I definitely agree with jack254 (the OP). The new lighting style is so severe, and it’s inaccurate in many places. Judging by the images of Halo 2 Anniversary, the designers are trying to make Halo 1-3 look like Halo 4. I could point out many areas where the graphics of Halo 3 are superior to Halo 4, but I’ll give just one: the Spartan helmet, the most icon representation of Halo. It sits front and center on the “Master Chief Collection” art. Just compare Halo 3 and 4 by the helmet. Halo 3’s visor has excellent lighting with a decent shadow and a realistic-looking reflection. Meanwhile, Halo 4’s visor looks like a piece of plastic. It doesn’t even have a shadow. The helmet in general looks so cheesy.
Just look at Red vs. Blue. They eventually switched to Halo 4 to advance the storyline, but the graphics took a major hit. For example, look at the first (Halo 4) and second (Halo 3) images of Doc:
And you still say Halo 4 has better graphics? Get real.
343 Industries, please do not make Halo 4’s graphic style your target across games. Halo 1 and 2 should be made to look like 3. As far as I’m concerned, Halo 3 could be left alone. And, man, would Halo 4 be great if they’d use Halo 3’s graphics and get rid of all that new multiplayer Call of Duty junk. But that is a different discussion.
Ugh the amount of wrong here makes me worry about you people. First off have you played Halo CE or Halo 3? They all have smooth and chrome like forerunner structures, Halo 2 is the only Halo (with a Halo) that had ruins and dull forerunner structures.
And before I get the obvious “BUT DUDE I PLAYED HAlO CE ITS DULL!”. No it’s not, It’s limited graphically, the structures are smooth, and Halo 3 is very “jaggy” and angled, as well as chromed and shiny…
The fact is Halo 3 and Halo 4 are closer than you people are willing to admit, yes Halo 4 has a specific design BUT EVERY SINGLE HALO GAME AS A SPECIFIC DESIGN. Halo 4 is just another, and it follows the Halo formula fine. Infact Halo 2 is one of the more “dull” of the Halo’s. Which gives me to the point of OP’s post.
It’s going to look more clear and nice because they can. They have a on-scale Halo ring rotating around the map, you know why? Because they can. Because 343 is actually putting some love into the game. They could have just given you the same map and done no work. Yet you fail to realize the amount of work that goes in here, Will it look like “halo 4”, sure. Yet is that bad? No. Infact I don’t get the problem, you act like Halo 1, 2, 3 were all bricks and stone and Halo 4 introduced metallic design. It’s a small step.
Also they may have classic Halo 2 versions of the 6 remade maps. Remember Halo CEA, they had classic versions and the anniversary versions.
So please why complain about something that
1-Shows hard work and beauty (implying that HALO2A skybox isn’t -Yoinking!- amazing)
2-You can play classic mode and not see new graphics
THANK you. That was a point I intended to make, is that the original Xbox simply couldn’t handle things like this. We have no idea what Bungie’s forerunner architecture would look like now that we have such advanced systems that can process much more detail. I really don’t think Bungie would still be making forerunner architecture still look like scraps of metal these days.
I think the dullness of the forerunner structures in the old Halo games had more to do with console limitations than simply making them look dull because they are old. I think they would look similar to the remasters if they were made by Bungie for the first time now.
Come on Waypoint, I am disappointed. Do you really have to complain and nitpick about everything?
I think the lightening and style looks fine. It still feels like Halo and looks like Halo. If Bungie could have produced these types of graphical upgrades back in the early 2000s, then they would have and I bet it would look closer to what 343i is outputting.
> Because this is supposed to be like a HD remake of a game bungie made. You don’t remake Aliens vs predator and give it crash bandicoots artstyle, do you?
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> Especialy when you’ve got cairo station becoming overcontrasting and oversaturating in terms of gameplay but the cutscenes are grittier than the original game (though arguably more accurate)
As I recall 343 did say this wasn’t a remake, but an upgrade. And if you seen the same map everyone else has. It surely looks like a major upgrade to me.,
It is meant to be a re-imagining, not a full HD recreation. MP maps are beautiful in their own right, and campaign looks good so far as well. Your complaints are unmerited and don’t have a sound base of argument.
> It is meant to be a re-imagining, not a full HD recreation. MP maps are beautiful in their own right, and campaign looks good so far as well. Your complaints are unmerited and don’t have a sound base of argument.
"Halo 4 forerunner style, not the appropriate Bungie/halo 2 forerunner style"
Could you please put some more emphasis on why the stye is not appropriate please? From my personal experiences in games development it is not easy to replicate art styles where there is not much detail to work on as the limitations were different back then, it normally ends up looking cartoonish… But remember its an anniversary map not the more accurately recreated campaign…
"Improper use of lighting (light from the blackness of space. Really?)"
The lighting is correct. Let me ask you if its not from space where you thinkg Earth gets it light from? The clouds? Nope. Cairo Station gets it light from the same place. The Sun.
"Not only is the lighting wrong, the colours are wrong"
It is more saturated, and it is a different time of day/weather. I wouldn’t necessarily call it “wrong” though. It looks more to me like 10 years of advancements in real time rendering. Plus they never promised an identical style like the do with gameplay etc. As a mentioned it is not easy to realistically replicate old art styles with new technology.
> Right. Halo 2 Is a bungie halo game. Bungie’s halo games were different from a 343 game and so a halo 2 remake should keep that difference. The first halo games were less saturated. They had this kind of contrast between the coloured-yet pale environments and the very saturated bolts of plasma and that worked beautifuly. Their forerunner architecture wasn’t shiny and new; It was dull, desolate and derelict and it added to the greater notion that the forerunners, an ancient race, are dead and out of reach. 343 had a different aproach; The forerunners are nearer, newer and more vibrant, but this isn’t a 343 game and we’re not fighting prometheans.
Have you ever considered that the reason why all of the Forerunner architecture in Halo 1/2 was dull is because of the hardware limitations of the original Xbox? Look at the map Valhalla in Halo 3, or all of the Forerunner forge pieces in Halo: Reach’s Forge World. Fun fact: They’re shiny.
So there are these things in space called “stars”, in fact we have one in our galaxy called “The Sun”. Now, these “stars” are actually big balls of fire in space that generate light! How weird is that! What you will find is that if you look at pictures from events, like say, the Moon landing, the terrain is all lit up, despite that there are no lights around, or even if you look outside during the day, the reason it is light outside is because of the sun! Insane right! Isn’t space so weird and wonderful!
On another note, once again, have you considered that the reason why there weren’t any shadows in the original version of Halo 2 is because of the hardware limitations of the Xbox?
This is really your only valid point here. The geometry will be different, but you will also note that if 343 were to add rocks like that in the remastered version of Ascension, they would look damn ugly as they would have a super low polygon count, or they could up the visual polygon count and be left with rocks that are misleading like the ones in Halo: CEA (Damn you Truth and Reconciliation!)
343 have done a damn fine job at recreating Halo 2, and they have gone above and beyond with the cutscenes for the game. The end result of so much effort boils down to a game that looks amazing. Just because 343 made it prettier, doesn’t make the whole game bad.
I’m going to purposefully nitpick here but to everybody calling stars “big balls of fire” you’re description is rather incorrect. You see, fire is the product of combustion reactions which can only take place in the presence of oxygen specifically double bonded oxygen.
First off, the Multiplayer is built off the Halo 4 Engine, not the Halo 2 one. It is designed to be 343i’s take on what Halo 2 would have been like if it was made with the technology we have today. There’s a lot more about the maps that are, by purposeful design, different, including several factors of the entire layout overall.
Secondly: The “Blackness of Space” isn’t exactly where Cairo Station is. Cairo Station is in Earth’s orbit, meaning that somewhere in what you’re calling the “Blackness of Space” is actually a Star we call the Sun which would light up Cairo through it’s windows about with about the same effect it has here on Earth. I trust that 343i’s design team purposely made it so that if you look out the windows from lit up areas you can see the Sun burning bigger and brighter than the other stars in the sky.
