Out of curiosity, I slowed the YouTube video down to half it’s speed ar 4k and I’ve found it to be a more interesting way to observe everything that’s going on. There’s a lot of chaos, so bringing everything down to a crawl helps various UI elements, enemy actions, and combat scenarios become more noticeable in their nuance. Here are some of my observations from doing this:
I’m still of the mind that this visual style is just…not working for me. And I’m at a loss to understand why, for example, the enemy Phantoms look the way they do–as well as some of the odd, bulky shapes of the weapons. Furthermore, I can’t stand the way Chief’s hands look. They’re not just bulky, but there’s this leathery/plasticy (pleathery?) feel that just is, well, I can’t think of a better word than “uncool.” Halo 5 made the hands look more like sports gloves, and I’m not sure that’s the way to go, but perhaps somewhere in the middle. Overall, slowing the video down made me realize how much the texture and design of the gloves kind of turns me off from wanting to play it. In general, everything seems very bulky and when combined with this color palette and texture choice, that’s where I feel the plasticness seems to come from–and, in fact, the bulkiness, I realize, it’s what reminding me of Doom more so than the combat (more on that in a moment.)
UI placement and design is a mixed bag. I’m firmly on the side of saying that those golden hexagons have got to go–or at least reduce their opacity dramatically. When you slow the footage down, you get a real sense for how much they obscure the screen. I also don’t care for having ammo count over the weapon as I feel it takes away from seeing the weapon design–designs I’m already kind of torn on. I do love that they’ve gotten rid of the sort of claustrophobic design of seeing the actual helmet edges outside the visor–I felt like it started to take away serious screen real estate in Guardians. So having a nice translucent HUD in general I think is the better direction here. But, and this is the most important part for me:
I sincerely hope we have the option to lower the crosshair. After spending time going back and forth with this on MCC on PC, I really prefer a lowered crosshair for Halo since it helps with the overall scale of the environment and since we’re looking at potentially greater verticality in combat–not to mention, ya know, flying grunts, getting more visual space freed up in the higher portion of the screen would be a win for me. So I think this would be an essential feature to have as a toggle. When I play with Mouse and Keyboard, I find that I sometimes prefer a centered crosshair, but with a controller, lower is the way to go for me–and I think it would go a long way, at least for me, if it lowered some of these bulky round weapons and Chief’s glove design that is just an eyesore–again, that’s just personal preference.
Visual details are…strange. Okay, it’s a demo, so maybe this will change. But, seriously, how does the Warthog not leave tire tracks in its wake? Check out Uncharted: The Lost Legacy for what I think is a great example of a vehicle really feeling like it’s interacting with its environment through motion (and, no, this isn’t about a PlayStation v. Xbox kind of thing–I’m merely pointing to another modern game which, at the time of Infinite’s release, could be considered “last gen”.) This extends to visual features all over the presentation; bland rock textures and ground–especially at a distance. This stands out to me more because the point of this game is to be open and expansive so…if we’re getting this “vista simulator” if you will, I really would like it if distant objects looked better and more detailed. When combined with the very colorful palette we’re seeing, I think this is why people are finding it to look like a cartoon more than anything else. Things just sit…odd in the foreground and background. This all could be the result of an early demo, but I really hope it changes. Also, the bullet streaks that you initially see as soon as Chief opens up on those Grunts? Yeah, those just look…odd…and, also, contribute to a “cartoon” kind of vibe since they’re quite colorful and stylized.
Combat is Halo…mostly. Okay, so slowing it down you can clearly see that the new VK78 does not “ADS” as we think of it in, say Call of Duty or Destiny. It’s a slightly more stylized version of what we’ve had in Halo 1 through, basically, 4. It’s not even what we have in Halo 5. As to bloom, to my eye, it does look like the guns continue to shoot fairly accurately despite the reticule “blooming.” I’m somewhat new to paying attention to bloom and bullet spread, so I think a more trained eye and perspective could get more information by watching this slowed down. Also, and this I love, targeted shots seem to make a difference. It’s very obvious when slowed down that when Chief fires at the Brute charging from the ramp before the elevator, he shoots out his leg and the Brute actually loses his balance and stumbles forward. This is great!
And with the obvious exceptions of spriting, clamber, and the grappling hook, this really just is Halo. Guns, grenades, and melee, make up the majority of the skrimishes and you can clearly see this when slowed down. Gunplay is about swapping between your two weapons when it comes to needing to shoot flesh vs shields, or when you’re out of ammo on one weapon. Since LT is bound by default (we can assume) to throwing a grenade and not zooming or ADS, that signals to me that this core loop is guns, grenades, and melee with some slight augments to the pattern by the use of the grappling hook, some slightly more advanced mobility, and equipment-use to mix up the battles from being too repetitive. The advanced movement is clearly scaled back from *Halo 5–*slow it down and you can see that this isn’t the sort of high-speed, frenetic, thrusting, sliding, sprinting, ground pounding, etc that 5 was. Slowing the footage down really made it more apparent to me how much like Halo this is over something like, say, Call of Duty, or Doom. As I said before, the bulkiness and roundness of these guns and Chief’s hands and arms feels more Doom-y to me than the actual combat.
Slowing the footage down made me appreciate the core combat and experience of what Infinite seems like it will offer, but I can’t help but feel that this demo kind of shortchanged the strengths this game is going to have–especially when it comes to visual design and the use of the advanced mobility which I think, especially on first glance, is a bit too distracting to the point where you miss the nuances, the Halo nuances, of the combat. This visual presentation–not necessarily the style, but the presentation and how things sit in the environment–still looks odd to me. The combination of color and light here just makes objects look like they’re not naturally a part of this world, that they’re not situated based on color and light that makes sense, hence the “cartoon” and “plastic” vibe–which to suggest that it looks “unnatural” is not to say that realism is what I’m desiring. I’m fine with a more stylized and colorful approach, but this just looks visually somewhat inconsistent and incoherent. I don’t believe that this is a real 3D space with real 3D objects in them–and that has nothing to do with “photorealism.” I’m hoping this is just a lack of polish in an early demo.
But yeah, combat looks like it’ll work out!