It’s interesting to see the events of Halo Infinite’s launch unfold. I am both intrigued and even outright perplexed by the design choices of this game and wonder if Microsoft’s marketing team watched 343’s dev team from over their shoulders throughout Infinite’s development.
Its no secret that Halo Infinite struggles to perform on PC hardware. Understandable as this new generation of components pushes the limits of new gaming standards. However, despite my appreciation of 343, the graphics rendered do not seem to justify the hardware needed for this game, specifically in the graphics card department. Nearly every build, be it low spec or full on enthusiast level, seem to struggle to keep the same smoothness that they would otherwise have no problem getting in most other games.
In my situation for example, I own an AMD R9 290x , which although slightly low end, is comparable to the majority of average GPU’s used in todays PC gaming market, such as an rx 570 or gtx 1060 for instance. In most first-person shooters, my card can at least generate 60 frames per second and keep gameplay smooth with Anti Aliasing at a resolution of 1080p (at the minimum, sometimes my performance is even higher).
This game nets me about 5-20 FPS on the lowest settings. Never mind resolution because this game apparently ignores the difference between 1080p and 768p and runs at the same level of performance.
After doing some research of course, the driver required for AMD cards is one of the latest versions, which is discontinued for my card thanks to the wise efforts of said producer (because why make PC’s accessible when you can charge a premium. Not that this is a jab at 343 however.).
I was able to run a modified driver that somewhat improved the performance, but even still I am regularly achieving under 30 FPS (about a 20-25 average), which is somehow still worse than the vanilla xbox one.
Because of this, I cannot enjoy many of the features I was looking forward to. And despite the negative rep of the battle pass, I was more than willing to pay for in-game store items. But now I can’t justify the purchase if the performance of the game doesn’t even allow me to enjoy it.
Therefore, I propose 343 design a low-res mode that removes parts of the textures and lighting that is rendered, and maybe have an option to modify the draw-distance, I don’t know, but otherwise at least do something to create a more playable experience. Need I mention that after digging through some files, I found a compatibility list for start-up settings on PC hardware, developer notes if you will, and this is what I found (check attatched image)
EDIT: Apparently links or uploads are not allowed. I’m somehow not surprised.
*The image I tried posting shows a compatibility list with my GPU as compatible with the start up graphics pre-set on low. GPU’s that are not compatible are listed as “Not Compatible”. My GPU is not on that list. If you would like to find your copy of said file, go to your steam library, hit the settings button on Halo Infinite, click browse local files, click the data folder, then the hardware folder, and click on whichever note file represents your system. *
I understand the work that goes into optimizing games and programs, but this is just sloppy to be frank, that despite knowing how lacking the graphical rasterization was, the game was fully launched intended to be able to run on this level of hardware and yet it was not even attempted to support this. Even despite some of the vocal discussions made on the previous Waypoint forum before the overhaul!
Again, I do not blame the dev team, they have the assets that they have to work with. However, management should have employed much, much better quality control and if that was out of their hands, then its Microsoft itself that should be held accountable for such a lack-luster release.
It’s unfortunate, because unless a solution is found for this (such as what I proposed), I will not be spending money on Infinite.