crysis 1 has better foliage movement then a game releasing in late 2021
This game shows big visual potential in some areas but it does feel like they were really held back by the last gen console and a messed up development timeline from completely incompetent project management. I am really hopeful the next gen only campaign will look a lot better whenever that finally comes out, especially if Joe Staten leads it beginning to end
Not weird at all, crisis was made in an age where micro transactions didn't exist. Development was fully committed to making games run at their absolute best. Crisis is a great example because they have always pushed the limits of technology. Now we have development teams devoted solely to cosmetic creation and mictronsaction based match making systems. Its closer to "what's the bare minimum we can we ship and get away with while keeping players engaged enough for the daily cosmetic resets"
@@Str8Wildcat i think the issue with the halo campaign was more the management didn't know what to do and went down the wrong directions and just really wasted the dev team efforts until like a year ago
Looks like the lightning feature is remove for some reason. Maybe ray tracing was planned? Hmmm
I like the clean and simple presentation a lot, reminds me of how many classic games from the older generations looked, such as ninja gaiden or Metroid prime
This got to be one of the few modern attempts at iconic franchises that don’t butcher the feel of the original but even add to it almost. Such a breath of fresh air.
Doom is the only other one that comes to mind
@@GuyFromJupiter doom was probably the best soft reboot/revival in video game history
It didn't innovate enough to be interesting for me. Standard Call of Duty style push-forward gameplay, regenerating shield rather than resource pickups. Shotgun fucking blows. Shooters which mess up the shotgun really irritate me.
To be fair they butchered it quite a lot before Infinite.
@@Ahov "Standard Call of Duty style push-forward gameplay, regenerating shield rather than resource pickups" how fucking slowly did you play to feel like CoD where you're peeking, shooting, peeking, push forward, etc...?
7:24 What's up with the blown out super blocky lighting in the final version?
They use a very low res volumetric light buffer, 1/8th of a resolution or something. I hate when developers do that. The demo had higher res buffer and the light itself wasn't as intense.
03:42 Good job on the editing here. I appreciate that you showed the comparison multiple times to let the viewer pick out different spots. Sometimes in other videos there are comparison shots but they are much too quick not allowing time to compare.
Excellent technical review! You basically covered it all. I look forward to another tech review once Co-Op Campaign is released next year which could potentially also include any updates between now and then. Great work John and Digital Foundry team!
26:05 RDR2 vs Halo...ouch...
This game looks so weird. It looks incredible but also dull and flat at the same time
Yeah, there are situations where the rendering techniques they use just fall apart as they can't cover some lighting conditions.
Xbox exclusive in a nutshell bruh 😂...the xbox game studios have NO SOUL 😉
@@cinematicpassages8884 Hahahah PS fanboys crying because Xbox dominated 2021 while PS5s best exclusive was made by the very same Xbox studios you claim “have no soul” 😂
32:00 this is definitely an optimization imo. I guess most of the things you mention were cut so that they work on the xbox one. Although surely they have different render paths for different hardware ? so... why no SDF shadows/occlusion ? I'm not sure why they changed the DOF method either, as you pointed out it can't handle sudden transitions between very different depths. There are plenty of papers describing methods that give better results, so I'm really curious as to why they pedalled back here. Lots of questionable lighting direction too... I liked the moody, contrasted atmosphere in the original trailer much more.
Im wondering if those are squarely engine problems moving the game from linear corridor/openish levels to an actual real time streaming open world map. Indoor to outdoor is easy to push lighting when it's separated by loading screens, but when you're moving in and out of structures it becomes exponentially more difficult.
I would say so, Tiger engine is also derived from BLAM just like slipstream is, but Destiny 2 handles it's lighting and shadows in an "open world" setting better than this game.
It's pretty funny how Crysis 3's graphics still look so much better than Halo Infinite's and almost makes it look last gen when they did that sudden switch. 343i is really falling behind in that front.
It's not a open world.
Exactly. Shadow of the Tomb Raider had the best graphics of any game ever BUT it's not open world.
Open World eats resources. Open world needs to die.
Idk if it’s an engine thing either. Halo 5 looked better in many ways.
@@wheretheyhaveribs55 Then RDR2?
@@wheretheyhaveribs55 Many open world games look better than Infinite, even from last gen. RDR2, Far Cry 6, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima just to name a few.
*cuts back to crysis 3* my brain: why does crysis 3 look better wtf?!?
Until this day, Halo 3's water impresses me.
Halo 3(Xbox 360) just impresses me. I booted it up not too long ago on a 48inch tv and it still looked good...
It’s still really great looking. Halo 3 is my favorite of the series.
Thorough job as always, ty to the DF team for the effort put into this one.
This game has to be one of the cleanness games iv ever seen. Whats crazy is 343 did all this and did it at 60fps.
343 Industries Head: Ok boys!! Congratulations!! We finished the game! Time to relax and enjoy your holi.....
343 Grunt: _Sir, sir.... Digital Foundry released a video reviewing our game_ ....
343 Industries Head: Ok boys!! Holiday's cancelled. Ready your notes and coffees!!!
zooming in on the textures was surprisingly detailed
Yes when i saw that wet ground with puddles i was like damn that actually looks like real life
Damn that shot of RDR2 took me off guard, that’s a great looking game and really put into perspective how (relatively) weak the Halo visuals are.
Halo has never been known for its visuals. Rdr2 doesn't 12 different AIs that have to act differently in battle. Halo has always been a sandbox first fun type of game.
There are plenty of places where halo excels over red dead 2. The verticality of this game is on another level. The physics in halo are superior. The combat itself in halo is no contest, pretty much the best to ever exist in any game. Enemy ai is also better than anyone else in the industry. There is much more, if you actually spent time playing instead of whining in the comments, it would be obvious to you
@@Sparatan18608 Not true at all, but ok. Let's just forget Halo 1 & 2 for example.
It's a given all the Halo fans are gonna flood the comments and claim everything is excellent and gloss over all the problems. The biggest eye-roll of the video was how it praised the generic space music and spent time listing the composers and playing excerpts of the underwhelming soundtrack. I'm sure it works well within the game, but it sure doesn't STAND out by any means. I remember them touting how this was supposed to be some next-gen masterpiece too. The killer app for Xbox Series X. Yet it's clearly a long delayed last gen game. At least Sony is doing it right. They have dedicated games for the PS5 and are not shackled by last-gen hardware. Games like Halo and Gears of War used to push the bleeding edge, but they have become increasingly middle-of-the-road and even feel like generic third party cross platform games with none of that special exclusive treatment.
Gears 5 has very good visuals. I think this game looks pretty good too. I also really like the soundtrack. It’s not the best looking game ever but I would imagine it will get upgrades over time. I think there can be middle ground between “this game is garbage PS5 is the best” and “this game is perfect.” But then again nuance isn’t something that people always care about these days.
The Virgin Far Cry vs the Chad Halo "Open World"
I have a friend who bought far cry 6 played it about 10 hours (hasn't played for weeks)but won't admit it was below average and regrets it. I wouldn't even pirate that garbage for free he should have taken my advice now he doesn't have the budget for another game he wants.
Oof, that cut from Crysis 3 back to Halo in the beginning is brutal.
I noticed that. Does everyone have a slight delay in Dolby Atmos for Series X? Even when you turn it on you can test it in setting. Just click left right left etc, and there is a slight delay. If you turn it back to 5.1/7.1 PCM the sound is instant.
If you use headphones and use Atmos or DTS:X there’s no delay.
I thought it was my Yamaha receiver but it looks like I’m not the only one.
For ps3/ps4/ps5 I have always had minor issues but they were varied and sometimes fixable. For pc same thing, varied but at least mostly fixable. As for Xbox one, X1X, and XsX, I have two issues. One is a crackling on menu things regardless of settings, I have never found a fix and it never happens in games. The second is the delay for particular formats (had this with the ps5 as well). The only fix even on an hdmi 2.1 bug-free receiver, was to use my tv HDMI port and eARC the atmos audio signal back to the receiver. I have tested this on my c9 OLED, G1 oled, and an 8k QN900A. I also tested a few receivers but the hdmi chips inside are the ones most receivers use for HDMI, so brand of receiver hardly matters as long as you know it should do the format.
Try the eARC thing. Maybe it could work. If not I personally really tried a mess of stuff and nothing worked at all. I also am not new to this so I went pretty deep in my diagnosing, even as far as testing active/passive hdmi.
Okay, so FREAKING WoW!!! I Just "fished" the campaign/main story line and image I'll now be thrown back into the open world to take over the MF'n universe
What A GAME. I'm Literally floored at what 343 have been able to pull off with this title from a narrative standpoint and everything else combining; MAKES AN UNPRECEDENTED HALO 💦 DREAM!!!
"There was no online or local co-op at launch. That said, cheers to my Halo ride or die ngga Bthomas. You were there with me every step of the way as it always has been. Thank you 343 for allowing me to carry on the memory of a friend with such a meaningful history grounded in Halo. Now your Halo brings together All of The Games in remarkable fashion in the MCC and Halo Infinite stands tall and proud amidst them all too.
Halo Infinite brings tones from Halo, Reach, ODST, Halo 2, Halo 3 along with new and amazing Freedom, Excellent Traversal, the ability to Expand and Grow Your Abilities and the UNSC's presence (and therefore your level of support) is out of this world and beyond anything I could have dreamed up, much less ever hoped for. Thank you to everyone involved and for enabling experience across race, gender, alternative biased and even life itself.
im about to hit the big 30 and i remember my Uncle getting me the first Halo for christmas all those years ago. Die hard fan ever since. I am fired up on some serious nostalgia for this new campaign.
Tommy! Great to see you around, you may recognize my name
@@theantsaretakingover Get out of here S.T.A.L.K.E.R! , i bet you cant wait for DF to cover Stalker 2 also lol
And what are you giving your uncle now?
@@itstommylove I cannot haha, time is flying by and we’re getting closer and closer!
same here dude it feel weird to say ive been playing halo for 20 years
This game being designed for last gen is obviously what held it back graphically, but honestly, it still looks very nice. Plus they nailed the gameplay and performance, which is far more important than graphics any day of the week.
At the end of the day this is nitpick to the highest degree. Oh they don’t have ambient shadows and at 500% zoom it artifacts. The game looks absolutely amazing
It's should be for now not everyone has access to the next generation console for almost 1 year
This game is terribly optimized
That's a pathetic thing to say.
Look at metro exodus enhanced edition compared to this.
OR doom eternal, or MW campaign etc.
Being made for last gen is not an excuse.
Rdr2 was on Xbox one with an 80km2 map. Look at the visuals and tech in that.
Old gen wasn't what held the game back graphically lol.
Fantastic review as always John some really good analysis on the lighting in particular I'm surprised myself at the cutscenes after Halo 5.
Great job! I wish you guys covered HDR more as lately these games have had a washed out look that lacks in the contrast ratio department . It's very evident in the clip where John discussed the armor from the demo. The Demo has a very stong black level and pops were the current looks way to faded.
True and especially because barely anyone covers HDR in games well, so it's always a mystery whether the implementation is fucked or if it's just due to wrong settings that can be fixed manually.
Yep so many games suffer with this...ive resulted in running AC VALHALLA at limited colour space on my OLED so contrast pops more, luckily its actually ok like this, hope I dont have to with infinite
Why does it look like a 10 years old game remastered in 4k? I don't like the artistic approach. Everything looks artificial and colors are faded, flat and not vibrant. Look at the grass. It's so depressing to look at. There's no point in HDR as color palette is limited.
Probably hard for them to talk HDR as everyone will have a different experience based on their setup. Though it would be nice if they went into depth on the lvl of HDR customization available to draw attention to those devs who only add a simple on or off.
@@vadimkrylov it's doesn't!! It's you being a crybaby in TH-cam
The gaming industry used to make huge multimedia titles with stories that were meant to rival movies..... Now we get games that are hardly finished. And if they have a campaign at all you got to pay extra for it...
This is our own fault tbh we keep on buying. (Not you necessarily i mean gamers as a whole)
@@Suikojunkie I think game development has been kind of going downhill in certain areas since the Wii. My theory is that developers and publishers learned that there is a huge market in designing and marketing games towards more casual players.
I kind of wish the grapple hook physics would take into account that grunts and jackals are feather weights compared to the chief so you should grapple them to you not the other way around. Might feel confusing to have it so varied and I get why they did it the way they did. I just chuckle as a grunt stays grounded as you come hurtling towards him 😀
20 years ago something like that wasn't complicated for gamers to understand and the game mechanics took things like that into account.
Chief would pull every enemy type except Brutes and Hunters to him rather than the other way around. Not saying it's a bad thing. It would be funny to just yoink an Elite out of cover.
That's some Kojima level attention to detail you have Danny.
@@athenian221 At least the game has exaggerated physics as based on everything else and how crap it looks even on PC and series X i would have skipped it however the gameplay at least looks fun to a degree. compared to the varied maps of MP though it is highly disappointing that this open world all looks so samey and so do the interior structures. This was a problem on original Halo Combat Evolved and 20 years on it really should not be.
Doom Eternal's meathook was originally have the Slayer pull demons towards him. but the designers at ID felt that it wasn't as fun as him being pulled to the demons, so its similar in that it's most definitely a game design choice
Man the grenade throw animations have been such an eyesore. I thought it was just me.
All the explosions look like shit lol
I have an LG CX and I’m now torn for when I play this later today. Should I go quality at 4K 60fps or performance at 1440p 120fps? Quick, what are you guys opting for?
Gameplay looks amazing, but gotta be honest, the open world looks pretty damn bad at a distance. 18:10 is just an absolute mess. Hopefully they can fix those shadows at least.
I'm excited to play but I agree that looks absolutely awful
It's nowhere near as bad & dramatic as you just made it sound. You're just spoiled.
@@nonyabusiness6084 spoiled by games looking good? Lmao That specific shot looks like a 360 game, stfu.
@@alsopsarchive5384 The game looks incredible & John just said as much. Especially given the game runs at 120fps & has to run on a base Xbox One. There isn't a game with better textures.
"Oh no! I can't see a shadow from that leaf from a half a mile away!"
Yes, your generation of gamers are spoiled, ungrateful brats who need to be stuck with nothing but an Atari 2600 to play on for a few years.
Biggest downside is no campaign co op. That really really sucks.
I thought it was going to come later on.
@@ALilCancer yeah, but after six years of development, why isn't it coming on release?
The music really has a big impact on how you feel, a lot of games are missing good music like this.
Brings the game up another level.
The gfx look great as well, makes me feel the way I used to when playing a big game on a new system.
Agreed with the music, super in touch with Halo and kicks ass. I CANNOT agree with the GFX though, explosions and FX in this game look pretty bad.
Glad you brought up the Dolby atmos delay issue. It drives me nuts in my 65cx. I hope they fix this because I have to run in Dolby digital since the delay in atmos is crazy. Please fix this!
Great tech review as always!
I love how you often leave room for the sound aspect of games in your reviews (like you did in Last of us 2) which is hugely important to me.
Well Done! :)
DF at his best really.
Thanks for speaking about the lighting of the game. I couldn't explain why I felt the game visual were se flat and lacked shadows. Now I know it wasn't just me.
I'm about 4 hours into the campaign, and I'm enjoying it more than I thought it would.
Looking back the campaign was rubbish wasn't it?
@@AndyTolly123 it was awful no thought same terrain bland and a pathetic excuse for a campaign clearly the worst halo ever made...if people are happy with that nonsense that's the end of the halo franchise higher youre expectations...blockbuster game?? Absolutely far far from it..if it wasn't called halo it would of been slated its as simpler as that
@@abcdefg3214 campaign was great
Great review! I hope they can implement the suggestions for shadows in the distance as you suggested. It’s like a night and day difference!
Thanks now when I’m playing I’ll be able to see Masterchiefs gloves wobbling and nothing else haha.
I also enjoy the wide linear design in games like this and the Last Of Us 2. My problem is instead of finding my own way to the end I search every inch before I go to the end .
Love that search though. Been doing it since Dragon Warrior on the NES finding treasure chests up around secret paths beside castles at the edge of the screen. Been an “every inch must be combed” since then.
I play like you. I think that's how they should be played too
thanks for focussing on audio a bit as well, hope it sticks as something to comment on in future vids
What's clear @36:30 is that the Slipspace Engine was put on ice, and the entire game ported back onto the Halo 5 engine.
As great as the gameplay looks to be, you can't help but notice that the game has clearly been shackled and affected by the long development time. Six years is a LONG time in terms of development in general, but must have been especially difficult considering the technological advancements that have been made in the video games space in that time. Some aspects look very mis-matched, to my unprofessional eye at least, as if they changed certain elements throughout the process (which they no doubt did) but had legacy tech and systems that made it to the end and couldn't be changed or improved. As a result, some parts look current gen, and some parts look very underwhelming. When the video cut to Crysis 3 and Red Dead, these issues became even more standout. The shadow cascading is incredibly distracting especially, as well as the general, I guess flat-ness to the appearance at times. I'm glad the game plays and sounds brilliantly, and looks good enough (especially in the interior areas)... it's just a shame that it couldn't be a little more impressive on the tech side.
...Yet, the tech was there. Just look at 2018 Slipspace showcase. Something must have gone wrong during development, because modern PC and Xbox surely can handle all of that.
Hopefully they will enable some of the stripped-away features in future patches, to make this game look up to date. And also add new features (raytracing should be confirmed, for example).
You are very right by the way!
the game looks little better than halo 5.
Six years is a long time? *laughs in Star Citizen*
BLASPHEMY! The game is the PERFECT NEXY GEN EXPERIENCE what are you TALKING about?
It's also the art direction. The game looks like it was designed to target younger players compared to past Halos, and hence the Fortnight / Minecraft colours and plasticky blockiness of everything. Oh, that and when they slapped open-world on a Halo title.
Fantastic tech review video. I really enjoyed this. Time well spent.
The fact that as a 32 year old contractor I’ve cleared my schedule for 2/3 days and declined jobs…thanks 343 for making me feel like a kid again!
Haha yeah me too although it's just for a day.
I got Wednesday to next Monday with nothing in my schedule. So I can grind the campaign
I don’t think that’s something to be proud of
@@rockendude103 If he has enough cushion let the dude live a little bro.
@@matthewtamayo9747 I guess but make sure you are set before you do anything like this.
Great Video as usual!
Just two quick notes on Audio:
1) The Atmos Delay is very real, but switching to DTS:X eliminates most of the delay and still gives you Spatial Sound.
2) I have only played the Multiplayer so far and wasn't that thrilled with thee Audio in general. It seem to lack bass a bit and the height channels aren't used that effectively IMHO.
That’s the multiplayer, I think they sacrificed quality for their balancing.
@@5000Seabass
We will know soon
@@rolandrohde I definitely felt what you were talking about though. They made it very clear the multiplayer was very E-sportsy, and it has all that audio mixing they do to make sure that everything is balanced around being able to hear everything going on around you no matter the situation.
I’m hoping the campaign sound design has more of the shock and awe factor to it, and not the sound compression and mixing focused on balanced competitive play.
Great review! It's unfortunate that the final game doesn't use the lighting solution from the 2019 trailer. I wonder if they were having trouble hitting target performance on consoles for the open world with the long view distances and had to reduce the visual quality. I would probably do the same in that sort of situation, unless I had a ton of time to incorporate new graphics research and the confidence/skills on hand to pull it off. But then again I'd try to get that all sorted in pre-production.
Hmmm there’s a lot of open world games on last gen running on PS4/Xbox One that look amazing & (sorry to say) better than the next gen Series X open world Halo Infinite visual wise.
@@lxXSuddenDeathXxl non of those games hit the same resolution and performance as Halo infinite. But alas Halo infinite is truly just a last gen game updated on a current gen console. I suspect we will see what current gen consoles can do late next year
@@Olivion17 they do on the One X / PS4 Pro consoles…..
@@MabuseXX name one game
@@Olivion17 To which i would reply to saying I'd rather have a slightly lower resolution and have a much nicer look open world. It's absolutely not worth the trade off to have a super clear yet boring looking game.
I am so very ready for this campaign. Other than Horizon, I haven’t looked forward to an Xbox game this much since Halo 3.
@@NemesisX94 because he likes the game... Lemme guess you're a Sony guy?
Me too. I skipped out on the Xbone and only played Halo 4 last year via the MCC on Game Pass pc. FH5 has been such a treat. I ended up liking it much more than I ever thought I would have. According to my profile I have 6 days and 20 hours of game time so far and there's still plenty to do and cars to collect. I'm really looking forward to sinking some time as Master Chief. Halo is back baby.
@@NemesisX94 Dumb question. SNEED AND FEED SOYNY
@@NemesisX94 this may be a shock to you. But Maybe there’s people out there who find zero interest in Sony games. Crazy right?
@@thirtythird985 I'm one if them
These Shadow Cascades building up 3m in front of the player are simply not acceptable on an Xbox Series X in 2021
I'm sorry if this was covered in the video and I missed it, but does Field of View affect performance? I've been playing in Performance mode on Series X with max FOV in multiplayer and to me the graphics look horrible and I don't know if it's due to the FOV straining the hardware or not, and I don't really have the equipment to properly test framerates.
"If you stop and look at things". Oh I will. I've always loved admiring textures up close as I play games. Water, trees, leaves, rocks, steel, dirt, whatever. I really take the time to look at the beauty of a game. And even more fun today due to AAA graphics, top of the line telivisions like OLED and QLED. Things like reflections, lighting, ray tracing, are so beautiful to look at up close.
You too? I’ve been doing that since the PS1/N64 days, even though textures back then were super pixelated or blurry. I’ve always been a stop and smell the roses kind of guy in games and have enjoyed admiring the incidental details these devs craft.
Me too! I remember being blown away by Banjo Kazooie's texture work on N64😄
This game looks bland
@@TheMrAdax Same, the Rare games really had a cool look. Never forget how impressed I was seeing the Killer Instinct arcade cabinet at the Theater. Halo has always had phenomenal textures. This one is no different.
Are you me? I do this very same thing. Modern games (or any game at that) look gorgeous on my LG C9 4K OLED. I admire game’s visual fidelity all the time when playing.
Almost no one has a 120hz display, let alone VRR. DF live in a bubble. "most high end TVs". Most of us are buying our stuff from Argos and sorting by 'cheapest first'.
not true. Most people who actually picks up a nextgen console also have a modern hdmi 2.1 tv to go with it or atleast they should.
Does anyone know if MS has said anything about fixing the atmos delay? Just noticed it today and it messes with the lip sync... cant unsee it...
Honestly at this point if I'm a dev in a big video game company and I still have a couple months in front of me I would get in touch with digital foundry and ask them feedback about my lighting/shadowing pipeline!
Couple months wouldn’t be enough time imo. I know what you mean though!!
Obviously professional game developers know more about this stuff than Digital Foundry.
Big devs who do their jobs right don't need DF's input, see Insomniac's, Guerrila's latest games.
These issues with odd lighting were far and few in between on PS4 and the fact that they complained about TLoU2 shows that the lore wasn't the only thing that fell by the wayside during that game's development. I don't remember glow-y NPCs being a feature or even common place in their PS3 games or U4:ATE (which was a PS4 exclusive). Even in TLoU2 issues with lighting weren't likely very common overall, just more prevalent than in their previous titles (I can't speak from personal experience as I will not buy that game because they turned it into a zombie shooter which they said they wouldn't do).
@@VariantAEC I have trouble distinguishing characters in fast action games and believe the lighting on models DF talks about is likely an intentional choice for legibility. Especially important in multiplayer. I don't think Halo Infinite looks amazing but a lot of that has to do with the art direction, not the technical competence of the developers. You can't even compare this world visually to the splendor of Horizon Zero Dawn, which I agree looks way better but that's not just a lighting issue.
@@saintsalieri
That should be an accessibility option not forced on all players at the detriment to presentation.
what is going on with the cascaded shadows maps around 21:00... and this was the technical review? Also what's with the foliage mesh jitter around 21:20? And for the life of me, I don't get why the final game cut scenes are lauded over the 2020 trailer... to me they look washed out and blurred... and I laughed to see how the quality has dropped since Halo5. Edit - ok atleast they touch onthe shadow maps later.... edit edit... do they really need DF to tell them they're cut scenes are running badly? I think the devs may know....
I honestly don’t understand…when they showed that 2018 Master Chief reveal trailer, all those features were there and it looked really great…and then you look at the washed out final game same scene and all those ambient occlusion and dynamic lighting and bokah depth of field was significantly lowered, making it jarring compared to the 2018 one.
Like…if you ALREADY achieved it in 2018…why lower these features and why mess with the composition of the scene? The pilot’s eyes look like they’re about to pop out of his skull in the final version, lacking shaders to make it look more natural like in the 2018.
Game looks good…but…if they could of just kept the same fidelity in the 2018 trailer on the ship, as John has stated, this game would of looked a lot more “next gen” than the compromised cross-gen presentation here.
Yea it's very strange isn't it? Especially since the game started development on the Xbox one so the Series X should be able to handle those features no problem.
Maybe it was intentional? The game does have a slightly animated vibe to it so maybe those features were taken out for a reason. Hard to say really. It certainly does seem odd considering they delayed the game a year to make it look better.
Because they make the game look the best they can when showing vertical slices to the public, and then start making cuts to manage the game as a whole in order to get it to run well, especially running up to release. This is really just par for the course for development.
@@daystyrfer7887 Right, I already know that…but…I mean, the 2018 trailer wasn’t like brain melting technology or visuals going on…sure, it was very beautiful for the look it was going for…but just like John admits in this review, Halo 5’s real time cutscenes running on Xbox One was technically more impressive in some aspects…so…if they could achieve H5’s visuals, I’m confident the visuals in that 2018 trailer, even as a VS, could be achieved. That’s why it’s disappointing.
They should of kept it. No idea why it was significantly drawn back, since they already achieved H5’s impressive cutscene fidelity in realtime…
To look especially at the differences with the original 2018 Slipspace reveal, It is indeed very disappointing.
@@wizardsandwarriorz since last year they said that there was a disaster in 343 i, I suppose it has to do with how little optimized the graphics engine is. Although it also seems strange to me that bf 2042 and cod vanguard are graphically significantly worse than their predecessors being that they were specially designed for the new generation, my hypothesis is that there is some problem with the new consoles and not with the old generation
Hey John, how does Master Chief's leg armor detail in first-person when you look down to his feet. His armor in the previous Halo games looked good so hopefully it looks more detailed. Are you show Master Chief standing vs crouched looking down to see the details in first-person. Thanks again!!
Why is there a slight delay in audio while using Dolby atmos headphones? Does this effect beoplay portals?
I'm disappointed at the lack of biomes in Infinite.
Same, it's kinda lame that it's all forest or interior, but I guess they'll be adding more SP content over time, so hopefully that gives us some different biomes, like what the multiplayer maps have.
Gotta keep the live service component interesting
DF team. Can you go into specifics on your opinion on the Dolby Atmos delay? It also heavily affects Dolby Digital. Huge annoyance and disappointment
3:01 it was really cool seeing the jackal rotate it’s shield
John, I wanted to ask you why when you turn on quality mode and vrr on a samsung q70, the screen is flickering. The only way to stop this fact is by turning off vrr or choosing performance mode.
I wonder if some of these small improvements could be added to the current gen version over time. I know 343 has mentioned ray tracing down the line but perhaps there could be smaller tweaks in the meantime.
Hopefully!
This game does not have procedurally dynamic cloud rendering as stated later in the video. At 22:50, you can easily watch the shadow patterns copying themselves after a few seconds (of your sped of gameplay) looping over and over. This is more like pre-rendered, baked lighting maps. Still looks great but far less costly on performance and nothing like you would get in say, RDR2 for example.
LOL….Tell em you internet Tech expert 😂😂😂😂
John this is an absolute rock star of a review thank you so much for the love and passion you put into this as it really shows I. Your work. 😊
I think vrs is really damaging the image quality. Maybe there is also a persistent problem with texture streaming and that's what I'm noticing 43:20.
Man these are some of the BRIGHTEST looking night levels i have ever seen...
It's a ring world....
@@frostycarp4 wouldnt looking up at space still look dark though? correct me if i'm wrong
like the other guy said it's a ring, it'd be bright as fuck at night I imagine. Like a full moon except it's an entire arch in the sky bouncing light back down on you.
@@MintyLime703 But The Ring is broken at this point in the lore, as John discussed, so the OPs point still applies. And why even have a day-night cycle if you are just going to make it "day" all the time..
@@MintyLime703 its still weird to me because
1) the intial reveal trailer still shows how deep and dark nights can get on this ring world.
imagine having a youtube channel tell you what to fix in your game (especially a thing that shows in the beginning and should be obvious), and then people praise them for fixing it, the absolute state of developers.
I can't believe John dropped the sword and picked up Pulse carbine @45:18
"Another focus" ... No, it's worse ...
We're talking about a game that ran on 1.31 TFLOP back then and sometimes looks better than on the new XSX ...
The game suffers from the background that it has to run on all xboxes and on the XSS ...
In many areas there were improvements but also reductions in details and even resolution.
60FPS on Quality mode? Thats very impressive of Series X with that sort of open world scale. Cannot wait to try it out
There are 0 reasons why this game should not be 60 FPS in quality mode.
It's 100% an old gen game.
There are old gen games that look WAY better than Halo: Infinite.
@@CrashBashL old game? Isn’t this the style Xbox fans are used to with game pass? They shouldn’t notice any difference in terms of visuals.
@@CrashBashL Disagree. Multiplat games that aren't multi world and are last gen games themselves have been releasing at 4k 30 1440p 60 with a 1080p DRS.
That's been the norm. No one complained.
He compliments this game for running 60/120 modes, and a 1440p 120 mode at that, and suddenly there's a complaint.
It doesn't matter what they "should be" running. What they have been running makes this impressive.
@@CrashBashL all games have different art styles and are made in different engines. It’s going for a halo art style. Are there more realistic looking games or better? sure. But to say there’s zero reason it shouldn’t run at 4k 60 is just dumb. It’s a huge open world game maybe? With good graphics. 4k 60 just a couple of years ago was hard on top end PC’s. Now modern AAA titles that have huge open worlds. “Have no reason to not run at 4k 60FPS” on a console lol.
@@braedonlock3359 I've been playing the Infinite multi-player on PC it looks pretty good to me and plays fantastic which is more important than anything. The game isn't anything that will blow you away graphically bit its definitely good enough and packing where it counts the most. Gun play. It feels like a great Halo game.
I got the weird feeling a lot of the graphical issues will not be patched.
I only feel that way due to them not taking a stance on the whole TAA debacle on PC it gives me the feeling the PC release became an afterthought.
the TAA is SO FUCKING BAD. especially if you're using a monitor with a low MPRT (motion clarity). You can see the game blur visibly whenever you move the screen =(.
That's usually how it goes.
I dont remember Crysis having "clear the outpost" missions in order to "unlock" stuff...
I Might give it a chance in the future, just not feeling it right now. But it does look nice.
33:50 , any chance of it using FP16?
Crysis is a hub world game.
What is the technical limitation for displaying the bottom half of your character in FPS?
In my opinion, the “floating” is immersion breaking.
Great video! Really thoughtful and insightful analysis.
PHENOMENAL Analysis guys! Hats off as always! Props for including sound design and awesome DF Music Player :D :D
Add timestamps please
I’m also glad of the 120hz campaign option just because I love options but another problem at 120 frames is the the pop-in when flying my wasp is exactly as bad as flying in GTA5 on xbox360. Trees blink in to existence right in front of you.
But the sudden stalling or “hang times” have now been fixed.
Have you guys talked to 343i about the shadows and black areas in cutscenes/in game/in menus being greyish instead of black? (brightness issue?) Even on OLED displays.
In the E3 demo we see contrast is far better displayed than what is showed in the final product, is that intentional or can it be tweaked?
I really think it would benefit the whole game if contrast is applied correctly and black levels are corrected everywhere.
Great video, and the game looks like fun! What a strange looking game though. Some areas look fantastic, but other don't look as good as their previous game on last-gen hardware.
This!
Halo has been a mediocre looking game since whenever. It's fun you get from playing it only thing that is worth something.
@@krzysztof6591 Halo 1 was stunnning and 3 as well, even Halo 4 pushed the xbox 360
@@krzysztof6591 Halo 4 was the peak of the Xbox 360's graphics, but otherwise the franchise isn't particularly known for its graphics.
@@plinkvevo it's known for its art style
Interesting 'nitpick' about the lighting not always affecting interactive 3D objects and models correctly. It seems like something that'd make sense for the multiplayer (but already compensated for by the outlines) but doesn't make much sense for the singleplayer experience. Other than that I'm impressed with how they improved the visuals over the past year. It's clear they've spent a large majority of their time overhauling the engine without sacrificing too much performance.
I wonder if it's not a response to the backlash against the campaign demo 2020. A lot of the enemies there looked flat and bad, partially because of the lighting not cooperating in a dynamic global lighting setting. One solution to that is to ignore that and make sure that each enemy always has the "lighting" it needs. Probably not, but just a thought that occurred to me. It is also possible that they just want to highlight enemies. There's a lot going on always, so even in SP, it wouldn't be surprising if they wanted to make them stand out from the environment no matter what's going on around you.
I remember people complaining about enemies blended in the environment which made them hard to see in halo 5 🤷
It makes the enemies look like a bad Photoshop job into the scene
At least it makes it easy to spot the enemies. Maybe this design ist intentional.
It's an intentional design choice.
They're choosing playability over the game looking realistic. It's not a choice they're making on a whim, either, as players have complained about the "realistic" lighting of dynamic objects before.
Could we get a video on Screen Space RTGI through Reshade?
An interesting idea would be showing how it can transform a game that has a heavily optimized build of Reshade, AKA, FFXIV with it's Gshade fork of Reshade.
I've been running SSRTGI in tandem with the MC_DAO shader and it does help cover all the notable lack of AO the game has.
Now, if took a lot of tweaking to get there, but It is a transformative change most of the times imho.
The jackal close up looks insanely detailed and beautiful. Amazing work from the character artists!
I am SO glad that you guys called out the VRS artefacts. I logged a ticket a few days ago because even though i’m playing on a 1440p monitor with VRS in performance mode it looks sub 1080p at times
don't forget that on top VRS there is DRS at play which can reduce the resolution to 1080p
If you’re on console it doesn’t matter what monitor you’re using bud.
Performance mode is going to automatically downgrade the resolution quality to reach 120FPS.
@@5000Seabass yeah it has nothing to do with monitor resolution and everything to do with poor VRS implementation pal, they basically apply VRS on edges and shadow terminators while they should be applying it to surfaces. Perf mode is 1440p anyways and you can see it in the frame but edges and terminators look aliased af because of the VRS making it look effectively lower res than 1080p in menu. You can actually still see the VRS artifacts in quality, just much less easily. Obvs perf mode turns down other visuals settings, its just annoying that the VRS implementation doesnt look as good as it could. This is all in menus too so not like its under load.
@@NizarElZarif exactly, perf mode is targeting 1440p but if it scales to 1080 with VRS up to 2x2 pixels, you essentially have 540 pixels rendering sometimes…which is definitely not a hardware issue
“We’re looking forward to working closely with AMD to bring raytracing to Halo Infinite,” says Noah Benesch, a product marketing manager at Xbox. “Raytracing is one our top development priorities post-launch and look forward to sharing more soon.”
What do you think of this? I didn't hear any acknowledgement of this so not sure if that was intentional.
At the end of the day, the game just isn't finished.
@@Spokker they said it's a 10 year game soooo yeah it's not finished.
not much to say about something that doesn't exist yet
@@arbiter- I agree, but if their chief criticism is lighting, and the company announced months ago they would be working on that, it might be worth a quick shoutout. Also I’m just interested to hear if 343 gave them any feedback directly.
LOL JUST A SHIT LIE. THIS SHIT LOOKING GAME WITH RT WILL JUST MAKE IT LOOK SHITTIER
love the game . Still, I think they will never top Halo 3 with the "finish the fight" marketing. that stuff was amazing
32:40 PS1 tech style is back baby!
Indeef
Absolutely true.
I noticed the warbling on Halo 2 Anniversary in Metropolis on the battle rifle and was confused as to what was going on. Thanks for clearing this up!
2:18 crysis 3 looks better than halo infinite :D
I think the lighting is affecting the overall look of the game, as well as the shadows. Other than that its the only thing that would make it look better.
absolutely, the textures are really high res. But the lighting engine doesnt make it shine, the shadows sometimes look flat and even fake on trees for example. Hope they keep working on that
@@Superhornet331 texture are very high res but vrs is lowering their image quality a lot I think it's a mistake implementing it, wut good does a high quality texture do when u fuck it up with vrs. It looks like they only look truly good when you get close to them.
Vrs also is doing more damage than good imo. Maybe there is a problem also with texture streaming that's what I think I'm noticing 43:20
definitely lighting tech is the weakest link in this game.
Really curious to see how the future RT patch will change this for the better!
It looks like Minecraft.
Thank you for highlighting the music in such detail!! Hyped!!!
So my question is if my TV which is a three-year old LG OLED , it doesn’t have 120 Hz it’s 60Hz if I play it in performance mode am I gonna get a solid 60 frames a second the same as quality ?? Because I don’t have HDMI 2.1 and 120 frames I should get 60 on quality and performance ?? I’m guessing quality has the best graphics also