Halo coming to the PC after nearly 12 years with the Master Chief Collection - Sensationalist Headlines

Halo:CE and 3 (probably 2 as well) run at 30FPS on native hardware, so 343i did something to get them running at 60 on the Xbone and MCC. Whether there's something preventing them from going above 60 is an interesting question.

The variance they'd have to accommodate for by allowing the game to run between 30 and 120FPS I can imagine would be a huge insufferable ballache to work around. Uncapping the framerate too would be such an unfathomable minefield of issues that I reckon the 60FPS cap is the best out of a myriad of bad options.

Halo 2 especially has an issue on the MCC where it playing at 60 makes the AI more aggressive than it is normally.

On the MCC version the framerate isn't v-synced (IIRC, for the Halo 3 deriv engines at least), so it wildly varies from 20s to 60s in certain scenes. Your real issue is stuff like damage calculation, maybe physics, probably some particle or other effects. You really have to hope Bungie made BLAM frame-rate independent, which while they had some of the best engineers, you couldn't blame 'em for engineering their engine for a situation they never expected it to be in (running 100-200 FPS).

when you play at 144hz, the frame pacing of 60fps is not a multiple of 144 so the framerate at 60fps actually looks choppier on a 144hz monitor than a 60hz or 120hz one. atomic's concern is just that, if the max were 72 fps im sure theyd be fine with it

Did some research into who is helping MCC with the transfer to PC. https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/b10j9u/psa_whos_helping_port_mcc/

Imagine it sells so well they start remastering or making new maps lmao.

I'd personally love if they started releasing new maps for MCC Halo games. It'd certainly be weird to see "New maps released for Halo 3 after 12 years" as a headline though

I really hope it’s sooner than later, I’m jonesing for Halo

They'd probably put the Halo Online maps in and call it a day, just as a nod to ElDewrito.

Halo: Infinite's art style changes sound great and i'm glad they're going to go back to some extent, but at the same time....how? Just how are they going to fix all the problems and inconsistencies? I feel like they've damaged things far too much to fix without just causing more problems. They established that the UNSC design aesthetic - the iconic near-future, bulky, unsophiscated style they had in Bungie's games - is now not the 'true' UNSC design style, as pretty much everything seen in the games was just old equipment they were still using with things in 343i's style like the Broadsword, M739 SAW and BR85 appearing during the Human-Covenant War. Something like the Elites they can just retcon back to their previous look, as there was no explanation for that in the first place, but considering they changed the lore to fit their new UNSC art style they can't just retcon things without complicating things just as much. They either: Retcon things out-of-universe, so it all just changes without explanation and you pretend it was always like that. They'd now have to go back and the several dozen armour types, weapons, vehicles, ships etc that no longer fit the re-established UNSC design style. Change things in-universe, in the sense of they give a lore-reason for going back to that older design style. That means that there's still 2 competing, contradicting aesthetics that don't fit together in the setting. That doesn't solve the problem at all, just avoids addressing it directly and still has the same damaging complications. I really don't see them doing the first one, especially as the BR85 still exists in their new art style. There's also the just as bad possibility that they somehow keep both at once, even - e.g. the older Marine armour and MJOLNIR designs yet you've then still got things like the Broadsword with its sleek, aerodynamic look. That would still mean the problem is still there. I just can't think of a way to fix the problem that seems feasible. That's a huge task without going into the just as absurd Forerunner designs, even.

It appears that 343 is taking option 2, but it's justified because of the ending of Halo 5 sort of works in doing a quasi-soft reboot. Since no one cares about the end of Halo 5 I'll just post it anyway: there's an AI takeover and people insinuate that most modern UNSC technology becomes useless because of how hackable it is, so they have to return to older stuff. Their 'newer' artstyle is still used, but in new ways. For instance, here is Halo Infinite concept art, apparently. https://www.vgr.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/DmITOHZU4AA59E6.jpg As can be seen, the Pelican is back to its original version. The new Hind-based version of the Pelican that no one likes was changed into a heavy-lift pelican-like aircraft in Halo Wars 2. Additionally, they didn't just 'retcon' the older design - the enemies in Halo Wars 2 were a sect of the Covenant that were literally banished, hence their name - 'Banished'. They are probably going to become the de-facto covenant because the Forerunner-worshipping evil Covenant from Halo 4 and 5 is effectively dead, and the Banished answer to no one but themselves.

It's literally Reach armor and the Halo 3 AR and BR. I would be FLOORED if that was infinite's design, even though Master Chief himself looks more like the 2/3 design.

The "It uses forerunner stuff so they have to go back to old equipment" idea does not make much sense though - the problem with the art style goes far beyond just the MJOLNIR armour, the AI wouldn't explain why Marine Armour has gone back to something resembling the previous version and also new technology like the BR85 is still there. Not played it myself but from what I've seen the Hind-style Pelican in Halo Wars 2 was not a Pelican, that was a Condor - a seperate ship based on the Pelican that was introduced in Halo: Nightfall. That wasn't a change. Outpost Discovery covers several games, that's not Halo: Infinite art. Those are apparantly 2 SPARTAN-IIIs who were active during the Human-Covenant War.

Combat Evolved and Reach's art-style are not consistent, yet there's no issues there. CEA partially tried to fix this by using Reach's marines but CEA Chief looks nothing like Jorge(if his armour wasn't modded with orange/red bits). There's like 5 minutes between the end of Reach and the beginning of CE and for some reason Chief/Noble-6 use a MA5 and MA37 respectively, with the latter being over 100 years old by Reach/CE. That alone creates a shit ton of potential lore problems but as far as I can tell there's no excuse. Even when the Marines show up in Reach(Pillar of Autum) they use MA37's. Honestly, my main point is, lighten up on art-style consistency stuff, even if your series is grounded in explaining everything. If it ends up looking better, we're better off and if there's actual reasoning even better.

343 did say that MCC on PC would have "adjustible/variable frame rates" on both the stream and in the Waypoint article, so unless that's just a toggle between 30 and 60 (what's the point), I'm willing to bet that it will support 144hz. There would be no reason for them to advertise adjusting the frame cap as a feature if the max you could go is the same as the standard Xbone release. However, if MCC has crossplay at all, I could also see them imposing a 60 FPS cap at least in multiplayer just to keep things a bit more fair between Xbone and PC. Higher frame rates means less input lag means even more advantage on top of having mouse and keyboard. Speaking of which, fun fact, the Xbone supports mouse and keyboard as game input devices. You can literally just plug in a mouse and keyboard and play Fortnite or Warframe with them right now. Would be nice to see that hit MCC in a later update for the console folk.

No game in the MCC on Xbox runs at 30 FPS. They're all 60 minimum. That being said, "variable refresh rates" might refer to FreeSync, which the Xbox One X supports.

The 30/60 fps toggle is also a thing in Forza Horizon 4. My best guess, is its there for people that can't quite hit 60 fps consistently. With the logic being that instead of dealing with framerate jumps between 30-60, just lock it to 30 altogether so its consistent. Also notebooks, to save on heat and battery life. Considering all the Halo games all ran at 30 fps on their original platforms, that's not a big deal. Also I suppose to please "purists" that believed Halo was meant to run at 30 fps and that 60 ruins the experience. I would not be surprised if that vocal minority existed.

I think there's a difference in severity between relatively small inconsistencies like that, and something like the entire design ethos of a species in a sci-fi setting no longer being coherant with itself, though.Obviously if things end up looking better than that's great, but that isn't going to suddenly mean the damage they've done to the iconic look of the UNSC and other things in the setting didn't happen or iisn't still a problem to some extent. The only way to fix it is to just retcon large amounts of the lore and art style without explanation.

This would explain a lot, I just played through it on the Xbox One and I swear Heroic was even worse than I remember

This explains why Legendary is impossible for me. I know it's meant to be hard but this is ridiculous.

I feel like the franchise has had considerable visual inconsistency since the beginning, though. Marines went from grey jumpsuits w/ brown plate armor in Halo 1 to OD fatigues and modern-looking LBE in Halo 2 to visually-complex armor plates in Halo 3. Mjolnir armor itself has gone from the sleek-but-bulky look of Halo 1 to the Gundam-bits-stuck-to-a-wetsuit style of later games. The guns have gradually gone from simple, utilitarian, and real-looking to Warframe-esque greeble overload. Just doesn't seem like a new problem to me.

Those things occuring with Bungie's games were not visual inconsistency, though. Things like the Halo 1 Marine armour and Halo 3 Marine armour being quite substantially different were the result of them being able to update their designs as the graphics of the games got better, they still maintained the usual design aesthetics of the UNSC throughout the series. All their technology looked like it belonged to a singular entity with the way it looked - there wasn't anything that substantially contrasted the overall feel of the UNSC and the way their technology was made. It was all still something that felt like a relatively low-tech advancement of modern-day equipment with 90s-style Sci-fi Mixed in and all their equipment fit in with that design approach. Reach added quite a bit more detail to things but the underlying look was still there. The MJOLNIR and weapons looking far, far too complex and sci-fi were 343i's changes, that wasn't something that was a significant problem before Halo 4. For example, the Longsword, Shortsword, Pelican and Sabre all look perfectly fine next to each other despite being from different games. They're all ships that have the same design stylings - sharp corners, flat sections, hard angles and are generally a rugged, somewhat bulky, unsophisticated look. That even extends to the other vehicles like the Wombat, Albtratos and even the Aircraft Carrier that we only briefly saw, they all broadly fit together within the look of the UNSC. Then you have something like the Broadsword, a fighter designed in a way that doesn't bother to adhere to the usual way the UNSC designed all their vehicles and aircraft, and instead for some strange reason goes for being sleek, smooth, futuristic and aerodynamic looking despite being something from the same time as the others and even the prototype Sabre not being designed in that way and being made after. https://www.halopedia.org/images/6/65/H4_Broadsword_profile.png : https://www.halopedia.org/images/8/83/Sabre-class_Starfighter.png The inconsistencies that 343i added are far bigger problems than the relatively small ones from Bungie's games.

This is one thing about 343's retconning of the Forerunners that really bothered me. It was a very subtle hint that the Forerunners were Human in the original trilogy since their architecture and general design is very similar to the UNSC stuff, utilitarian, hard angles, no curves, flat colours. Which was a contrast to the Covenant and their ornamental, curved, colourful design. The designs aren't exactly the same, with the Forerunner tech being much larger and having more geometric shapes than the UNSC, but it was close. Spoilers for the courtesy of those who'l be playing for the first time with the PC release.

Pretty sure that Bungie discounted that theory with Halo 3, given the terminals.

Yeah but 343 was already beginning the transition to take Halo over at that point. I had always heard that they were responsible for a lot of the extra lore bits in Halo 3. Didn't they also add terminals to Halo Anniversary?

Guilty Spark very heavily implies that humans are Forerunners in his dialogue with Master Chief in H1, then literally says 'You are Forerunner' in H3. There are a lot of hints throughout the first three games, so it's very odd to me that 343 decided to change this and in the process basically imply that Guilty Spark has gone so senile he doesn't know what species he's talking to.

If i remember correctly, isn't he referring to that master chief, is in fact, a forerunner creation? That the forerunners have manipulated mankind so that john would be born? Thus, he is a forerunner?

That's from Halo 4. It's also an incredibly dumb idea.

343 was made after Bungie left Microsoft, which happened a month after Halo 3 was released. Bungie themselves created the terminals based on similar elements from the Marathon series. Yes, 343 made Halo Anniversary's terminals, but that's besides the point.