Forget the sprint debate the new halo art style makes it look like power rangers in space.
We need the old halo art style back!
With black undersuits
The gritty look towards the covenant and Spartans
We need it back
And also, bring back blood too.
I hate hearing a pop every time I get a head shot
Back in h3 we saw blood come out the side of the helmet, it’s way more satisfying than halo 5’s pop.
I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be very fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
Its rated T to attract more players
The ‘pop’ sound is awesome!
If they come back to the “gritty” look and reduce the plastic textures I’m fine.
But the rest, I prefer much more the 343 art style.
> 2533274883669557;2:
> I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
>
> There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
>
> As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be vary fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
>
> But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
Yea but there is a big difference between clean looking armor and power ranger like armor. While Halo 3’s armor may not be gritty per say, it definitely doesn’t look Power Ranger like. That picture is also a little misleading because the actual in-game Halo 3 armor definitely does not look like plastic.
I prefer the headshot death sounds in Reach to the popping sound in Halo 5, but that’s just me.
Grittiness, though, isn’t always a good thing. I think Bungie did a good job with Reach’s textures and style, and that the primary reason people don’t like it is because it was so drastically different from Halo 3’s polished, almost plastic look. 343 seems to have gone back to the latter in their most recent game and “cleaned it up” even more; even Halo 4 looks more metallic.
I wish 343 had just used H2A’s style again. The multiplayer elite models were questionable, but everything else is fantastic.
Art style should be the last of our concerns if the gameplay itself has issues.
> 2535447528499735;5:
> > 2533274883669557;2:
> > I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
> >
> > There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
> >
> > As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be vary fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
> >
> > But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
>
>
> Yea but there is a big difference between clean looking armor and power ranger like armor. While Halo 3’s armor may not be gritty per say, it definitely doesn’t look Power Ranger like. That picture is also a little misleading because the actual in-game Halo 3 armor definitely does not look like plastic.
You see, I already said in my post “but as far as [Halo 5] armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful.” I didn’t use the term “Power Ranger” because I haven’t seen Power Rangers in 25 years and they certainly didn’t like that then. lol.
Those are in-game Halo 3 assets; they’re against a black background … but if you insist … Here’s another one I took with the intention of an aesthetically pleasing screenshot. It looks like plastic. Here’s another one. They all look like plastic. They have always looked like plastic. Here’s Master Chief, he looks like plastic. Here’s Halo 2, looks likes plastic. Here’s Combat Evolved, looks like plastic. Halo 4 definitely looks like plastic. The only exception is Reach.
> 2533274949193447;1:
> Forget the sprint debate the new halo art style makes it look like power rangers in space.
> We need the old halo art style back!
> The gritty look towards the covenant and Spartans
Yeah that was only in Reach, which in turn was tonally different to other halo games. I would prefer some faded colours on the colour selection though. I’d like to have my Spartan have a fairly muted faint colour as its more lore friendly for warzone, but unless I go grey/black its bright as hell.
(Add faded greens plz x)
> 2533274883669557;2:
> I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
>
> There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
>
> As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be very fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
>
> But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
black undersuits made halo 3 armors look nice
> 2533274949193447;10:
> > 2533274883669557;2:
> > I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
> >
> > There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
> >
> > As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be very fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
> >
> > But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
>
>
> black undersuits made halo 3 armors look nice
The colored undersuits really do ruin a lot of the designs, still doesn’t excuse their crappy art style. Like about 99% of the armor doesn’t even look functional for military assets to be wearing.
I always get a new chuckle railing against Halo’s “new” art style being too cartoony and not gritty.
People, “cartoony” IS the original Halo art style. Bright colors are original Halo. Not grit and dirt and grime. The only game that fits that bill is Halo: Reach, released 9 years after Halo entered the world. Bright greens and purples were the defining characteristics of the Halo: CE art style. Hell, even the blood in the original game was purple and florescent!
Feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
I might take 343 Spartans a bit more seriously with a black undersuit option, darker yet less vibrant colors, more consistent abdominal protection, and proper shadowing. Right now the Spartans are neon, glow in the dark power rangers with unchangable white or blues lines on armor and mismatched secondary to primary brightness on certain sets limiting a limited customization system.
> 2533274883669557;8:
> > 2535447528499735;5:
> > > 2533274883669557;2:
> > > I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
> > >
> > > There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
> > >
> > > As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be vary fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
> > >
> > > But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
> >
> >
> > Yea but there is a big difference between clean looking armor and power ranger like armor. While Halo 3’s armor may not be gritty per say, it definitely doesn’t look Power Ranger like. That picture is also a little misleading because the actual in-game Halo 3 armor definitely does not look like plastic.
>
>
> You see, I already said in my post “but as far as [Halo 5] armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful.” I didn’t use the term “Power Ranger” because I haven’t seen Power Rangers in 25 years and they certainly didn’t like that then. lol.
>
> Those are in-game Halo 3 assets; they’re against a black background … but if you insist … Here’s another one I took with the intention of an aesthetically pleasing screenshot. It looks like plastic. Here’s another one. They all look like plastic. They have always looked like plastic. Here’s Master Chief, he looks like plastic. Here’s Halo 2, looks likes plastic. Here’s Combat Evolved, looks like plastic. Halo 4 definitely looks like plastic. The only exception is Reach.
Just putting this out there, but the renders you used were actually CGI assets for the characters in Red vs Blue, not in engine renders for Spartans in Halo 3. Also, if you’re going to use Halo CE as an example of plastic looking armor, keep in mind that CE was built for the original Xbox, and before that the Mac platform, so texture quality wasn’t necessarily the best. With that in mind, I think CE definitely looked much grittier than Halo 2 and 3, especially with the upscale do resolution on the PC and Xbox One, but still pretty colorful.
If we’re comparing Halo 3 and Halo 4/5, then I feel the problem isn’t so much the plastic look of the models, but more often the lighting and coloration of the models. As you can see in the Halo 4 screenshot you posted, the Spartan’s colors look pretty faded and low-res compared to the more colorful, yet aesthetically pleasing design of the Halo 3 Spartans. Halo 5 doesn’t have this problem in terms of having faded colors like Halo 4, but the lighting in both games and the colored undersuits make the Spartans seem much more cartoony than the Spartans in Halo CE-3.
Edit: For greater reference to the faded colors on the Spartans in Halo 4, just look at the cartoonishly pale team colors compared to the darker, more vibrant, reds and blues from Halos 1-Reach.
finally after I watch a good topic, I agree, I would like to see the Halo wars 2 cinematic7Halo 2 Anniversary artstyle, in my opinion it is a perfect representation of what Bungie’s artstyle would look in future Halo games, I would like to see that artstyle in Halo 6 and maybe every future game.
The problem isn’t that it’s not gritty. Halo was only gritty in Halo: Reach, which was used to facilitate a more dour theme. However I do agree that the art style is messed up and mostly horrible. I’ll just repost a comment I had made elsewhere previously to sum up my feelings on the matter.
Suppose the UNSC should start this, since they seem to be the biggest focus now. On the human side of things, everything looked like a practical, hyper-modernized military hardware (Or what was deemed to be futuristic version of practical military hardware in the 70s and 80s). Every piece of equipment and weaponry (including vehicles and Cheif’s Mk6 armor) was bulky and had an almost-strictly black/gray/green color scheme, but at the same time have a nice mixture of curvature and angularity in their design. They don’t look like giant uncomfortable bricks, they all look like they were built for a specific military application by a technologically advanced military. That’s saying nothing of the non-military side of humanity; in Halo 2 and 3 when you were wandering around the cityscapes, everything looked completely believable. You had Old Mombasa, a run down, obsolete, thoroughly lived-in slum, but then when you got to New Mombasa you had a city that looked like it was once very lively. You had cars all over the place, huge stretches of highway/roadway, skyscrapers and office buildings that look like larger, more advanced versions of what we have today and just general a very practical layout for the city. If you look at any of the city maps in Halo 4 or 5’s multiplayer, or the one bit where you talk to people at Meridian in the campaign of the latter, it doesn’t look like a believable city at all. It’s just a mash of neon signs and horrendous layouts that make absolutely no practical sense. None of the armor or weapon redesigns looks “practical” at all given the technology the UNSC has. Everything looks like it was just designed to be “cool” rather than actual military hardware.
Then you have the Covenant. In previous games the Covenant were the polar opposite of the UNSC; they were characterized by their use of very obvious, apparent colors like purple, pink and red. All of their designs were very organic, with large swoops and curves. The whole look was very alien and new, which I think is pretty appropriate given that they are aliens, but was also very aesthetically pleasing and nice to look at. Weapons looked like they were almost a part of Covenant soldiers with how they were built, and vehicles looked almost like the soldiers became a part of them when they got into them. In the more recent games (Halo 5 in particular) this has all been trashed and replaced with very insectoid, ugly-looking vehicles that end up looking much less organic and honestly a lot less alien too. The weapons have been replaced almost entirely by more human-looking designs that don’t really keep that same organic, flowing feel, and the Covenant themselves have been changed from groups of species that looked diverse and menacing (except for the the grunts, which looked silly) to just ugly and… ugly (including the grunts, who look ugly). They even changed the colors from their former vibrancy to much more drab shades, including orange and white as significant parts of the color palette.
And then you have the Forerunner. In every previous game the design philosophy of the Forerunner was as much of an enigma as the species themselves. Their trademark was massive, monolithic, derelict metal or stone behemoths of structures that on the inside were just as spartan (no pun intended). There were several interesting things that they did, such as the towers on Installation 04 that would launch pulses up toward the middle of the rings or the light bridges that you could activate using the sparse holographic features, but you had no idea how any of these mechanisms worked. There was no exposed mechanical or moving parts other than doors, no obvious power conduits, nothing to give you any insight into how any of it worked. The technology was so far advanced that to the UNSC and the player alike it seemed almost like magic. Just these giant, decrepit, sterile tombs of a long-dead civilization that you had no hope of ever understanding completely. The most life they exhibited (Outside of the interiors of the Halo rings themselves) were the little machines like Guilty Spark and the Sentinels that they left behind, meant to look after and keep everything they guard in working order, buzzing around for all eternity, unthinking in their purpose. And then Halo 4 rolls around and the Forerunner all of a sudden become these grotesque-looking mechanical entities. All of a sudden the inner workings of all Forerunner machinery open up and it all looks completely mundane, with little spinning and mechanical moving parts that completely shatter that illusion. All of a sudden everything has to have a trillion superfluous pointless-looking floating bits that serve no purpose other than to make the enemies look menacing and weird and scary. I get that there’s a canonical and practical reason for Prometheans looking so much different, but they could have easily kept the spirit of the Forerunner. If you look at old Bungie concept art for Guardian Sentinels and Warrior-Servants they looked nothing like the weird menacing Soldiers and Knights we have now; they looked shadowy and legitimately creepy. They didn’t look like poorly-built Bionicle monsters, they looked like the menacing, ominous ghosts and wraiths of a civilization that’s been dead for a hundred thousand years (again, no pun intended). They looked to be as much of an enigma as everything else concerning the Forerunner and I’m hugely disappointed that 343 decided to go a different direction with the Prometheans.
That’s just ignoring the general negligence 343 has exhibited toward interesting environmental design, character design, etc. I get that 343 is a new studio, but they have time and time again shown that they can mimic that old art style down to a T. Halo 2 Anniversary is legitimately the best-looking Halo game because of this, and is just generally one of my favorite-looking games ever. I really hope they rescind on their designs and bring back the classics for the next game, because it would be a genuine shame to see Bungie’s wonderful artistic decisions for the universe lost behind a smattering of generic science-fiction aesthetics.
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> > 2533274883669557;8:
> > > 2535447528499735;5:
> > > > 2533274883669557;2:
> > > > I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
> > > >
> > > > There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
> > > >
> > > > As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be vary fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
> > > >
> > > > But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
> > >
> > >
> > > Yea but there is a big difference between clean looking armor and power ranger like armor. While Halo 3’s armor may not be gritty per say, it definitely doesn’t look Power Ranger like. That picture is also a little misleading because the actual in-game Halo 3 armor definitely does not look like plastic.
> >
> >
> > You see, I already said in my post “but as far as [Halo 5] armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful.” I didn’t use the term “Power Ranger” because I haven’t seen Power Rangers in 25 years and they certainly didn’t like that then. lol.
> >
> > Those are in-game Halo 3 assets; they’re against a black background … but if you insist … Here’s another one I took with the intention of an aesthetically pleasing screenshot. It looks like plastic. Here’s another one. They all look like plastic. They have always looked like plastic. Here’s Master Chief, he looks like plastic. Here’s Halo 2, looks likes plastic. Here’s Combat Evolved, looks like plastic. Halo 4 definitely looks like plastic. The only exception is Reach.
>
>
> Just putting this out there, but the renders you used were actually CGI assets for the characters in Red vs Blue, not in engine renders for Spartans in Halo 3. Also, if you’re going to use Halo CE as an example of plastic looking armor, keep in mind that CE was built for the original Xbox, and before that the Mac platform, so texture quality wasn’t necessarily the best. With that in mind, I think CE definitely looked much grittier than Halo 2 and 3, especially with the upscale do resolution on the PC and Xbox One, but still pretty colorful.
>
> If we’re comparing Halo 3 and Halo 4/5, then I feel the problem isn’t so much the plastic look of the models, but more often the lighting and coloration of the models. As you can see in the Halo 4 screenshot you posted, the Spartan’s colors look pretty faded and low-res compared to the more colorful, yet aesthetically pleasing design of the Halo 3 Spartans. Halo 5 doesn’t have this problem in terms of having faded colors like Halo 4, but the lighting in both games and the colored undersuits make the Spartans seem much more cartoony than the Spartans in Halo CE-3.
>
> Edit: For greater reference to the faded colors on the Spartans in Halo 4, just look at the cartoonishly pale team colors compared to the darker, more vibrant, reds and blues from Halos 1-Reach.
Were they? I thought they were just hi-res H3 assets. Also, I hoped you noticed that the CE picture was a joke, but since you brought it up, I personally think CE looks a lot more solid and polished that Halo 2. That game, as you know, was rushed due to some issues, so it has texture popping and all kinds of nonsense going on. And I actually take back what I said, CE armor doesn’t look like plastic … it doesn’t really look like metal either, or at least not painted metal. It looks like Chief’s armor is a dark, incredibly reflective and shiny drab green, through and through … like if you scratched it, there would be no paint coming off, that’s just what color the metal is.
I’m quite familiar with the lighting in the games. I didn’t get these screenshot badges for nothing. That’s something I’ve noticed and brought up before in other threads is that the 343 Halos seem to have strange lighting and color pallets. Halo 3 still has fantastic lighting.
As far as this: “As you can see in the Halo 4 screenshot you posted, the Spartan’s colors look pretty faded and low-res compared to the more colorful, yet aesthetically pleasing design of the Halo 3 Spartans”, well the Halo 4 screenshot was taken on my 360, so it is low res (720p). The Halo 3 screenshots were taken in the MCC, so they’re 1080p. But those are still fair points, whereas the “aesthetically pleasing design of the Halo 3 Spartans” is simply subjective … I mean, I’ve always thought the Spartans in Halo 3 looked a little derpy compared to Halo 2 (not their armor, just their … like … proportions and movements. Same with the Elites. They looked so cool in Halo 2).But that’s beside the point. We’re basically in agreement on where we want the armor to go.
Here’s what I personally would like:
-black undersuits (or at least an option for it)
-more muted color options (they know exactly which green we want)
-Reach style textures (not necessarily “gritty”, assuming you guys are all talking about dirt and crap. Just THIS)
-More traditional design choices: the only armor sets I like in Halo 5 are from previous games like the Mark IV, VI, Reach armors, etc. More of that, less of THIS.
> 2533274883669557;17:
> > 2533274912467533;14:
> > > 2533274883669557;8:
> > > > 2535447528499735;5:
> > > > > 2533274883669557;2:
> > > > > I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
> > > > >
> > > > > There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
> > > > >
> > > > > As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be vary fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
> > > > >
> > > > > But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Yea but there is a big difference between clean looking armor and power ranger like armor. While Halo 3’s armor may not be gritty per say, it definitely doesn’t look Power Ranger like. That picture is also a little misleading because the actual in-game Halo 3 armor definitely does not look like plastic.
> > >
> > >
> > > You see, I already said in my post “but as far as [Halo 5] armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful.” I didn’t use the term “Power Ranger” because I haven’t seen Power Rangers in 25 years and they certainly didn’t like that then. lol.
> > >
> > > Those are in-game Halo 3 assets; they’re against a black background … but if you insist … Here’s another one I took with the intention of an aesthetically pleasing screenshot. It looks like plastic. Here’s another one. They all look like plastic. They have always looked like plastic. Here’s Master Chief, he looks like plastic. Here’s Halo 2, looks likes plastic. Here’s Combat Evolved, looks like plastic. Halo 4 definitely looks like plastic. The only exception is Reach.
> >
> >
> > Just putting this out there, but the renders you used were actually CGI assets for the characters in Red vs Blue, not in engine renders for Spartans in Halo 3. Also, if you’re going to use Halo CE as an example of plastic looking armor, keep in mind that CE was built for the original Xbox, and before that the Mac platform, so texture quality wasn’t necessarily the best. With that in mind, I think CE definitely looked much grittier than Halo 2 and 3, especially with the upscale do resolution on the PC and Xbox One, but still pretty colorful.
> >
> > If we’re comparing Halo 3 and Halo 4/5, then I feel the problem isn’t so much the plastic look of the models, but more often the lighting and coloration of the models. As you can see in the Halo 4 screenshot you posted, the Spartan’s colors look pretty faded and low-res compared to the more colorful, yet aesthetically pleasing design of the Halo 3 Spartans. Halo 5 doesn’t have this problem in terms of having faded colors like Halo 4, but the lighting in both games and the colored undersuits make the Spartans seem much more cartoony than the Spartans in Halo CE-3.
> >
> > Edit: For greater reference to the faded colors on the Spartans in Halo 4, just look at the cartoonishly pale team colors compared to the darker, more vibrant, reds and blues from Halos 1-Reach.
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> Were they? I thought they were just hi-res H3 assets. Also, I hoped you noticed that the CE picture was a joke, but since you brought it up, I personally think CE looks a lot more solid and polished that Halo 2. That game, as you know, was rushed due to some issues, so it has texture popping and all kinds of nonsense going on. And I actually take back what I said, CE armor doesn’t look like plastic … it doesn’t really look like metal either, or at least not painted metal. It looks like Chief’s armor is a dark, incredibly reflective and shiny drab green, through and through … like if you scratched it, there would be no paint coming off, that’s just what color the metal is.
>
> I’m quite familiar with the lighting in the games. I didn’t get these screenshot badges for nothing. That’s something I’ve noticed and brought up before in other threads is that the 343 Halos seem to have strange lighting and color pallets. Halo 3 still has fantastic lighting.
>
> As far as this: “As you can see in the Halo 4 screenshot you posted, the Spartan’s colors look pretty faded and low-res compared to the more colorful, yet aesthetically pleasing design of the Halo 3 Spartans”, well the Halo 4 screenshot was taken on my 360, so it is low res (720p). The Halo 3 screenshots were taken in the MCC, so they’re 1080p. But those are still fair points, whereas the “aesthetically pleasing design of the Halo 3 Spartans” is simply subjective … I mean, I’ve always thought the Spartans in Halo 3 looked a little derpy compared to Halo 2 (not their armor, just their … like … proportions and movements. Same with the Elites. They looked so cool in Halo 2).But that’s beside the point. We’re basically in agreement on where we want the armor to go.
>
> Here’s what I personally would like:
> -black undersuits (or at least an option for it)
> -more muted color options (they know exactly which green we want)
> -Reach style textures (not necessarily “gritty”, assuming you guys are all talking about dirt and crap. Just THIS)
> -More traditional design choices: the only armor sets I like in Halo 5 are from previous games like the Mark IV, VI, Reach armors, etc. More of that, less of THIS.
reach style textures is what i basically meant
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> The problem isn’t that it’s not gritty. Halo was only gritty in Halo: Reach, which was used to facilitate a more dour theme. However I do agree that the art style is messed up and mostly horrible. I’ll just repost a comment I had made elsewhere previously to sum up my feelings on the matter.
> Suppose the UNSC should start this, since they seem to be the biggest focus now. On the human side of things, everything looked like a practical, hyper-modernized military hardware (Or what was deemed to be futuristic version of practical military hardware in the 70s and 80s). Every piece of equipment and weaponry (including vehicles and Cheif’s Mk6 armor) was bulky and had an almost-strictly black/gray/green color scheme, but at the same time have a nice mixture of curvature and angularity in their design. They don’t look like giant uncomfortable bricks, they all look like they were built for a specific military application by a technologically advanced military. That’s saying nothing of the non-military side of humanity; in Halo 2 and 3 when you were wandering around the cityscapes, everything looked completely believable. You had Old Mombasa, a run down, obsolete, thoroughly lived-in slum, but then when you got to New Mombasa you had a city that looked like it was once very lively. You had cars all over the place, huge stretches of highway/roadway, skyscrapers and office buildings that look like larger, more advanced versions of what we have today and just general a very practical layout for the city. If you look at any of the city maps in Halo 4 or 5’s multiplayer, or the one bit where you talk to people at Meridian in the campaign of the latter, it doesn’t look like a believable city at all. It’s just a mash of neon signs and horrendous layouts that make absolutely no practical sense. None of the armor or weapon redesigns looks “practical” at all given the technology the UNSC has. Everything looks like it was just designed to be “cool” rather than actual military hardware.
> Then you have the Covenant. In previous games the Covenant were the polar opposite of the UNSC; they were characterized by their use of very obvious, apparent colors like purple, pink and red. All of their designs were very organic, with large swoops and curves. The whole look was very alien and new, which I think is pretty appropriate given that they are aliens, but was also very aesthetically pleasing and nice to look at. Weapons looked like they were almost a part of Covenant soldiers with how they were built, and vehicles looked almost like the soldiers became a part of them when they got into them. In the more recent games (Halo 5 in particular) this has all been trashed and replaced with very insectoid, ugly-looking vehicles that end up looking much less organic and honestly a lot less alien too. The weapons have been replaced almost entirely by more human-looking designs that don’t really keep that same organic, flowing feel, and the Covenant themselves have been changed from groups of species that looked diverse and menacing (except for the the grunts, which looked silly) to just ugly and… ugly (including the grunts, who look ugly). They even changed the colors from their former vibrancy to much more drab shades, including orange and white as significant parts of the color palette.
> And then you have the Forerunner. In every previous game the design philosophy of the Forerunner was as much of an enigma as the species themselves. Their trademark was massive, monolithic, derelict metal or stone behemoths of structures that on the inside were just as spartan (no pun intended). There were several interesting things that they did, such as the towers on Installation 04 that would launch pulses up toward the middle of the rings or the light bridges that you could activate using the sparse holographic features, but you had no idea how any of these mechanisms worked. There was no exposed mechanical or moving parts other than doors, no obvious power conduits, nothing to give you any insight into how any of it worked. The technology was so far advanced that to the UNSC and the player alike it seemed almost like magic. Just these giant, decrepit, sterile tombs of a long-dead civilization that you had no hope of ever understanding completely. The most life they exhibited (Outside of the interiors of the Halo rings themselves) were the little machines like Guilty Spark and the Sentinels that they left behind, meant to look after and keep everything they guard in working order, buzzing around for all eternity, unthinking in their purpose. And then Halo 4 rolls around and the Forerunner all of a sudden become these grotesque-looking mechanical entities. All of a sudden the inner workings of all Forerunner machinery open up and it all looks completely mundane, with little spinning and mechanical moving parts that completely shatter that illusion. All of a sudden everything has to have a trillion superfluous pointless-looking floating bits that serve no purpose other than to make the enemies look menacing and weird and scary. I get that there’s a canonical and practical reason for Prometheans looking so much different, but they could have easily kept the spirit of the Forerunner. If you look at old Bungie concept art for Guardian Sentinels and Warrior-Servants they looked nothing like the weird menacing Soldiers and Knights we have now; they looked shadowy and legitimately creepy. They didn’t look like poorly-built Bionicle monsters, they looked like the menacing, ominous ghosts and wraiths of a civilization that’s been dead for a hundred thousand years (again, no pun intended). They looked to be as much of an enigma as everything else concerning the Forerunner and I’m hugely disappointed that 343 decided to go a different direction with the Prometheans.
> That’s just ignoring the general negligence 343 has exhibited toward interesting environmental design, character design, etc. I get that 343 is a new studio, but they have time and time again shown that they can mimic that old art style down to a T. Halo 2 Anniversary is legitimately the best-looking Halo game because of this, and is just generally one of my favorite-looking games ever. I really hope they rescind on their designs and bring back the classics for the next game, because it would be a genuine shame to see Bungie’s wonderful artistic decisions for the universe lost behind a smattering of generic science-fiction aesthetics.
A very well done post, especially the part about the forunner architecture!
I hope more people read it despite it’s length…sadly most people probably won’t take the time to do so…
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> > I thought the pop sounds was weird at first (especially in the beta) and a bit annoying, but since it signals a headshot and often came at such a relief, I’ve been Pavlovian Conditioned into loving the noise. When I play the older games now, I wish it was there. It’s a little victory pop.
> > There are plenty of aspects of 343’s artstyle that I prefer to Bungie’s, but not nearly as many and those are mainly limited to campaign. I largely agree with you on a lot of things … but as far as armor goes, yeah, most of it looks awful. But people wear it. And I’m all about aesthetic choices in matchmaking. I wish they would tone it down a lit. I wish the universe looked a bit more like it does in Halo 2 Anniversary (save for a few thing). But as far as matchmaking is concerned, if they want unicorn armor, why not?
> > As far as “gritty” goes, not sure what’s with the obsession. I think Reach started that. Fire up Halo 3 matchmaking in the MCC at 1080p and look closely: there is nothing gritty about those Spartans. Everything is clean, shiny, and (dare I say) plastic looking … and I’m going to be vary fair and post the best looking picture of Halo 3 Spartans I could find. There’s a big difference between Spartan III’s on suicide missions on a doom planet under Covenant invasion and Spartan IV’s in brand new armor stationed on the Infinity running War Games simulations (and yeah, that’s dumb; canonizing multiplayer is silly).
> > But I don’t know. Maybe since everything is canon now, and since Cortana and the Created have taken over, and Halo 6 will be the Spartan IV’s third game, they’ll start to look a bit more dirty for you.
>
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> Yea but there is a big difference between clean looking armor and power ranger like armor. While Halo 3’s armor may not be gritty per say, it definitely doesn’t look Power Ranger like. That picture is also a little misleading because the actual in-game Halo 3 armor definitely does not look like plastic.
Then you’re problem isn’t with the art style, rather it’s with the general design of armor in Halo 5.
I would personally prefer Halo to look somewhat realistic yet also retain its cartoonish look that its had for such a long time, save Reach. The Halo 2: Anniversary campaign is an excellent example, although I would change it by making it slightly more realistic and, I suppose, “gritty”.