14 DAY TRIAL // The Halo 2 Anniversary single-player story campaign available inside Halo: The Master Chief Collection won't run at a 1080p resolution on the Xbox One, as Microsoft was unable to achieve the native resolution benchmark due to the parallel rendering in both the old and new engines.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection is one of the biggest Xbox One exclusives of the year, with millions of franchise fans being eager to re-experience the classic Halo 1, 2, 3, and 4 installments in the series on the new home console from Microsoft.
While all games have been overhauled to run on the new hardware, Halo 2 has also got the Anniversary treatment, meaning its campaign has extra content and runs simultaneously in both the old and new engines. This allows players to quickly swap between the original and the Anniversary visuals with the press of a button.
The Anniversary treatment doesn't allow for 1080p
Unfortunately, it seems that the improvements made in the Anniversary mode and the quick swap functionality prevent the Halo 2 story campaign from reaching the 1080p resolution benchmark. This is according to 343 Industries' Dan Ayoub, who's the executive producer on the new collection.
"During development we were really pleased with the way the engine and buffer allowed us to switch instantly between classic and Anniversary engines that are running simultaneously - however that, as you might expect, put a hit on resolution," Ayoub tells IGN.
The Halo 2 campaign runs at 1328x1080 with a 60fps framerate
However, while 343 could have left the campaign to run at 720p, it managed to push things further and achieve a higher resolution, while still retaining the target 60fps framerate, according to Ayoub.
"The campaign of Halo 2: Anniversary looked fantastic at 720p with the level of detail and clarity it gave us, but like every other aspect of the game and tech, we wanted to push it further," he explains.
"So in the last weeks of development, our teams were able to meet a stretch goal and the campaign of Halo 2: Anniversary now runs 60 fps at a crisp resolution of 1328x1080, which is a significant and meaningful boost in image quality we think fans are really going to appreciate. All of the other games across the entire package of The Master Chief Collection run 60 fps at 1920x1080 native."
As such, while the lack of consistent 1080p across all games and modes in Halo: The Master Chief Collection is a pity, the Halo 2 Anniversary campaign is still expected to deliver some great visuals, especially when compared via the swap system with the original ones.
