Halo Infinite (8th December 2021) (XSX/XBO/PC)

[Julius]

I had a nose around, but couldn't find a thread for this?  Please delete if there is one already!

Last E3's trailer:

This E3's trailer:

Played Halo games here and there at a friend's house growing up, but never completed or owned one. Love the look of this, so guess I've got some catching up to do! 

Edited October 26, 2021 by Julius

[Julius]

This game doesn't seem to getting that much attention on here! Gameplay demo from the other day:

Hopefully with their next showing they do a better job of communicating why this should be a next gen launch title. I felt like this demo was a bit lackluster. 

[Happenstance]

I’m pretty much done with Halo now I think. Last one I properly enjoyed was Reach. 

[bob]

I thought 4 was a bit naff, and I didn't play 5, but I like the look of Infinite.

Supposedly they intend it to be a game platform onto which they release updates for many years to come, sort of like Destiny or GTAV online.

Not sure if that's something I'm on board with, but hopefully the initial base game is there to begin with.

I don't intend to buy an Xbox, so hopefully this is available on PC?

[Nicktendo]

52 minutes ago, bob said:

I thought 4 was a bit naff, and I didn't play 5, but I like the look of Infinite.

Supposedly they intend it to be a game platform onto which they release updates for many years to come, sort of like Destiny or GTAV online.

Not sure if that's something I'm on board with, but hopefully the initial base game is there to begin with.

I don't intend to buy an Xbox, so hopefully this is available on PC?

It's coming to Steam in December.

Despite all the noise and chatter about how bad it looks, I think the gameplay looks phenomenal. Really looking forward to it.

[Kaepora_Gaebora]

 

[bob]

Wow, that's unexpected.

120FPS though!

[Nicktendo]

The thought of playing games at 120hz is very appealing to be honest. Especially for FPSs and stuff like Rocket League. But I've always held off on upgrading my monitor as I have a feeling it will ruin other games (particularly 30fps) for me. I can't imagine going from RL in 120hz to Dark Souls or BOTW on Switch, for example. Would be jarring as hell. Good to see it getting support though. 

I feel 60fps is enough for me and I will never be good enough at any game to feel the tactical benefit of 120fps.

F2P multiplayer is a good move. It means the player base will be huge. However, I'm sure it would have been anyway, and this does open the door for shady mechanics. This gets a wait and see from me. 

[Sheikah]

The thought of playing games at 120hz is very appealing to be honest. Especially for FPSs and stuff like Rocket League. But I've always held off on upgrading my monitor as I have a feeling it will ruin other games (particularly 30fps) for me. I can't imagine going from RL in 120hz to Dark Souls or BOTW on Switch, for example. Would be jarring as hell. Good to see it getting support though.

I feel 60fps is enough for me and I will never be good enough at any game to feel the tactical benefit of 120fps.

F2P multiplayer is a good move. It means the player base will be huge. However, I'm sure it would have been anyway, and this does open the door for shady mechanics. This gets a wait and see from me. 

Unfortunately though free to play brings its own set of issues, namely microtransactions, battle passes and various currencies to make profit. Given the option I would always pick paid for over free to play any day of the week.

 

For 120 Hz, won't we also need a new TV capable of supporting it? It sounds great, but also something that actually won't be accessible to the majority of people. I also feel like they're able to pull that off at the cost of graphical fidelity, based on the gameplay demo.

[Zell]

30 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

For 120 Hz, won't we also need a new TV capable of supporting it? It sounds great, but also something that actually won't be accessible to the majority of people. I also feel like they're able to pull that off at the cost of graphical fidelity, based on the gameplay demo.

A lot of people game at their desk using a monitor, and most gaming monitors can do 120 Hz, so it will be welcome for them. Think we'll also start seeing more TVs with 120 Hz because of HDMI 2.1.

Halo Infinite does look like an Xbox One game running on more powerful hardware, so if they can get a performance boost then that's great. People get banging on about the graphics in that 8 minute demo, I guess I was more interested in the gameplay side with the grapple and "open world" layout.  

Would you prefer lower fidelity graphics that performs better and runs at higher frame rates or high fidelity graphics with lower frame rates and loading times? Perhaps for a fast paced FPS, a higher frame rate is preferred (would you want to play say Overwatch or Apex Legends at 30 fps if it looked nicer).

I've recently finished God of War. The game looked absolutely stunning, but it did become apparent how much of that game's level were designed around the long loading times, all those slow climbing sections, the horrendously slow travel room etc. Granted that I think the new consoles will fix some of these load time issues by using SSDs. But my worry with a new generation of hardware is that developers go balls to the wall with pretty high fidelity 4K graphics that run sluggishly at 30 fps with frequent frame drops, rather than target smooth performance at 60 at the cost of some of the fancier graphical effects. 

It will be interesting to see their business model for the free to play multiplayer, I'm guessing a battle pass will be involved. No loot boxes please.

[Ronnie]

1 hour ago, Sheikah said:

For 120 Hz, won't we also need a new TV capable of supporting it?

People said the same when the PS4 Pro came out, re: 4K tvs.

[S.C.G]

As I understand it, Halo Infinite is getting a physical release, which can be played on either an Xbox One / X / Xbox Series X at various graphical resolutions, depending on your hardware setup and presumably you will be able to play it on Windows 10 PC's. It's certainly good to have a variety of options available when it comes to playing the main campaign.

When it comes to the multiplayer, it seems that this is also true and being that it is Free to Play, presumably it will be a separate install, that way anyone can just play the multiplayer if they wish, also if anyone just wanted to play the campaign, they can do that as well and not need the extra install space for the multiplayer, if they have no interest in it.

The other side of it, now that we know the multiplayer will be Free to Play, is the nature of how this will be implemented; a battle pass would be good, loot boxes would be not so good. I'm aware that for any of these types of games to survive, they need to have a decent player base, which should be a given as this is Halo but, depending on how F2P is implemented, it could turn a lot of players away, overall this model is still probably the best business move for the developers but if I had the choice, I'd have picked paid over F2P easily.

Halo has always been something which you'd just buy Xbox Live Gold for and then be able to play the multiplayer if you had the game, I'm assuming that now that it has gone F2P, you no longer need the gold subscription, so for anyone who only wants to play Halo and doesn't want to subscribe, this is a good thing but as with all things (especially in gaming) it's a trade-off.

Having a game like this run at 120fps is a good thing, it's nice that the option is there, of course there will be plenty of people who will use this option, but I think for the majority of users, 60fps will be ample. Does this make it an unlevel playing field however? It's arguable that if you can play the game on an Xbox or a PC, the playing field is already unlevel due to a variety of factors, so it probably won't make that much of a difference; I do think it would be a good thing to have plenty of matchmaking options though.

I write all of this from the perspective of someone who just plays the campaign on the Halo games when they come out usually, I might try the multiplayer out and then not play it again for either a long time or ever, so I don't think I have much of a stake in this.

Halo Infinite on an Xbox One base console, on a years old 1080p TV? That'll do nicely.

Oh and I watched the trailer, it's Halo... it looks as good as it probably ever has and I like that they've added in some new mechanics to aid the gameplay, let's hope it's good.

[Nicktendo]

1 hour ago, Sheikah said:

Unfortunately though free to play brings its own set of issues, namely microtransactions, battle passes and various currencies to make profit. Given the option I would always pick paid for over free to play any day of the week.

 

For 120 Hz, won't we also need a new TV capable of supporting it? It sounds great, but also something that actually won't be accessible to the majority of people. I also feel like they're able to pull that off at the cost of graphical fidelity, based on the gameplay demo.

If the core gameplay remains the same and the battle pass goodies / micro-transactions are purely cosmetic, it seems sensible to make it F2P. People who just want to play can ignore the cosmetic stuff. I'd prefer it if that stuff wasn't there too, but it's not difficult to ignore. I think it's pretty clear what the most lucrative multiplayer model is now, so ignoring that seems silly. This is pretty much what they have in MCC. You can't spend money or buy a battle pass, but the more time you play, the more cosmetic stuff you unlock over various seasons. I don't think it detracts from the experience at all. It's still classic CE / 2 / 3 / Reach multiplayer. A lot will depend on how it's implemented of course. 

[Dcubed]

Big deal for Microsoft to make it F2P.  Will be sure to make some waves across the industry and the eSports scene.

[Sheikah]

A lot of people game at their desk using a monitor, and most gaming monitors can do 120 Hz, so it will be welcome for them. Think we'll also start seeing more TVs with 120 Hz because of HDMI 2.1. Halo Infinite does look like an Xbox One game running on more powerful hardware, so if they can get a performance boost then that's great. People get banging on about the graphics in that 8 minute demo, I guess I was more interested in the gameplay side with the grapple and "open world" layout.Would you prefer lower fidelity graphics that performs better and runs at higher frame rates or high fidelity graphics with lower frame rates and loading times? Perhaps for a fast paced FPS, a higher frame rate is preferred (would you want to play say Overwatch or Apex Legends at 30 fps if it looked nicer).

I've recently finished God of War. The game looked absolutely stunning, but it did become apparent how much of that game's level were designed around the long loading times, all those slow climbing sections, the horrendously slow travel room etc. Granted that I think the new consoles will fix some of these load time issues by using SSDs. But my worry with a new generation of hardware is that developers go balls to the wall with pretty high fidelity 4K graphics that run sluggishly at 30 fps with frequent frame drops, rather than target smooth performance at 60 at the cost of some of the fancier graphical effects.

It will be interesting to see their business model for the free to play multiplayer, I'm guessing a battle pass will be involved. No loot boxes please.

Well my comment was specifically on the Series X version of Halo Infinite, which I supect the overwhelming majority will be playing on TV rather than a gaming monitor (I believe many with a decent monitor will be playing on PC rather than Xbox).

 

Not saying a proportion of people won't hook up a Series X to a gaming monitor but it seems strange to me that they'd target this slim minority of gamers on Series X with a 120 Hz option with somewhat iffy graphics, rather than target a perfectly good 60 Hz option that everyone can enjoy, but with much higher graphical fidelity as a result. It feels like it's serving the slim minority with a feature they comes at the expense of serving everyone.

 

Of course, if they provide both performance and resolution modes then that's different, and I suspect the issue with the graphics then is that it's a current gen game that they haven't had time to optimise for Series X.

[Sheikah]

If the core gameplay remains the same and the battle pass goodies / micro-transactions are purely cosmetic, it seems sensible to make it F2P. People who just want to play can ignore the cosmetic stuff. I'd prefer it if that stuff wasn't there too, but it's not difficult to ignore. I think it's pretty clear what the most lucrative multiplayer model is now, so ignoring that seems silly. This is pretty much what they have in MCC. You can't spend money or buy a battle pass, but the more time you play, the more cosmetic stuff you unlock over various seasons. I don't think it detracts from the experience at all. It's still classic CE / 2 / 3 / Reach multiplayer. A lot will depend on how it's implemented of course.

 

The trouble with the FOMO mechanics of battle passes, limited time events and microtransactions are that they generally rely on whales and obtrusive game design elements that detract from the game.

 

An example that springs to mind is Apex Legends - to earn XP each day you're tasked with playing specific characters (ones that you probably wouldn't otherwise want to play or perform well with) land in specific areas and perform specific actions. As a result I have genuinely seem team members request to land in specific, otherwise inadvisable areas to land to increase their XP. My gripe about this is that even if you choose to ignore it, other people unfortunately don't.

[Sheikah]

People said the same when the PS4 Pro came out, re: 4K tvs.

I have no problem with Series X supporting 120 Hz; it's perfectly reasonable that during the course of the generation, a lot of people will end up with more modern TVs that support it.  

My issue is that this game looks graphically very undercooked, yet boasts 120 Hz support on Series X despite the overwhelming majority of current TV players not having the means to take advantage of it.

 

My own thought on this is that it they targeted 60 Hz they would surely be able to increase the graphical fidelity of the game, while still having a very respectable framerate that everyone would be able to take advantage of.

 

I'll reserve full judgement until we see what graphics options they provide (e.g. both performance and resolution modes), but for now it looks to me that 120 Hz is possible because the graphical fidelity is low, probably because it was an Xbox One game that they haven't had time to optimse for Series X.

[Ronnie]

28 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

I have no problem with Series X supporting 120 Hz; it's perfectly reasonable that during the course of the generation, a lot of people will end up with more modern TVs that support it.  

My issue is that this game looks graphically very undercooked, yet boasts 120 Hz support on Series X despite the overwhelming majority of current TV players not having the means to take advantage of it.

My own thought on this is that it they targeted 60 Hz they would surely be able to increase the graphical fidelity of the game, while still having a very respectable framerate that everyone would be able to take advantage of.

I'll reserve full judgement until we see what graphics options they provide (e.g. both performance and resolution modes), but for now it looks to me that 120 Hz is possible because the graphical fidelity is low, probably because it was an Xbox One game that they haven't had time to optimse for Series X.

I was just replying to "For 120 Hz, won't we also need a new TV capable of supporting it?"

[Sheikah]

I was just replying to "For 120 Hz, won't we also need a new TV capable of supporting it?"

Yep, and I feel I answered that quite well. I feel that they have prioritised the wrong thing here, at this point in time.

[Glen-i]

Noticed the old "If it's just cosmetics, microtransactions are not as bad" argument pop up here.

I've seen kids get picked on because they use the default skin in Fortnite. Naturally, I give whoever tries this a right telling off if they even dare to pull that crap with me around.

Just chiming in with that. Go back to your Halo discussion.

[Julius]

51 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Noticed the old "If it's just cosmetics, microtransactions are not as bad" argument pop up here.

I've seen kids get picked on because they use the default skin in Fortnite. Naturally, I give whoever tries this a right telling off if they even dare to pull that crap with me around.

Just chiming in with that. Go back to your Halo discussion.

Glad you mentioned this Glen. My younger brother has put thousands of hours and quite a lot of money into Fortnite over the last few years, and the issue I've generally noticed with the majority of that community is just how dialled in they all seem to be when it comes to these cosmetics. 

Knowing when new cosmetics are being made available in the store, exclusive items being added in another country and trying to change their server and system settings to obtain it, or exclusive things being made available on certain platforms/through certain activities outside of the game, they're ready for it. Watching videos, reading (a lot of totally bogus) articles, etc., seems to be their source. I think, at least for most cases I've seen through my younger brother and his friends, it goes beyond a surface level "yeah, I'll just buy this skin and be set for a month".

Of course this varies from person to person, depending on a whole load of other factors (emotional and psychological maturity, awareness, money handling, etc.) and I don't want to lump everyone in together on this, but it just rubs me the wrong way. I don't care if it's not gambling through EA's "surprise mechanics", it is clear as day to me that cosmetics-only F2P platforms which are updated on a daily basis can have just as big and unhealthy an impact on younger minds. 

As for the topic at hand, I agree with general the sentiment that it's cool that Halo's multiplayer will be F2P, and it might tie in further to something else which seems to be knocking around as a headline today: Xbox are apparently planning on dropping Gold and going all-in on Ultimate/Game Pass, and will be returning to free online gaming across the board, which would be a very interesting turn of events. Curious to see how PlayStation respond if that is the case, but considering they have somewhere around 30 million PS+ subscribers, I don't think there's a chance they'll be budging anytime soon. 

120 Hz is fine and dandy (though perhaps a little excessive at this stage for the overwhelming majority of gamers), though I do agree with the spirit of what @Sheikah is saying, in that I would rather have them focus on selling the story of Infinite's campaign and blowing us away with a stunning gameplay demo, rather than announcing that the yet-to-be-seen multiplayer will be capable of running at 120 Hz and free-to-play. 

I could be totally wrong here, but I had always been under the impression that the campaigns were the big selling point of Halo games, like with most first person shooters, with the online multiplayer adding a reason to return after the campaign on a regular basis. I still feel like they should have gone all-in on blowing us away with that demo rather than showing us something that they've since claimed is something like 6 months old? I don't know who thought that would be a great idea. 

Edited August 1, 2020 by Julius

[Glen-i]

13 minutes ago, Julius said:

I could be totally wrong here, but I had always been under the impression that the campaigns were the big selling point of Halo games, like with most first person shooters, with the online multiplayer adding a reason to return after the campaign on a regular basis.

Total outsider to Halo here, but I was always under the impression that the multiplayer is what garnered the most praise with that series.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Glen-i

[Julius]

2 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Total outsider to Halo here, but I was always under the impression that the multiplayer is what garnered the most praise with that series.

Well dang. This is awkward. 

I mean, one of us has to be right (I mean, it could be a combination of both...but that's not interesting!), so only one of us is the real Halo outsider here. 

And the other is clearly a lifelong Halo fan. 

I'm onto you Glen! 

Edited August 1, 2020 by Julius

[Glen-i]

1 minute ago, Julius said:

Well dang. This is awkward. 

I mean, one of us has to be right (I mean, it could be a combination of both...but that's not interesting!), so only one of us is the real Halo outsider here. 

And the other is clearly a lifelong Halo fan. 

I'm onto you Glen! 

As if! My knowledge of Halo makes you look like a right genius in comparison!

Robot Devil there representing the rest of the thread.

[Zell]

12 hours ago, Sheikah said:

I have no problem with Series X supporting 120 Hz; it's perfectly reasonable that during the course of the generation, a lot of people will end up with more modern TVs that support it.  

My issue is that this game looks graphically very undercooked, yet boasts 120 Hz support on Series X despite the overwhelming majority of current TV players not having the means to take advantage of it.

 

My own thought on this is that it they targeted 60 Hz they would surely be able to increase the graphical fidelity of the game, while still having a very respectable framerate that everyone would be able to take advantage of.

 

I'll reserve full judgement until we see what graphics options they provide (e.g. both performance and resolution modes), but for now it looks to me that 120 Hz is possible because the graphical fidelity is low, probably because it was an Xbox One game that they haven't had time to optimse for Series X.

I think the reality with Halo Infinite is, as we all realise, is that it is an Xbox One game first, a PC game second, and an Xbox Series X third. It also has to be capable of running on all iterations of Xbox One. I'm not a developer and have no clue how it all works really, so I'm guessing it's easier to have a single 'base' version that can then be enhanced based on the technology it's running on, like a PC game. Maybe if they wanted to make the graphics more next gen they would essentially have to create a remastered build of the game. Perhaps that's in the pipeline for a few years down the line, at which point they 'discontinue' the Xbox One version. Who knows, just speculating really.

I generally think it's a good thing for a big developer to go for 120 Hz right at the start of the console generation as it will surely influence other developers to make use of it too. There will be people (like me) who are in the market for TVs which are PS5/Series X (that is to say, tick off all the relevant boxes: 4K, HDR, 120 Hz, low input lag etc) and would like the capabilities to be utilised sooner if possible (although we probably won't see the console's full potential for another few years).