I finally understand why Halo 3’s environments, colors, and lighting looks so good compared to Halo 4 and Halo 5. And why everything “pops”. Four words: Lack of color grading.
Halo 3’s environments were created to look as photorealistic as possible. The realistic and “popping” look to every environment is a result of the very real colors. Compare these environments to the Halo 4 environments below these links:
http://www.electricblueskies.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Halo-3-Chronicles-Sierra-117-4.1.jpg
http://www.electricblueskies.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Halo-3-Postcards-The-Ark-4.jpg
Halo 4 and 5, by contrast, always have color grading applied to it, a sort of “filter” to tint every scene a certain shade of color. The result is that nothing in a specific scene pops out, everything blends together, and of course, looks less realistic. I’ll say though, some levels benefit from it more than others based on the story theme and setting. Anyway, Halo 4 and 5’s polygon count, textures, shaders, and lighting are all very advanced and impressive, but it’s the color grading that puts their environments below Halo 3’s.
Why would they tint everything in Halo 4 and 5 a certain color? Because it’s a result of these two games mimicking modern hollywood films. Mainstream films nowadays always have a strict color scheme; the most common being blue and orange. While I’m glad to see Halo 4 and 5 avoid blue and orange color schemes (unless it’s relevant to the story like between the Librarian and Didact), I’m disappointed to see every scene in these two games look incredibly flat thanks to the single color applied over entire environments. I’ll give you examples.
Dawn: Blue-green
Requiem: Bright Yellow
Forerunner: Purple
Infinity: Army Green, and then Dark Blue
Reclaimer: Orange and green-blue indoors
Shutdown: White glow over the whole level
Composer: Some blue and white glows
Midnight: This one uses a nice combination of colors, and the use of orange is justified because of the Didact
If you’re having trouble believing the color grading, just look at Chief in any given level, and you’ll find you can NEVER get a neutral, accurate depiction of Chief’s armor’s shade of green; it’s always tinted to match the respective level.
The best example of color grading, by far, is Valhalla between Halo 3 and 4. Note the tinted filter over the entire Halo 4 level.
Let’s take these images of Crow’s Nest. Imagine what it would look like if it were made for Halo 4.
http://www.electricblueskies.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Halo-3-Postcards-Crows-Nest-2.jpg
First off, there would be a yellowish glowy filter over the entire image, the lights on the ceiling would be glaringly bright, and the outside world the hanger looks out into the African landscape would have a harsh yellow glow to it with a distracting lens flare effect. The result is a seriously unmemorable, and over exaggerated scene.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find looking at a color graded image or scene to be… “gross” to the eyes. I think “gross” is the best way I can describe how tinting a scene makes me feel.
In Halo 3, I never felt I was looking at the environments through blue, orange, or green tinted glasses. I always felt I was looking at a real place with real colors. Everything in Halo 4, and so far with what we’ve seen of Halo 5, it all looks flat because of the color grading. However, I think Halo 5 is doing it to a lesser extent than Halo 4, and it benefits greatly, so I’m thankful for that.
This isn’t to say color grading should never be used. If a scene takes place in a burning ship, feel free to use as much orange as you want. Or if it benefits the story in some meaningful way, like with the Librarian and Didact, sure. But for normal scenes, no color grading.
The second contributing factor to Halo 4 and 5’s inferior look is the overuse of bright lights and lens flares also damages the look of an environment since it distorts the colors. If you use too many bright lights that glare over everything, the result is the same as color grading. Brights lights only serve to blend all the colors together into a big unmemorable mess. Battlefield 3 made this mistake by making the entire game blue, but thankfully fixed it for Battlefield 4.
I ask only that Halo 5 is allowed to portray real colors instead of having these cheap grading and filtering “techniques”. Stop trying to mimick hollywood movies because it hurts the games’ timelessness in the long term.
EDIT: I can’t believe I have to explain this again, but I am talking purely about color choices and lighting of environments. The environments are the ONLY things in Halo 3 that look better than Halo 4. Facial models, most texture work, polygon count, weapon models, enemy models, and animation are all vastly superior in Halo 4. Let’s stick to only talking about colors and lighting of environments.
