343 Industries,
With Reach, forge was far improved over Halo 3, no questions about it. The new forge gave us SO MUCH MORE OF SO MANY THINGS! More editing precision. More palette objects. more more more more…
But the community ceased not to complain. We complained about the “gray” that permeated the palette. And I admit I was part of that crowd. I am not pointing the finger at them without pointing it at myself. GUILTY!
With Halo 4, even before it came out, we had a sneak preview of the 3 story building structure. The geometry was the same as in Reach, but the skin was very different. It was detailed for spartan theme. And I noted then, before the game was released, that if all the blocks were detailed like it, then the palette would be a huge step back. And I was correct.
The skins are visually noisy. They are catastrophically destructive to the cohesiveness of the forged map. There are so many noisy blocks that don’t look like they belong to each other, next to each other, blended or merged with each other, etc.
It taught me a lesson…
How I long for the gray palette of Reach - the homogeneous skins that all blended with each other, and were visually sound.
So from this perspective I ask that you consider the following with the next Halo title forge…
-
Reduce the visual noise (in many cases just go back to a neutral solid gray)
-
Make the blocks match the canvas (we know you know what this means, we saw a few examples in the palettes of the anniversary map pack)
-
Make the blocks match the theme (why do we still have Forerunner blocks and structures with Spartan skins?)
-
Make the palette match the canvas (why do we have a spartan palette on Ravine which is clearly a Forerunner theme canvas?)
I know I am asking quite early for Christmas, but hey if you plan today it will be much much easier to incorporate correctly as you begin to plan out the next title.