Legacy (Gaming)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Thursday, June 13, 2019, 08:48 (2082 days ago) @ Ragashingo

On the opposite side of not caring, I'm always just sorta impressed that the Master Chief Collection exists at all, and that the developers are going back and making fixes to games that shipped almost two decades ago. Case in point, and right in the middle of this "do they care about graphics" lane, is the major fix to Halo: Reach that is coming this fall:

Reach was originally developed with a specific visual style, partly accomplished by having a deliberate motion blur rendering solution built in. It served its purpose back in the day on Xbox 360, but in today’s world of 4k and HDR that works against what we’re trying to accomplish. Defining the solution that stays true to the original artistic intent, whilst taking advantage of the huge fidelity gains on offer today - finding that balance has been a bit of a challenge and sparked a fair amount of debate. However, Reach looks far crisper, smoother and more dynamic than it ever has - especially on Xbox One X - so we think it’s a challenge we’ve overcome well.

If I'm reading this right, it means they are doing away with Reach's "double rendering & blur" smoothing that played all sorts of havoc with the cutscenes. For the first time ever Reach's cutscenes will be what they should have been! And while that motion blur was most noticeable in the cutscenes, it has some crazy negative effects on other parts of the game. Remember flying into the very first level on the Falcons and you look over at the other team and their Falcon is a blurry mess? That too will probably be cleaned up!

Reach is probably my favorite Halo. I think it captured the spirit of Halo possibly even better than the original. I liked the story. I liked Noble team and their diverse characters. I liked the tragedy. I liked the gameplay. And to have it come back with one of the most glaring flaw fixed nine years after it shipped? I'd pay $60 for it again, but Microsoft is only asking $10 for it. Plus it'll run at 60fps. And 4K.

If you read through the various MCC developer updates, you'll see that they are constantly making improvements to all the Halo games that run within the MCC. Most recent one I can recall was an fix to a bug that got introduced somewhere along the way that caused the Halo 1 rocket launcher to auto aim (fire the rocket at a bit of an off angle to try and hit an enemy in your reticle instead of firing it straight and true no matter what). It was probably 343's bug, but that they are fixing issues with an 18 year of game at all is crazy.

Yeah, the MCC ain't perfect. It nearly died on release and I guess there are various issues here and there even today. But, I think it's pretty remarkable how committed to the MCC Microsoft has been given that it almost certainly is not a money maker. I figure it's has got to be a goodwill project. And I'm glad it exists.

Agree with every word you've said. Also, I liked MCC fine at launch--it was worth the money to me, but I wasn't as interested in multiplayer.