Are Better Graphics Really Better??

Community General Discussion
1

Hey Guys, Wanted to discuss over a sirious conflict iv seen between many players over the years, and thats the graphics. So If you know The cinematics for the HW2 and HW2 nightmare had most of us drooling and the smaller detailed maps in Halo 5 on the guns down missions had to have been some of the main highlights of the new titles. Do you think that having more realistic graphics is better, or are u an OG and like the old days of Combat evolved, and Rooster Teeths Red vs Blue? im not saying either is wrong but there are many things not just the graphics that are posotives for the old and new titles. Here are a few examples

For the newer Games i think we can all agree that the graphics were awsome. reffering to Halo 5 not HW2 Lol, but the campeighn was rather short and there wasnt much depth to the story being told. the foucus of H5 was more geared twoard multiplayer experience and the release of Arena with a newer fresh more fast and competitve game style not liked by all.

For the older ones, there were definatly not as good graphics, and the controls were diffrent but we got well rounded out long campeign. and the story was the main focus for 343i

Let me know what your oppinion is on the matter it dosent have to just be graphics, im sure we can think up some other good points for either side.

<mark>mod edit: moved to General Discussion</mark>

2

As an OG player, I love the more realistic graphics. They have made the games a more immersive experience for me. I don’t really see a connection between graphics and story, as I see the graphics as more of an appetizer while the story is the main entree. You can have an immersive experience with graphics along with a fantastic story, as evidenced by the anniversary editions of CE and Halo 2.

3

Graphics in a triple-a game are definitely important. However, as is the case for any game, no amount of pretty textures and hardware showcases can make up for terrible gameplay. I’m generalizing here, not necessarily saying gameplay in any Halo game is terrible. Halo set a pretty high bar by excelling in all areas: gameplay, graphics, music, dialog, narration, plot, on-foot combat, vehicle combat, enemy variety, multiplayer maps, multiplayer modes, and the list goes on… In many ways, Halo players are spoiled since not many (if any) games do all those things right.

The challenge for any company that has developed Halo is making sure every one of those aspects is perfect. If that’s not the case, it becomes immediately obvious and comparisons to prior titles are sure to arise.

So to answer your question, I think Halo has consistently done graphics (and tech showcases in general) incredibly well. I like the progression in graphical technology, especially what we got with H2A. But, somewhere along the line, it lost a bit of what made it unique by changing up tactics to follow some other franchises instead of sticking to what worked well. Games from Reach until Halo Wars 2 did a lot of those things I mentioned above right, but they missed out on one or more of them. Reach divided players because of its loadouts, Halo 4 introduced built-in sprint, Halo 5 was perceived as a CoD clone with all sorts of movement mechanics and awful narration (the plot and characters deserved a real writer), and Halo Wars 2 had a fantastic marketing scam post-launch and told a cool story in a bland way. Just a few examples, but I’m sure there are plenty of others.

Because of all this, some games have caused unrest. That’s not to say the older games did not have major flaws (Halo 3 BR, Halo 2 BXR, and Halo 1 vehicle damage, to name a few), but the important thing is that, looking at the big picture, they did their own thing and did it right and that’s what made them successful.

4

> 2535410704700107;1:
> or are u an OG and like the old days of Combat evolved, and Rooster Teeths Red vs Blue?

Yes. Even if Halo 3 had been in Halo 1’s graphics I would have enjoyed it because of the story, campaign, multiplayer, etc. I’m not saying we should go back to those old graphics but having the best and freshest graphics is not the end all be all of a good game. If we could get either another Halo 2-esque campaign or graphics that make a flower’s petal have little wrinkles and a little bumble bee that comes out and tips his top hat to me, I’d hope for the prior.

5

I prioritize things this way.

  • Story - Gameplay - Music - GraphicsSo, no. Having been around since the twilight days of the Atari up to now, I can tell you that graphics do not make the game. They can make it better, sure, but they are not the most important element to a video game. Honestly if we were to go back to, say, Reach era, I wouldn’t be heartbroken about it.
6

This is how I feel, Halo should stray away from the realistic graphics while still remaining grounded to reality.

The best examples of this are are not in any one game but across several. Halo 1-2 have very Cartoony looking concepts and graphics that go hand in hand with the cyberpunk settings, positives of this were limiting Enemies to the exact same skin with different color and making them fo-reflective chrome so they were easy to register as “hey that’s an elite/grunt/MP spartan”. Simplicity is key and the time to register what’s on screen and reacting to it is the name of the game in an FPS. Juicy, rich colors can be seen almost exclusively in the first two games.

A bad example is Halo Reach which plays well but the difference in all the Elites plus the boring pastel colors and over saturated textures and hyper detailed models make it hard for some people to register an enemy from long and sometimes medium distance.

Some of the best “realism” are the things people don’t like talking about (which are also my favorite things) like the evenly spaced out and functional design of the Gen 2 armor, which takes the concept of Reach’s Spartan armor placement and makes it beleiveable with its maneuverability but high fantasy in its shapes of the armor. Another is the Halo Reach Sniper Rifle which has such amazing shapes to it compared to the snipers we have seen but in real life would be absurd and unwieldy.

Bad and examples include things like Master chief in Halo 2-3 only because his hip/crotch/thighs/shoulders/back torso all clip through each other, meaning they in real life would limit range of movement to less than that of what we see in the games, thus breaking the suspension of disbelief for many who say old mark 6 is more realistic then gen 2 mark 6. There is an amazing image of halo 3 chief T posing, and the way they get the model to do that without the shoulder clipping the torso is by pulling the arm and stretching it, based on that if chief needed to move the way the books or even the game implies with the old suit he would rip John’s arms from the socket or worse. (It should Be known full MOCAP didn’t exist in games until reach, this was the best guess they’d had at proportions) (EDIT: Bungie also admitted after halo 3 was made and reach began production that they screwed up proportion on how the armor should be designed in both vidoc and live play)

another example of bad “realism” is the halo Reach and Halo 4/5 marine uniform which is bulky and busy compared to the sleek yet unrealistic Halo 1-2 designs which are just standard green/grey uniforms with armor plating and rubber tread (like the marines from aliens) which are by no means credible protection but look more flashy and visually appealing to the viewer.

There are a lot of hit or miss when it comes to realism and halo, I firmly believe that’s because Halo started and was meant to stay “unrealisitc” by traditional standards, instead it takes something not realistic in shape and form and grounds it in reality by how it’s seen in motion and interacted. This is why brightly colored aliens with spikey chrome armor and 7 foot tall green cyborg mech suits work when reality says “that’s bogus”.

Life, REALITY in general has a lot of dull colors and overflowing detail. Your Eye and mind don’t process it all and tend to simplify details. I Have a 4 year degree in Illustration and Design, one of my favorite teachers said “reality is visually boring, the mind in memory tends to enhance colors/features based on how we perceive things and not as they are so they are more exciting to us.” And the More you study the subject the More you understand something streamlined is more often then not easier for the viewer to digest, and that “more details, more gritty colors, over saturated multiple texture layers” aren’t real answer.

One last thing: I really like the halo CE/2 models for chief because he has worn battle elements like damage/scuffs in his armor but it still reflects a polished high green series of colors when you see it move which was abcent in every game after except halo 5 (but only really close up) and that feels like the best compromise realism in a high fructose fantasy universe like Halo.

7

Bottom line, gameplay is more important than graphics. There are many great games with bad graphics. Then there are games that have good graphics but are bad. The really good games are the ones that can combine both. Halo has done that before, so I’d hope it can do it again.

8

I’m a bit confused about the meaning of “better graphics” in the OP. Are we talking about higher fidelity graphics in a strictly technical sense, or about or visual realism? Because these two things are definitely not the same, and to me “better graphics” indicates the more technical side of pushing more computationally expensive effects, but the OP seems to be conflating the two.

If we’re talking purely about graphical fidelity, I think the answer is fairly simple: higher graphical fidelity is always better to the extent that it doesn’t compromise the rest of the experience (e.g. by forcing a framerate that is too low for the needs of the game). This answer is of course a bit disingenuous in the sense that in reality essentially any graphics decision impacts other parts of the game, so there is no situation in practice where you can push for higher fidelity without abandoning some possibilities. However, what I mean is that there is no inherent value in low graphical fidelity. There may be practical constraints, and artistic choices that don’t need all the available graphics performance, but in the ideal world, you’d always want to find a use for unused GPU clcock cycles.

When it comes to visual realism, I think the answer is again fairly obvious: no. Not every artistic decision in a game needs to, or even should, be made to pursue a more photorealistic look. I think people understand the concept of doing things narratively, or in gameplay design that aren’t realistic to create an experience that is more fun, more interesting, more engaging. The visual art is no different. The real world is occassionally beautiful, but often boring. Some of the most beautiful skyboxes in Halo have come from neglecting how space looks. Furthermore, with Halo’s competitive multiplayer, it’s advisable to keep visual noise to a minimum, which might necessitate making some artistic decisions that go against visual realism.

9

If we’re talking splitting resources then I would choose to have worse graphics if it meant a better campaign/maps/gameplay but if that’s not an issue yeah I think better graphics are better. I don’t want to play a game in 2018 on XB1 that looks like a game from 2001 on an Xbox. I get people like that nostalgia factor of older graphics like the 100’s of 8/16 bit side scrollers that come out every year but I’m not a fan, I’d much rather the developer take advantage of the more powerful platforms and engines.

10

Not really, at this point games exceed the standard as is, it’s become obnoxious to me to see people still wanting the devs to push even further when they could put more work on the technical side of things. I don’t want eye candy :+1:

11

Not sure what graphics have to do with the story. H5 could’ve had a long and in-depth story, but it just wasn’t written that way and that’s what we got. The graphics would still be the same if we had a long story as well. Your point would probably be better suited for a small game that doesn’t have much resources, but Halo particularly with H5 is a triple-A game.

For your question, I don’t think graphics matter as much as long as the game is good.

12

> 2533274825830455;8:
> I’m a bit confused about the meaning of “better graphics” in the OP. Are we talking about higher fidelity graphics in a strictly technical sense, or about or visual realism? Because these two things are definitely not the same, and to me “better graphics” indicates the more technical side of pushing more computationally expensive effects, but the OP seems to be conflating the two.
>
> If we’re talking purely about graphical fidelity, I think the answer is fairly simple: higher graphical fidelity is always better to the extent that it doesn’t compromise the rest of the experience (e.g. by forcing a framerate that is too low for the needs of the game). This answer is of course a bit disingenuous in the sense that in reality essentially any graphics decision impacts other parts of the game, so there is no situation in practice where you can push for higher fidelity without abandoning some possibilities. However, what I mean is that there is no inherent value in low graphical fidelity. There may be practical constraints, and artistic choices that don’t need all the available graphics performance, but in the ideal world, you’d always want to find a use for unused GPU clcock cycles.
>
> When it comes to visual realism, I think the answer is again fairly obvious: no. Not every artistic decision in a game needs to, or even should, be made to pursue a more photorealistic look. I think people understand the concept of doing things narratively, or in gameplay design that aren’t realistic to create an experience that is more fun, more interesting, more engaging. The visual art is no different. The real world is occassionally beautiful, but often boring. Some of the most beautiful skyboxes in Halo have come from neglecting how space looks. Furthermore, with Halo’s competitive multiplayer, it’s advisable to keep visual noise to a minimum, which might necessitate making some artistic decisions that go against visual realism.

I think I was just saying that some halo fans like me liked the older big open maps and not super cutting edge graphics that games like reach and halo 2 had to offer, and I wanted to discuss weather or not people think that games like HW2 and Halo5 are more liked because of their graphics and cutscenes over the actual story. what im saying is that like some other posts have mentioned is that better graphics cant make up for the lack of a story; again my opinion but i feel as thought halo 5 could have had a few more campeighn missions and maybe a cooler story, and the big one that messed some people up from 2015 when they killed Jul M Dama in the first campeign mission and not even with Masterchief. Overall I think 343i did a great job at creating halo 5 EXPECIALLY for adding a TON of new things like guns down missions, Warzone, Req system so much other test things they put into halo 5 but i still wanted to see some other opinions

13

Tbh, if I’ve pick between good story or good graphics, I rather have good story.

14

I think Graphics are overrated and should take a back seat to art style. I have played many games that lack the best graphics but have provided some of the best gameplay.

EDIT: I think of graphics as being more representative of realistic features rather then a distortion of reality (art style).

15

Well… that’s subjective. I suppose it really comes down to how well the graphics age over time. The graphics of Halo: Combat Evolved still hold up rather well and have a timeless quality to them, despite clearly being older in comparison to everything made since then. Halo 2, however, may have had better graphics than Halo: Combat Evolved on the whole, but some things actually looked and felt better in Combat Evolved, and certain textures actually looked less realistic in H2 than in CE, despite the newer graphics. Perhaps the question should be… are newer graphics better?

Although, one cannot argue that graphics do play an important role in the immersion of the player into the world of the game, and may in fact be just as important as the story and gameplay, although gameplay performance takes precedence over everything else in the long run.

16

As an og player I enjoy really good graphic. They help bring the world to life and immerse you deeper into the story and world.

17

Sometimes I find myself wondering what we’d be able to do with video games in general if there wasn’t all this pressure to have the most cutting-edge graphics in damn near every title out there, not just Halo. Some people expect top-notch graphics so much that they let it affect their review scores, which in turn pushes game developers to keep prioritizing them. In my opinion, devs and critics both worry too much about graphics. Yeah, having crystal clear images in 1080p or 4K or whatever is hyped up these days is nice, but what does that mean if gameplay suffers because of it?

I’m not saying that Halo is sacrificing gameplay for graphics, but I just can’t help but imagine what game devs could accomplish without the weight of graphical expectations on their shoulders. Halo 5 takes up 80 or 90 gigabytes of data, somewhere around that ballpark. How much of that data is just pixels on the screen? I can’t say I know for certain, but it seems to me that these “upgraded” graphics correlate with an exponential spike of data use by modern games. Let’s take a moment and imagine what Halo 5 would be like if there were no set expectations for graphics. Let’s imagine what it would be like if it had the same quality of graphics as an older title, like Halo 3 or Reach.

The game would still benefit from the increased amount of power the Xbox One can provide over the 360, but that power could be allocated to things other than graphics. Would it be possible to use this extra power for better AI? Render more combatants in a single battlefield? Allow for more dynamic events, like what we see on H2A multiplayer maps? I’m no expert, I have don’t know if advanced graphics actually hold back possibilities like this, but the idea still interests me.

At the end of the day, quality of graphics are a low priority for me. I don’t let them sway my opinion of a game, though it’s important to acknowledge that there is a difference between graphics and art style. Anyway, what I care most about in a game is quality of gameplay and storytelling.

18

The graphics don’t really matter to me as long as the Story and Gameplay is good

19

Its a combination of graphics and a good art style that make the visuals feel right. Look at Halo 4 and how while the graphics looked good, some of the arnour and weapons felt off.