14 DAY TRIAL // Since the multiplayer Beta of Halo 3 has been launched, a lot of bad mouths (including myself) said that it looks a lot like Halo 2, but slightly better. To clear the atmosphere of any doubt, Bungie's Frank O'Connor takes on the subject in an interview with NextGeneration, hinting that the final product will be better.
"Well to be honest, we've seen them [the graphics] praised too. Multiplayer is by necessity a more sterile iteration of our graphical style and will always be tuned for performance and elegance rather than jamming the screen full of pixels. We think that the final aesthetic look of our game will be judged at launch in September and in part based on the more intense single player spaces. We're also focused on maintaining the Halo character and atmosphere in our visual design - we're competing with ourselves, and not simply trying to match the aesthetic of other games. We think that folks will be happy with Halo 3's graphical polish come September."
O'Connor assures that the game will see some changes in the months ahead and that the complete form will prove to be better: "We have a long time to polish and iterate on the largely complete game at this point. We'll be working on some big ticket items as well as making sure that the little details, like decorators and shaders are all in place. Lighting and atmospherics are going to be big keystones in our look and feel, and those really haven't been shown except in multiplayer to this point."
Yes, there is time to polish the game, but why wasn't it polished earlier? Did they expect gamers to be completely satisfied with a Halo 3 that looks and plays just as good as Halo 2? Or did Bungie need confirmation that Halo 3 should look better? Either way, it sounds like they haven't done their best with it, but now they intend to.