As you may have noticed, the beta weapon sandbox in the new H5:G vidoc has demonstrated a small change in the art style of Halo. I realise that these models are placeholders, likely not fully textured, but it appears that many of the weapons have plastic components now rather than being hunks of solid metal.
To me, this indicates a subtle shift in Halo’s genre. Before now, Halo was a retro-futuristic sci-fi game. This means it uses slightly older concepts of what is futuristic, similar to things like Bladerunner and Alien. Whereas other franchises/movies/games/etc like Star Wars/Trek have had lasers coming out of their ears. The best example of modern futurism I can think of is Tron. Oviously, Halo is never going to get that shiny, but there are hints of the same idea, like the glowing lines on Locke’s armour’s back.
Until now, Halo guns have been primarily metal, as most guns were in the early/mid 19th century, but nowadays we tend to have many more synthesised materials in firearms. Look at the Defence Distributed Liberator, for god’s sake. The thing is completely plastic. Thus, with Halo now incorporating a more modern sci-fi aesthetic into the game, I think that there’s a subtle shift in art movement going on that may extend to other parts of the game, such as vehicle, enemy and armour design.
In any case, tell me what you think of this. Do you like it, or do you prefer the old models? I prefer the new ones.
I like both old and new. 
Plus, the BR is black again. That’s all I ever really wanted. 
Personally, I don’t mind the shift. And in a way it makes sense.
Halo: Combat Evolved was developed in a time where our vision of what the future might look like was rather odd. We didn’t quite know what it would look like. That being said, Bungie’s designs were reminiscent of Alien I think. Not too well versed in that. So it had this blend of futuristic, but modern as well. Modern for the present day that is. The art style that Halo 4 started and Halo 5: Guardians is sort of tweaking, looks to be heading in a purely science fiction direction, with some grounding as to how we believe technology would realistically progress as well as architecture and various other designs. It’s basically like updating Halo’s art style to be more accurate.
Not a fan of the color schemes but overall they look pretty cool. The SMG is a bit over-designed though.
> Personally, I don’t mind the shift. And in a way it makes sense.
>
> Halo: Combat Evolved was developed in a time where our vision of what the future might look like was rather odd. We didn’t quite know what it would look like. That being said, Bungie’s designs were reminiscent of Alien I think. Not too well versed in that. So it had this blend of futuristic, but modern as well. Modern for the present day that is. The art style that Halo 4 started and Halo 5: Guardians is sort of tweaking, looks to be heading in a purely science fiction direction, with some grounding as to how we believe technology would realistically progress as well as architecture and various other designs. It’s basically like updating Halo’s art style to be more accurate.
I couldn’t agree more. Alien was sort of Cyber-punk. Everything was dirty, metallic and only slightly futuristic. Halo took off quite a bit of the dirt, and stuck with that theme. I think this is definitely positive design evolution.