Just a few days ago, Bungie was answering 'Halo 3 is Halo 2 in HD' accusations letting the game's cinematic designer do the commenting. He reckoned that the gameplay experience is all that matters in the end, not saying much about the game's "true" HD capabilities. Recently though, Bungie has clearly confirmed that Halo 3 simply "doesn't" support true HD.

Is this the kind of news that makes you hate the most anticipated game ever, or what? Here's what the Bungie statement reads, according to actiontrip.com:

"The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see - lighting. We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible - so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values. Both are combined to create the finished on screen image."

So basically, Bungie is trying to convince its fans that they tried achieving something close to HD quality, without actually having to develop a Halo 3 that supports HD. More than that, in the lines that follow below, the developers explain why they didn't feel it was necessary to mention this before, as it's impossible to see the difference anyway:

"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."

They have a point. Had they mentioned this before everyone got the chance to experience the game hands-on, spoiled brat gamers all over the world would have negatively blogged Halo 3 to its end. Well, maybe not to its end, but a good dose of bad publicity would have been ensured, had Bungie disclosed these aspects earlier.

So I guess that's that then: Halo 3 does not support true HD. There, another piece of Halo 3 news for you.