.

@sakaixx said:

@louixiii said:

@Desmonic said:

@Pedro said:

It looks like old school Halo.

I agree. From that perspective, it's everything fans wanted (well, not so sure about the pseudo-open world, but you get my point).

However...

Whoever decided *THIS* was a good marketing shot needs some permanent vacation tbh.

They went from Halo to Hobo. Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I hope its really an old build cause man that is so unflattering. Sure the demo may be an old build (damage control lol) but these still shots should at least be on newer build...

The game is feature complete at this point man. Everything you see is indicative of the near final product. Nothing is going to change other than some slight lighting differences. Nothing will fix the awful quality of the assets currently in the game, or the unpolished texture work/shaders/animations. Or change that god awful artstyle and flat angular forruner design language, etc. Or change those guns from looking like Unity/UE4 store bought assets that do not belong in Halo. Or change the gameplay from looking like a generic Far Cry clone, follow the waypoint and clear the outposts. Im ranting now.

None of this is going to change unless they go back to the production stage. I'd argue pre-production, but.......

Im going to repeat myself. There is no way this game is launching in 2020. And if it does, this will be Mass Effect: Andromeda all over again, in that it will potentially end the franchise.

They need to close down 343 Industries, buy back bungie (or bring in some other outside studio) and do an emergency overhaul of this game. Delay it for a year, even two years. Dont rush the game out until its finished, because you feel you NEED to have a Halo game out.

As a Halo fan......I DO NOT WANT YOUR SHITTY GAME if you're just pushing it out to sell the Series X. I would rather NOT have a new halo game for years, than having ANOTHER bad Halo game.

This franchise is as important in the canon of gaming as a Rockstar game like GTA or RDR, or Kojima Metal Gears, or TLOU, ETC..... People used to camp out for days to buy this game. This series invented the "Midnight Launch" and "preorder culture". Halo 2's launch was the fastest grossing opening weekend for an entertainment release ever (at the time), dethroning Star Wars Ep 2: Attack of the Clones. A record that would go on to be shattered by its successor, Halo 3. (This record has, of course, been broken many times over since then, by 2 GTAs and 3 CODs, and is currently held by GTAV). To put this in perspective, this would be like a game outperforming a Marvel Avengers movie opening weekend today.

I dont care how long you need to delay this game to reflect that, but GO AWAY, and do not come back until you have a game that does.

Im going to be brutally honest. That demo looked like liquid shit. Pure ass-butter. Its not even fathomable how ........uh......lets diplomatically say...... "rough" those graphics look.

Some of those gun models? Dont even look like Halo guns. Bruh, some of those guns looked so generic, they literally look like pre-bought assets from the Unreal Engine 4 marketplace, directly inserted into the game.

That blocky artstyle is terrible, and I have no idea why everything looks flat, angular, cartoony, and so low-poly. They're trying way to hard to pander to the Bungie artstyle, but Halo CE through Halo Reach NEVER looked like that. That aint an "artstyle", or "return to form" and this aint an "its just the lighting, give'em a few months to polish". NO. The actual quality of the assets look awful, as well as the animations. The gameplay looks trash. It looked just like any generic Far Cry game. This game needs to go back to pre-production.

The antagonist is just a generic saturday morning cartoon villain. You know the funniest part about this? The best part about the demo, The Banished, werent even created by 343. Creative Assembly created The Banished/Atriox, for Halo Wars 2, and 343 likely just ran out of ideas, and shoehorned them in. This is what the banished looked like in Halo Wars 2, and could have looked like here, if an actual GOOD developer had made the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58W2QVzgFps

Which is puzzling, because ALOT of the hardcore Halo fans in the Halo community, LOVED the artstyle of Halo Wars 2. So I cant figure out why they didnt just use Halo Wars 2's artstyle for this game.

This makes me thing there was truth to those 4chan rumors a few days ago, saying they basically had nothing, and the entire dev team turned over multiple times, and that the E3 demo from 2019 was basically made up just for E3, and they had a ton of outside help for this game. There were also rumors that the multiplayer isnt coming at launch.

Im going to say this right now. There is no way this game is launching in 4 months. And if it does, it has the potential to irrevocably damage the brand equity of Halo as a franchise. Phil said alot of stuff that made me nervous, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I went in with tempered expectations, and even I cant fathom how monumentally bad this demonstration of Halo was.

Microsoft needs to tuck tail, permanently close 343 Industries (or reduce them to just being managers overseeing the extended universe/lore/canon), and bring in an outside studio like Bungie (or even Creative Assembly at this point) to do an emergency overhaul of this game. Delay the game a year, or two, and go back to the drawing board. I would rather them tuck tail and go back to production, and Xbox Series X being without a new Halo game at launch, than Xbox being stuck with another bad Halo game for the next 5 years. There is a reason this game comes out in 4 months, and this is the first time you're seeing it. Lets be clear on that.

One last thing.......That "Live services" crap.......get the f*ck out of here with that shit. Any time you EVER hear a developer utter the sentence "we view our game as a live service platform that evolves over time" RUN FAR FAR AWAY, AND RUN FAST. Same goes for Everwild, which im not convinced the developers even know what that game is.

Im going to go on record and say that while I am excited for the show, and expect the actual games to be good......

I am not a fan of this "staggered" release of information, and there not being a deep dive into the hardware, or business talk. I dont just want a highlight reel of back to back game trailers I could watch on youtube. You have to speak publicly about this console man. You have to deliver a full keynote speaking address. Keep in mind, that MS and Phil Spencer have not done an official reveal event or spoken in an official capacity (ie. a keynote address like E3, or Sony's show, or Apple, Build, etc..) since The Game Awards last December, and that was only a minute long. Im not talking about an interview with IGN, or an exclusive "deep dive" with Digital Foundry, or hopping on some youtubers podcasts. By this time last gen we had roughly 5-6 hours worth of stage time between BOTH Microsoft and Sony, with 4 press conferences between them, dedicated to the upcoming PS4 and Xbox One.

They were supposed to have their show in May, but it got split into two shows, and now they're saying THIS show is ALSO being split into two shows with another one in August. And apparently the August show is where they're showing Lockheart.

This "staggered" approach to releasing this information (and the drawing out this reveal) is nonsensical, and I am not a fan of it. I know that Covid threw a wrench in things, but other companies, like Apple were still able to do a keynote show. They cant blame everything on Covid. And im not letting Sony off the hook either. They were cancelling their events months before Covid hit. This is not FUD or fake concern. I fully expect the games shown thursday to be fire, but I just wanted to rant about this.

The show is prerecorded, and wrapped filming a week ago.

Im perplexed about what you're complaining about in this thread. What part of the information provided exactly do you taking issue with? Is it the fact that a verified insider, and the most reliable Xbox leaker on ResetEra with a bulletproof track record just floated (and doubled down) on the notion that Xbox Live may be going free soon, and that sentiment is now being independently validated by senior editors at the largest industry press outlets, who by the way, have all already SEEN Microsoft's show?

Lemme guess, this is the part where you attack his credibility, right? They're all "lemmings" and "rabid xbox fanboys" right? The whole world? Fake news? Fake tweets? "who even are these guys anyway? never heard of'em". I've noticed you do that alot. You did it in the RDNA 1.5 thread. You progressed in that thread from calling the principal graphics engineer at Sony "some guy on the internet who said something" .........to....."well the DMs were fake"........ to "well, they're wrong anyways".

Also...........Did you honestly just suggest that PAYING for Playstation Now and it "including" online multiplayer is the same thing as online multiplayer on PSN being FREE? You need to sit this one out lol.

More oxygen being thrown on this.

Tom Warren, Senior Editor at The Verge. Keep in mind, these journalists have already seen the show btw.

I love that this rumor has Cows gulping and pulling at their collar.

With PSPlus possibly left holding the bag on paid online, the PS5 being weaker, and apparently being RDNA 1.5, and possibly being more expensive, I imagine the only job harder than being Tormy right now is being Sean Spicer 3 years ago. You're going to have your hands full over the next 3 days bruh.

For whatever its worth, verified insider Klobrille (one of the most reliable Xbox leakers, along with Shinobi, leaked acquisitions of Playground Games and Obsidian) is in the ResetEra Xbox thread right now, albeit using cryptic language, suggesting Xbox Live (and the mp paywall with it) may be going away entirely. You heard that right.

In response to someone posting the following tweet from Brad Sams:

Klobrille responded:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/xbox-game-studios-otx-you-had-me-at-halo.246538/page-92

Yea ... No.

XBL Gold is an artificial barrier that prevents a frictionless ecosystem between consoles, PC, and xCloud. That's why it's a problem and significantly raising the entry cost for online multiplayer would only make the situation worse and practically kill their console online population.

In response to the following post:

Please tell me your'e implying what I think your'e implying o:

Other posts ITT:

He didn’t just say what I think he did, did he?

Klobrille responded:

The question is not if the online multiplayer paywall falls. The question is when.

This would potentially be a VERY bold move. The implications of which would put Sony in a very compromising position.

Sony would be left holding the bag, and either be forced to follow suit, forfeiting a massive revenue stream of $2-3 billion dollars, or keep the PS Plus MP paywall, and look out of touch. Playstation Plus is one of the primary revenue streams of not just Playstation, but Sony as a whole. Billions of dollars were talking here. To put this in perspective, it makes $2-3 billion, and Sony as a company made $5.3 billion dollars in the fiscal year ending march 2020.

Its not a question of IF Sony would be forced to follow suit (they will) but Microsoft has already done the legwork of retooling their business model and pivoting their incentive structure away from a Live Services paywall and towards a "netflix style" games delivery platform. They've also already built up brand equity around GamePass. So when they drop the paywall, they have something in place to replace it with.

With Sony, they would have to do a HARD pivot of their business model. You cannot just flip a switch at the last minute on a $2-3 billion service that makes up more than a THIRD of your entire companies annual operating profits. They have investors and quarterly financial projections to meet. They could rebrand/retool their business model to compete with MS, and introduce their own "GamePass" style subscription service, but anything they did would require a refractory period before it yielded results.

While im not putting my full weight behind this, I think Cows would be wise to calm down and wait for next thursday before making fools out of themselves.

Wait until AFTER next week to start the fake panic/concern/FUD.

They're obviously gearing up for a reboot/brand refresh of the service, that will likely be announced at their showing next week.

Im going to be honest, and I've said this on here before, even pre-dating the existence of GamePass Ultimate. I've always known MS intended to eventually introduce the $15 unified pricing model (currently called "Gamepass Ultimate", but will probably be called something else) as simply the "base" model next gen.

It'll get a brand refresh, a name change, or just be called "gamepass",etc, but it is coming. It sucks, but with all the netflix talk, it is coming. Best thing we can wish for, is that MS may be willing to eat more of the hardware cost, and recoup that loss through Gamepass.

Cows always complained about MS "giving away" Gamepass on $1"fire-sale"....... welp.....you guys got your wish.