It's a universal law of human snarkiness that the bigger the game launch, the more attention will be paid to any hitches, large or small. It's also a universal law of videogames that the more you hype, the more trouble you tend to get into along the way, and so through a combination of both of these truths, Halo 3 has taken a few hits recently. Whether it be justifiable backlash, defective discs, both scratched and unreadable, or leaked endings, things haven't gone without a glitch or two, and while nothing is going to stop the big green and gold behemoth at this stage in proceedings, certain things really should have gone better.
Also present in the list of Halo 3 'inconveniences' is the story from earlier this week of the discovery that the game doesn't output in a native 720p, but instead uses a vertical resolution 80 pixels smaller. Bungie has now officially responded to the claim by putting its hands up and admitting a fair cop. The explanation is that the resolution was dropped to an unusual 640p for the sake of the methods used to give Halo 3 its high dynamic range lighting effects, and you can find the full details over at Bungie's site (Scroll down to "You owe me 80p!").
What the developer resolutely refused to do however, was apologise or make excuses, and instead took a general attitude of "Does it really matter? The game looks good, okay?", as you can read below.
In fact, if you do a comparison shot between the native 1152x640 image and the scaled 1280x720, it’s practically impossible to discern the difference. We would ignore it entirely were it not for the internet’s propensity for drama where none exists. In fact the reason we haven’t mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings.
Such a flagrant disregard for tact when expressing an opinion always wins a smile from me, but do you agree with Bungie's logic? Is it fine for a game to just look good, or are those absent pixels proof of a gaming benchmark missed? As ever my friends, it's over to you.
[Tip from The Big GD. Big thanks to TwilightLouis for the pic]
Contest:
11:26 PM on 09.29.2007
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whatever. bungie, thank you for the amazing conclusion. no HD is fine with me. *wicka wicka*
You know, it really doesn't matter. I work on TV shows and we work at 1536x864 and we upscale our finished footage at the editing stage back up to 1920x1090. There is no noticeable difference in image quality from the upscaling. If you have a decent upscaling codec, it looks just as good as the real thing.
I don't mind the "non-HD", but the split-screen pisses me off. Two player split-screen looks like shit. And, they cut off the left and right sides on HDTVs. Tight. I love playing in 4:3 on my fucking 16:9 HDTV.
Also, I've experienced quite a few drops from 60 FPS, but hey, they can't all be perfect. Even Crackdown was choppy at points, and that game had a phenomenal frame rate...especially considering the draw distance.
Honestly, I barely know what the fuck those are. And I bet 95% of the people playing Halo 3 don't, as well as half of those complaining about it.
Problem I'm referring about.
Problem I'm referring about.
Graphically it looks great and until this was announced I wouldn't have known the difference ever. Do you really want to see the wrinkles on Master Chief's face?
And yes, Bungie gets hugs and free gifts, because they're not dicks. They're one of the nicest, coolest developers out there. Respek.
btw, Lair would totally have been a good game if only it had been in 1080p, if only. Damn those pixels...damn them all.
single player is fine though.
And we will all probably have an HD TV eventually, remember.
Red Rings of Death.
I know that people are having problems with some of their disks but, honestly, I know a dozens of people who have the game, and none of them have had any problems with their copies. Microsoft should be held accountable, sure, but I'm just saying that it's not like the majority of disks are fucking up. It's disgusting, but let's not freak the fuck out.
Now the issue is, is it fair for Microsoft to print the up-converted resolution on the box instead of its native resolution? would you want to buy a HD TV if its box says "1080p resolution" if, in fact, it inputs 1080p source and outputs at lower resolution?
As long as there isn't something about the graphics that stands out as unforgivably BAD, I tend to not care. Text is unreadable? Wrong aspect ratio (fuck you, Halo 2 emulator, a 1280x1024 monitor is not a widescreen display)? Unbearable framerate problems? Crappy art direction? That's what I'll knock it on. Cheating a bit on the resolution? That I'll forgive, especially considering the 360 has an upscaler that will output a proper-resolution feed.
Bungie made their case on the matter well enough. Were I in their position, I'd probably make the same tradeoff. On the other hand, the fact that the Brutes' armors just suddenly disappear annoys the holy hell out of me... what was the problem there, Bungie?
Have they been promoting that this runs in native 720p? Hoping we wouldnt notice? If so, this is not fraud but whats the word I'm looking for...its just misleading. If SCEA did this to a game there would be a few more dozen comments on here further bashing that PSTriple. (BTW, did Dtoid give theres out yet...betrayal).
Bungie is lucky for who they are. Mass gamers out there aren't going to give a fuck and still play this game to death. No matter how many bugs, mistakes, errors, screwups, RRoD, castrations, cancer, rectal bleeding, etc etc.
What I've noticed from screenshots is that AA doesn't seem to work. I'd much rather have AA than high dynamic range.
But, as Scrixx pointed out, 60FPS is the most important thing of all. Regardless of detail, all games should run at 60FPS these days. No excuses -- even on the Wii.
Seriously, though, all this 1080p, HD nonsense is ridiculous. I didn't care when Sony bragged about it, and I don't care now. When did gamers become techno-snobs? I know Bungie's not perfect, and they've certainly never claimed that they were the best game studio in the business, but let's give them credit where credit's due.
But i could be wrong
Then again I'd like to see Bungie sued for crimes against humanity for ever releasing Halo in the first place.
that said, a consistently smooth frame rate has a bigger impact on graphics than a slightly sharper picture.
ps3 boys please stop bringing up killzone. killzone 1 sucked. in fact, those developers have never produced a hit game! so what makes you think this next game will be any good? because it has pretty trailers? c'mon...
As for me, I'll wait for the Orange Box. I am a straight up slut for class-based multiplayer. I'd much rather have a role to play then have everyone just running around and not playing as a team. All I hafta do is wait another week or so and move beyond this crazy Halo hype.