My concerns about biomes are getting worse the more I look over all the content we’ve seen from Infinite. 343 has stated that the entire game will exist within the main biome of the Pacific Northwest, albeit with several sub-biomes within (damaged parts of the ring, swamps, mountains.)
From my perspective, Infinite needs more than this single biome/color palette to thrive. Would you have bought Halo: CE, if the entire campaign looked like the level Halo? Frankly, that is how Infinite looks so far, based on literally everything we’ve seen of the game (aside from the game engine demo in 2018.)
So what do you think? Have we already seen the basic idea of what the entire campaign environment will look like? Or will there be different areas with different color palettes, different kinds of trees, etc?
Now think back on the July demo. Notice anything in common? Literally every single outdoor image we have seen of the campaign, including concept art, shows the exact same biome. Look far into the distance, or look in the far corners of the July demo… every bit of the campaign world we have seen is populated with the same rocky mountains, grass, trees. Now consider these screenshots from Halo: CE, 20 years ago. Notice the variety of locations and color palettes.
So what do you think? Is 343 just playing their hands close to their chest, and they haven’t yet revealed entire portions of the world that will look entirely different (maybe a la the desert or dense forest we saw in 2018 demo.) Or is this what we can expect? Would you pay $60 for the campaign if all of it was in this biome/color palette? Personally I think that might just be the final straw for me if this is really what it looks like.
I agree. I have a feeling its going to look very samey. You’d think if they were advertising how big and expansive the game is they’d be giving us content to show us how big and expansive it is. Instead it looks like you could pan around a small valley and every screenshot would look like it belonged there. You can show different environments without spoiling plot.
But hey, it gets light and dark sometimes so that totally makes up for it right?
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> I agree. I have a feeling its going to look very samey. You’d think if they were advertising how big and expansive the game is they’d be giving us content to show us how big and expansive it is. Instead it looks like you could pan around a small valley and every screenshot would look like it belonged there. You can show different environments without spoiling plot.
>
> But hey, it gets light and dark sometimes so that totally makes up for it right?
Seriously right? I have a feeling like they moved into territory they really didn’t understand (open world-ish) and that led to huge development issues (in addition to whatever reason they scrapped development a few years back and started over.) Now they are polishing it and making something decent that isn’t anywhere near as ambitious as it was supposed to be. They say the campaign is several times bigger than 4 and 5 combined, but Joe Staten says he played through the entire campaign twice during his first week on the job. So I don’t imagine it’s that huge. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have a mission or two on the Infinity or a Covenant ship, but otherwise it looks like they actually think they can sell a $60 campaign that all looks like this.
This is a pretty big concern of mine. Going from Halo CE, 2, and 3, (hell, even Halo 4 and 5), the environments are varied and incredibly diverse. Halo 3, having the Ark, Covenant, Cortana, and Halo follow sequentially, all with incredibly different settings, adds to the enormity of the game. Hell, The Covenant has two different biomes types alone. If the game looks entirely like a random walking trail around where I live, with very little diversity, I will be greatly disappointed. Hopefully, they don’t just mean grass and hills, but rather, different seasons as well.
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> This is a pretty big concern of mine. Going from Halo CE, 2, and 3, (hell, even Halo 4 and 5), the environments are varied and incredibly diverse. Halo 3, having the Ark, Covenant, Cortana, and Halo follow sequentially, all with incredibly different settings, adds to the enormity of the game. Hell, The Covenant has two different biomes types alone. If the game looks entirely like a random walking trail around where I live, with very little diversity, I will be greatly disappointed. Hopefully, they don’t just mean grass and hills, but rather, different seasons as well.
Thanks for chiming in. Yeah it’s incredible to see the different locations across 1, 2, and 3. Reach also had huge variety, caves, forests, desert, etc.
I wonder if other biomes were cut from the game? I’ve been posting on twitter with #ask343 trying to get them to address biomes.
I disagree quite strongly based on what we’ve heard so far - while the sub-biomes will not be entirely drastically different and have good cohesion, but will still offer good variety.
We’ve already heard Infinite doesn’t really have cutscenes in the traditional sense - so seems much more like a One Take style experience. - jetting halfway across the ring (as you do in CE, or having weeks pass between missions as in Reach just isn’t going to cut that so much).
I understand people’s concerns, but I think they’re founded in misunderstandings about what the experience is going to be
I think 343 has already said that the entirety of the campaign will unfortunately take place only in that one biome. I agree that it’d be so much more fun if it expanded to a desert or a jungle; the jungle parts in halo 3 were some of my favorite.
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> I disagree quite strongly based on what we’ve heard so far - while the sub-biomes will not be entirely drastically different and have good cohesion, but will still offer good variety.
>
> We’ve already heard Infinite doesn’t really have cutscenes in the traditional sense - so seems much more like a One Take style experience. - jetting halfway across the ring (as you do in CE, or having weeks pass between missions as in Reach just isn’t going to cut that so much).
>
> I understand people’s concerns, but I think they’re founded in misunderstandings about what the experience is going to be
I’m confused, so you disagree, and you think this game will do great with a single biome? I suppose to each their own… even if some areas are more like wetlands and others are mountains, if the entire game is set in an environment that is green and gray I can’t justify paying $60 for that. I’m confused why you say that the game wont have cutscenes in the traditional sense, all I’ve heard from the updates is that the transition from gameplay to cutscenes will be smooth. I certainly don’t imagine cutscenes are in first person.
> 2533274874872263;6:
> I disagree quite strongly based on what we’ve heard so far - while the sub-biomes will not be entirely drastically different and have good cohesion, but will still offer good variety.
>
> We’ve already heard Infinite doesn’t really have cutscenes in the traditional sense - so seems much more like a One Take style experience. - jetting halfway across the ring (as you do in CE, or having weeks pass between missions as in Reach just isn’t going to cut that so much).
>
> I understand people’s concerns, but I think they’re founded in misunderstandings about what the experience is going to be
The game does have traditional cutscenes, the July demo shows that pretty explicitly. They just said it would transition seamlessly from cutscene-to-gameplay, and again, we see this in the demo.
On the topic of biomes:
From a lore perspective, PNW kind of biome we’ve seen is standard for all the Halo installations. The only time we’ve seen deviations in climate on any of the rings has been because of abnormal circumstances:
-Installation 04’s weather systems weren’t functioning properly, as Cortana points out in both CE and in in the novel “The Flood”.
-Installation 05’s sentinels set up the snowy Quarantine Zone around the Library to keep a catastrophic Flood outbreak contained, though this plan failed when the UNSC and Covenant brought vehicles to the ring. (the other rings may have something like this as well, but we haven’t seen outside their Libraries).
-Installation 08 wasn’t finished yet, with weather systems likely still in development.
Just pointing out that, canonically, this is the standard biome for a Halo to have, and unless Zeta Halo’s weather systems are in serious flux we shouldn’t be seeing any other major biomes.
I personally don’t find it a good deal. I care more about the story. In Halo CE, the only real biomes were Forest PNW, Island, Snow, and Swamp. We’ve already seen swamp and PNW. Islands and snowy areas will come. The PNW isn’t just trees.
Besides, this whole game is just the level Halo from CE, but only it’s the level Halo on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas. And, the ninjas are all on fire, too.
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> > 2533274874872263;6:
> > I disagree quite strongly based on what we’ve heard so far - while the sub-biomes will not be entirely drastically different and have good cohesion, but will still offer good variety.
> >
> > We’ve already heard Infinite doesn’t really have cutscenes in the traditional sense - so seems much more like a One Take style experience. - jetting halfway across the ring (as you do in CE, or having weeks pass between missions as in Reach just isn’t going to cut that so much).
> >
> > I understand people’s concerns, but I think they’re founded in misunderstandings about what the experience is going to be
>
> I’m confused, so you disagree, and you think this game will do great with a single biome? I suppose to each their own… even if some areas are more like wetlands and others are mountains, if the entire game is set in an environment that is green and gray I can’t justify paying $60 for that. I’m confused why you say that the game wont have cutscenes in the traditional sense, all I’ve heard from the updates is that the transition from gameplay to cutscenes will be smooth. I certainly don’t imagine cutscenes are in first person.
and
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> > 2533274874872263;6:
> > I disagree quite strongly based on what we’ve heard so far - while the sub-biomes will not be entirely drastically different and have good cohesion, but will still offer good variety.
> >
> > We’ve already heard Infinite doesn’t really have cutscenes in the traditional sense - so seems much more like a One Take style experience. - jetting halfway across the ring (as you do in CE, or having weeks pass between missions as in Reach just isn’t going to cut that so much).
> >
> > I understand people’s concerns, but I think they’re founded in misunderstandings about what the experience is going to be
>
> The game does have traditional cutscenes, the July demo shows that pretty explicitly. They just said it would transition seamlessly from cutscene-to-gameplay, and again, we see this in the demo.
Evidently I wasn’t clear enough - I meant in the traditional sense of acting as scene changes. I.e. the transition from first to third and back to first from what we’ve seen I expect to be more like a one-take kind of thing rather than the traditional: hours pass and you’re somewhere entirely different. As a result I do not expect we’ll see you jetting all over Zeta Halo like you did on Alpha Halo.
> 2533274892901745;10:
> On the topic of biomes:
> From a lore perspective, PNW kind of biome we’ve seen is standard for all the Halo installations. The only time we’ve seen deviations in climate on any of the rings has been because of abnormal circumstances:
>
> -Installation 04’s weather systems weren’t functioning properly, as Cortana points out in both CE and in in the novel “The Flood”.
>
> -Installation 05’s sentinels set up the snowy Quarantine Zone around the Library to keep a catastrophic Flood outbreak contained, though this plan failed when the UNSC and Covenant brought vehicles to the ring. (the other rings may have something like this as well, but we haven’t seen outside their Libraries).
>
> -Installation 08 wasn’t finished yet, with weather systems likely still in development.
>
> Just pointing out that, canonically, this is the standard biome for a Halo to have, and unless Zeta Halo’s weather systems are in serious flux we shouldn’t be seeing any other major biomes.
I think you’re conflating weather and biome slightly. I don’t deny that a Halo would naturally have multiple different biomes as we see in CE. The argument I was making was between dymanic - i.e. changing weather and static i.e. non-changing weather within a particular biome.
I disagree that Cortana explicitly demonstrates that the systems are malfunctioning: she merely hypothesises they might be malfunctioning or that it might be by design.
I’m kinda hoping that there are secretly 2-3 maps with different biomes, allowing for a warmer climate (desert/jungle) and cooler climate (high mountains/glaciers), along with the PNW map we have seen.
I understand were MorseyBaby is coming from with the one-take cutscenes, but also in the July demo, the scene faded in from black with a time stamp, suggesting that some considerable time had passed between then and the previous scene/mission.
For me, my biggest concern is that if the game does indeed take place on the one PNW map, then it will constrict the scale of the story.
In CE we visited the Control Room, Cartographer, a Flood research facility, and the landing sites for 2 spaceships. I would hate for 343 to have to come up with some ‘convoluted’ reason for all of the important locations in Infinite’s story to be crammed in to one local area on the Halo. The rings have a surface area of just over 6 million km squared. Even if scale-wise, the PNW map is five times the size of GTA V’s map, it would only make it 380 km squared.
That’s not to say they can’t tell a compelling story in a small space, they did it with ODST, but that was arguably quite a different game.
I think people dramatically underestimate how different “sub-biomes” can be. Reach is a great example of this, outside of a few missions (New Alexandria comes to mind) the game is set in the same “biome” yet there are diverse looks between sub-biomes.
Don’t just assume because they said it’ll be PNW we’ll just be walking through pines for hours.
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> I think people dramatically underestimate how different “sub-biomes” can be. Reach is a great example of this, outside of a few missions (New Alexandria comes to mind) the game is set in the same “biome” yet there are diverse looks between sub-biomes.
>
> Don’t just assume because they said it’ll be PNW we’ll just be walking through pines for hours.
Entirely agree. I’ve never been fortunate enough to visit PNW, but I imagine the area around Seattle is quite different to the more mountainous inland areas. PNW as an area to draw from is huge - including at least 3 US states and one Canadian province. Indeed you could argue most of the CE environments fit well into that PNW mould
Whilst I understand your worry, I have the same worry, but I suggest looking at the PNW biome and the sub-biomes itself. They do vary considerably.
I guess we’ll have to wait until we get more information.
I think a good example of how it can still be one biome but have diversity is the level The Covenant in Halo 3. Most of that level feels like a summer day at the water’s edge in a PNW biome. But, once the shield generators are down, we go through this very short corridor and all of a sudden we’re in a winter wonderland. Now, it still has the tall pines scattered throughout so it’s a PNW biome but it feels completely different from the rest of the level.
With that being said, do I wish there were more? Absolutely. I’ll always take more diversity in environments. But I think a lot of people are forgetting this game has a planned 10 year life cycle. There’s still a lot of opportunity to explore different biomes in the coming years. As long as the setting we get makes sense and meshes well with the story they’re telling, I can hold off on seeing drastically different environments for now.
I love variety so I’m always in favor of more biomes but this isn’t a regular Halo game or run of the mill open world game. I suggest waiting to see what their vision plays out like before deciding not to play it just because there isn’t any snow or deserts.
It’s interesting that you are using Halo CE as an example of varied biomes when much of the outdoor biomes are very similar and 1/4 of the game is backtracking through those same biomes. Halo CE has Alpine, Alpine with snow, Alpine at night, covenant interior, UNSC interior, forerunner, and swamp. Lighting in Halo CE levels helped make things look different, that is what makes the levels Halo vs Silent Cartographer vs Truth and Reconciliation look different despite using much of the same assets. Halo Infinite will have dynamic lighting so that will change the look and feel of all areas. Out of all of the biomes in infinite vs Halo CE, we can’t be sure the snow-covered one exists because there is no direct confirmation from the team. All of the others we know exist because 343 has stated these are things in the game. We have barely seen any of the game. Based on what we know as far as biomes are concerned, at a minimum, there are just as many as Halo CE which we can all agree was a successful game despite only having 7 truly unique biomes.
I think we need to not get too worried about the game yet. We have not seen gameplay for Infinite in a while, only screenshots. There is a lot this game will have, and we’ll never know how we truly feel about Infinite’s campaign until we finish it. It’s possible that the developers can’t tell us everything yet regarding the environments, and what they have showed us looks good so far in my opinion.
