This is the first time I have really made a post of this nature, most of the time I comment on multiplayer aspects of Halo, but I just had to make this post.
I was rewatching “O Brave New World”, Bungie’s look back on their history in order to see the future. And one of the things that struck me was the amazing art that Bungie had created.
I want you guys to skip to 48:00 (or watch all the way through) and watch until they start talking about Forge World.
Just look at the grandness of that space. The environment it creates. The shear awe that comes from it. The amount of detail put into the extremites that we don’t even get to use.
Is there anything really like that in Halo 4? I am afraid not. The best we got was these flat -Yoinks!- dlc that are as inspiring as pancakes. And I hate to say it, but Forge Islands was a good reflection of the direction of Halo 4’s art as a whole.
There isn’t really any depth in the art of Halo 4. It all just exists, is just there, but doesn’t really tell a story like Reach or 3 did. Realism is no match for story telling.
So for Halo 5, I really hope that 343 truly takes care of their art. That they don’t just attempt to push the boundaries of the graphics, but instead focus on creating environments that inspire. Environments that aren’t just functional spaces but ones that are involved and evolve. Environments that are Halo.
Things like detail to environments and textures had to be cut back on because of the memory the graphics took up. Halo 5 should have the same problem as the Xbox one has a lot of space on it.
> Things like detail to environments and textures had to be cut back on because of the memory the graphics took up. Halo 5 should have the same problem as the Xbox one has a lot of space on it.
> So for Halo 5, I really hope that 343 truly takes care of their art. <mark>That they don’t just attempt to push the boundaries of the graphics, but instead focus on creating environments that inspire.</mark> Environments that aren’t just functional spaces but ones that are involved and evolve. Environments that are Halo.
Which makes sense, but it was at the loss of the depth of the spaces you could play in, which I would disagree as being a fair trade off. I mean, when you think about Halo 4, you don’t think about “wow, that shadow looked really good”. Where in Reach and 3 you think about how vivid they were, which was something that lacked in 4.
So maybe with the extra power, 343 will be able to do both for H5. But if push comes to shove, I really hope that they give up the better graphics for a better art style.
As far as Bungie went, there was a lot of Halo artwork that was just truly inspiring. The artists at Bungie went to every extent to show off the grandeur of the characters of Halo, but mainly the Chief and the Arbiter. Sometimes I’ll flip through the old Halo art books I’ve collected over the years, and I can just stare at some of the images in awe and I can take in the feeling of the art. It creates this connection between me and the characters of Halo, and I think that’s been lost through the years of tossing the franchise between Bungie and 343i.