This is something I felt like talking about for a while now. I just felt like Halo 4 could have been much more if 343 had more hardware to work with. Though I enjoy playing Halo 4, just think about it. Though Halo 4 did look stunning at times (graphically + native 720p) I felt like the scale of the battles had to be cut down a bit in the campaign. Also Halo 4 was shorter than previous Halo (my first playthrough was 8 hours due to a glitch that forced me to restart one of the missions). Plus 343 couldn’t fit the multiplayer and campaign into one disk and you had to download War Games seperately which is why Halo 4 came with 2 dvds. I also heard that when Bungie was developing Halo 2 they were also bottlenecked with the original Xbox’s hardware limits and they had to cut back on some things. It feels like 343 ran into the same problem with Halo 4. Also I noticed more low res textures and texture pop in more with Halo 4. Let me know what you think.
Indeed the hardware limitations of the Xbox 360 did limit the overall scope of Halo 4. It is even stated in some reviews I saw of Halo 4. Sad to see the full dream could be seen.
Hopefully 343 can make the next Halo more bigger with the next-gen Xbox. 
I’ve heard several mentions of this exact problem from people before. Especially the large scale battles. Also, while predominate textures look amazing, if you zoom in on a phantom and look closely, they appear half-rendered, especially compared to Halo 3 & Reach.
I also heard there wasn’t enough space to contain a full theater mode (campaign / Spartan Ops). And having a 3rd disc, like LA Noire, I’m assuming would have been costly.
Halo 4 seems like a glimpse into what 343 wants to do graphically and keeps me excited for what they can come up with on the XBox One.
Yes it did. 343 were limited by the Xbox 360’s processing power and the size of the game discs among other things.
The game was indeed limited by the Xbox 360’s dated hardware. Some viDocs even feature people who worked on the game state that they drove the game to the console’s absolute limits and had to do some “technological trickery” and cut back on some things.
I would have liked to have seen Halo 4 as an early title for Xbox One instead. Just imagine what 343 will be able to do with Halo on a next-gen (current-gen, actually haha) console!
Of course. Almost all games are limited by a console’s hardware, especially a couple of years after release. There are many games that look better on the PC (or even PS3) than the Xbox 360-- Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty, among others.
Or course. The terminals might have been in game if the disks had more apace I think.
The fact Halo 4 released only Months before Microsoft’s Xbox One’s event was a sign of struggles to come. I don’t think it is solely the fault of ‘newer persons’ in 343 Industries. Some of my friends were too hyped for Microsofts next (current) generation console. Also the Xbox 360’s limits kinda became apparent with some of the NPC designs looking ridiculously more detailed than player-characters. But their initial scale felt unnatural if not completely out of proportion. I liked how the NPC Recruits looked- that’s how the armor in-game should have looked.
> The fact Halo 4 released only Months before Microsoft’s Xbox One’s event was a sign of struggles to come. I don’t think it is solely the fault of ‘newer persons’ in 343 Industries. Some of my friends were too hyped for Microsofts next (current) generation console. Also the Xbox 360’s limits kinda became apparent with some of the NPC designs looking ridiculously more detailed than player-characters. But their initial scale felt unnatural if not completely out of proportion. I liked how the NPC Recruits looked- that’s how the armor in-game should have looked.
NPCs? Explain.
> NPCs? Explain.
I think he’s actually referring to the pre-rendered cinematics.
> Or course. The terminals might have been in game if the disks had more apace I think.
If the 360 supported blu-ray then we wouldn’t have these kind of disk space related limitations.
> > NPCs? Explain.
>
> I think he’s actually referring to the pre-rendered cinematics.
Even with a good PC, those graphics wouldn’t really be achievable pretty sure. Rendering the cutscenes likely takes some time.
> I also heard there wasn’t enough space to contain a full theater mode (campaign / Spartan Ops).
Actually, the theatre mode is functional and fully capable of recording in campaign and Spartan Ops. However, missions in campaign which involve quicktime events cause theatre controls to become unusable, and the maps were never updated with invisible borders to restrict the camera, which is likely why 343i disabled it before release. Frankie has stated before that they “ran out of time” with theatre.
I guess I am backwards - I’d rather they had focused on game-play more (less linear campaign for one) and not worried about squeezing in the last bit of pretty graphics on the Grunts and Marines. I have dozens of older PC and console games that have terrible graphics by today’s standards, but are a better play that Halo 4.
The 360’s dated hardware limited what was graphically feasible, sure. It is, however, quite disingenuous to blame the overall underwhelming nature of the game on the hardware.
“Lack of disc space” is a terrible excuse - this game has considerably less content than Reach. The only aspect of the game that justifies use of more disc space is the use of prerendered cutscenes. All previous entries in the franchise rendered those in-game.
I will say that, though I’m not a fan of the art direction in this game, it is impressive that they managed to get the 360 to pull it off. I think the sort of “plastic” look everything has in this game is awful, though.
> > The fact Halo 4 released only Months before Microsoft’s Xbox One’s event was a sign of struggles to come. I don’t think it is solely the fault of ‘newer persons’ in 343 Industries. Some of my friends were too hyped for Microsofts next (current) generation console. Also the Xbox 360’s limits kinda became apparent with some of the NPC designs looking ridiculously more detailed than player-characters. But their initial scale felt unnatural if not completely out of proportion. I liked how the NPC Recruits looked- that’s how the armor in-game should have looked.
>
> NPCs? Explain.
NPC: Non-playable-character. He’s referring to the Spartan IVs you encounter during Campaign and Spartan Ops. You can’t play them, but they act like shielded Marines. 
No doubt. They could’ve squeezed the last drop of old generation power if it weren’t for those cursed time restraints too. The Xbox One must feature theater for all game modes, is that too much to ask?
I think development time limited Halo 4 more. Features that should have been in the game were not present at launch. Some like campaign theater are still missing.
Hardly. Most of Halo 4’s problems stem from its gameplay; being on Xbox One would not have fixed that.
So much this . . .