Aside from the over use of grey Forerunner objects, there is one thing that makes Forge bland in my opinion. It is the lighting. I want everyone to understand this first, before I make my point. Every Halo game so far aside from Halo CEA (which runs on the Saber3d engine) has used ‘caked’ in shadows for the environments. What I mean by this is that instead of a tree casting a realistic shadow that moves with the tree, and cascades over you as you pass under it, you get a shadow that is static and lifeless. It doesn’t change with the environment, nor does it act anything like a real shadow would.
To truly understand this, watch this video of Halo CEA. Notice how when the Warthog passes into the shadows you see the shadow move realistically across it. Everything is casting shadows as they should.
Now here is Halo Reach. Notice how the shadows aren’t moving along the Warthog realistically like in CEA, they are merely shading it (darkening the entire thing at once).
More examples would be to play the level Halo in CEA and walk into a shadow. You will notice that the environment casts shadows across your arms and weapons realistically. This picture of Farcry 2 will give you a better idea of what I am talking about. In Halo Reach, your arms and weapon just get darker.
Now to my main point. The lighting is why Forge maps are so bland. Take The Cage from Reach for example. Not only do the objects not cast shadows upon themselves, they simply don’t sit well in the world. Non Forge maps look alright because the lighting is set in stone, and the shadows have been caked in. In a Forge map, we don’t have that luxury to make our maps cast shadows, they just become shadowless, lifeless maps. Sure the grey can be monotenous, but it’s the lack of a proper shadowing techniques that really draws us away from the experience.
Here is another problem with the lighting. Go into Forge and place a crate. When you are close to it you will see that it is casting a shadow on itself and on the environment. Now, pick it up and notice that the shadow disappears from the environment once it reaches a certain distance. This would not happen with the new lighting. An object in the air is still going to cast that shadow on the environment, regardless of the distance. A banshee flying, no matter how high, should cast a shadow somewhere in the environment. With the current Halo lighting limitation, it doesn’t.
A lighting Engine similar to that in CEA would make Forge (and the overall game) look significantly better. The new lighting would, most likely, allow for us to change the Time of Day on the spot, or even change the suns or our main light sources location. This is because all the shadows and lighting generated is in real time. Every map would now be unique. No more monotone maps with no life.
So I am praying that Halo 4 has adopted these new lighting techniques, because it will benefit the game so much.