When it comes to art design, 343’s style in Halo certainly has its share of both fans and critics. While I myself think that 343’s designs themselves are fine, what I think sets them apart from the Bungie style is the color pallet. While Bungie’s design of the UNSC utilized a lot of matte greens and browns with really dark grays, 343 seems to have this weird obsession with stark white. The worst aspect of this, is in my opinion, the new marine armor which makes them look more like wannabe storm troopers. Same can be said for the new Spartan techsuits, rather being just black they match the armor’s primary color which makes the whole Spartan blend into a solid color rather than having the black undersuit contrast with the armor making it stand out more.
The thing is, it seems that 343 has caught on to this which is evident with Halo Wars 2. The marines have the same armor design as Halo 4/5 but simply making it camo green and brown again actually makes the design look much better.
Anything else in 343’s design that could be enhanced by a different color pallet? I feel just throwing out all of the new designs isn’t the way to resolve the art crisis Halo seems to be going through. Although mixing the style from the original trilogy and the new games is also a good option.
I hope they continue on with the newer colours, hopefully they will do a radical overhaul of the art style completely.
With the whole Infinity on the run thing at the end of Halo 5, it could be interesting to see a lot of improvised tech. Imagine new weapons and vehicles that are made by cannibalizing equipment from older games which could give a real “resistance on the run” feeling to the game. Sort of like the Battlestar Galactica remake
I agree and I also feel like the brightness in 343s armors is unrealistically high making them stand out too much and feeling kind of odd.
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> I agree and I also feel like the brightness in 343s armors is unrealistically high making them stand out too much and feeling kind of odd.
You mean the way the Spartans all appear to be glowing brightly even when standing in shadow?? 
(I’m pretty sure their reasoning for that had to do with multiplayer balancing, but still… )
Anyway, in response to the OP - agreed that the same Marine armor looked much better in Olive Drab, in Halo Wars 2, than it did in H4/H5… hopefully they keep that up. I always say in art style threads, I wouldn’t mind if their newer styles and the older ones just co-existed side by side.
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> > 2533274927085736;4:
> > I agree and I also feel like the brightness in 343s armors is unrealistically high making them stand out too much and feeling kind of odd.
>
> You mean the way the Spartans all appear to be glowing brightly even when standing in shadow?? (I’m pretty sure their reasoning for that had to do with multiplayer balancing, but still… )
>
> Anyway, in response to the OP - agreed that the same Marine armor looked much better in Olive Drab, in Halo Wars 2, than it did in H4/H5… hopefully they keep that up. I always say in art style threads, I wouldn’t mind if their newer styles and the older ones just co-existed side by side.
Yeah it probably had to do with multiplayer, but I still feel it’s kind of odd.
I think we can all universally agree that the design of Human architecture in modern Halo needs to be reconsidered. The blocky white shapes would work as a GUI but not buildings, they look very medical, bland and just all round ‘ehh’.
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> I agree and I also feel like the brightness in 343s armors is unrealistically high making them stand out too much and feeling kind of odd.
A good balance for this I’ve heard is to have the Spartans affected by lighting in the environment but bring back the lights that were on the armor in H3 and crank them up to where if someone was hiding in a dark corner someone could easily see the lights on their shoulder guards or chest plate. Not a perfect fix obviously, since its 343 they’d probably try to add a crazy lens flare effect with it.
It’s amazing what battle damage and good lighting can do for a character model.
The darker palette also helps considerably, but I do still prefer the H2A designs which are also used in the Blur cutscenes.
I know Blur puts in an insane amount of detail but I’d rather see some version of these designs than the newer armor, or at least alongside them, as I feel at least subjectively that the designs themselves are part of the issue.
As for the color palette, I think the UNSC should be talking more in terms of Woodland, Moss, Gravel, or Earthen, and less in terms of Ecru, Cream, Beige and Salmon, thus I definetly agree with HW2’s direction in that regard; The Prometheans look dumb to me in general and the ‘Covenant’ are gone (hopefully) in favor of the Banished so that problem solves itself.
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> It’s amazing what battle damage and good lighting can do for a character model.
> The darker palette also helps considerably, but I do still prefer the H2A designs which are also used in the Blur cutscenes.
>
> I know Blur puts in an insane amount of detail but I’d rather see some version of these designs than the newer armor, or at least alongside them, as I feel at least subjectively that the designs themselves are part of the issue.
>
> As for the color palette, I think the UNSC should be talking more in terms of Woodland, Moss, Gravel, or Earthen, and less in terms of Ecru, Cream, Beige and Salmon, thus I definetly agree with HW2’s direction in that regard; The Prometheans look dumb to me in general and the ‘Covenant’ are gone (hopefully) in favor of the Banished so that problem solves itself.
Well with the whole “Infinity on the run” ending that H5 gave us, I could see the UNSC developing more improvised armor caniballized from other pieces of equipment to compensate for a lack of resources. How cool would it be to see marines running around in the sequel in some kind of Mad Max style of armor… except… more Haloey
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> > 2533274900668879;9:
> > It’s amazing what battle damage and good lighting can do for a character model.
> > The darker palette also helps considerably, but I do still prefer the H2A designs which are also used in the Blur cutscenes.
> >
> > I know Blur puts in an insane amount of detail but I’d rather see some version of these designs than the newer armor, or at least alongside them, as I feel at least subjectively that the designs themselves are part of the issue.
> >
> > As for the color palette, I think the UNSC should be talking more in terms of Woodland, Moss, Gravel, or Earthen, and less in terms of Ecru, Cream, Beige and Salmon, thus I definetly agree with HW2’s direction in that regard; The Prometheans look dumb to me in general and the ‘Covenant’ are gone (hopefully) in favor of the Banished so that problem solves itself.
>
> Well with the whole “Infinity on the run” ending that H5 gave us, I could see the UNSC developing more improvised armor caniballized from other pieces of equipment to compensate for a lack of resources. How cool would it be to see marines running around in the sequel in some kind of Mad Max style of armor… except… more Haloey
Ha, yeah, I actually discussed something similar in another thread. With the current Arc there’s a perfect canonical excuse to go back to classic designs, and maybe even expand on them with new variants done in the grittier style. Threw around the idea of having Covenant armor as well, like a damaged Honor Guard’s helmet as a shoulder piece or, maybe a Spiker Bayonet on your gauntlet, something to that nature.
Wouldn’t want to go too far as you still want both sides to keep their identities, but I do like the idea of battle trophies as a form of armor.
So does Atriox apparently since he has an ODST chest-plate as part of his gear.
There’s not a “343 color pallete”. If you look at all the games they developed, they have a very different color pallete. Now if you talking about the HALO 5 color pallete, in my opinion it is the only one the colors have some ‘controversy’.
For example, the bland white UNSC architeure, I wouldn’t mind if 343 just change the colors a little bit, instead of throwing the same white shapes in almost every single map.
And the colors looks too saturated. It takes away some depht and shades in everything and make things look like plastic, imo.
That’s my problem, if they just use the color pallete from Halo 2A and Halo 4, increase the lighting and the shadows (contrast) it will make the game feel better.
There should be an option to input RGB values to get the precise color you’d want on your guy.
