Much has been said about Halo Infinites visuals in the hardcore fanbase in here, on reddit, on Twitter and so forth. From my point of view, the game looks good and will only look better when it gets released. I wanted to lay out what i consider to be important from a visual perspective…and its more than meets the eye so to say.
I see some aspects that could greatly improve the overall visual fidelity that does not require to throw out all assets out of the window, that is not going to happen anyway and is not necessary.
Please take a look at this gif:
At first glance, this looks great to me. BUT: The world is quite static. Except for some small wildlife, a bouncing Warthog (looking good!!!) and some smallscale water- and mudsplashes your actions, in this case driving the Warthog, do not seem to do much.
Looking at this GIF specifically, what i really hope they add is more environmental interactivity/physics/cause-and-effect type of stuff.
Tracks in the mud from the Warthog, mud splattering on the Warthog, the Warthog getting wet from the water. Grass bending when driving and walking through, grass waving in the wind, branches of trees reacting when touching them, shooting at them, reacting to shockwaves from explosions etc.
From my POV, “graphics”, meaning surface details, model details, simply put, age. But these things if done sufficiently well don´t age as much. The sparks from shooting the AR in Halo CE at a metal wall still look great, the tons of shell casing flying around when shooting the Warthog gun do as well. People still admire Killzone 2´s atmospheric effects to this day and the smoke and bullet holes in FEAR still hold in motion. Right now, the world looks very static except for some physics objects like crates.