Halo 2 Confirmed For Fall 2004

Jeremy Parish writes "Bungie has finally announced that Halo 2 will ship this Fall for Xbox, as relayed via 1UP. But to make up for this semi-distant release date, they've released the first Halo 2 multiplayer screen!" Over at Halo.bungie.org, they point out a Bungie development update noting the new screenshot is "...entirely representative of the lighting, polygon counts, bump-mapping and particle effects", and also refer to the original Bungie.net announcement, clarifying: "A number of people have been confused by the title of this news item. The game is NOT named 'Halo 2: In Reach of Fall'. This is just a reference to the title of novel The Fall of Reach.)"

Comments

half-truths

[Frac]

entirely representative of the lighting, polygon counts, bump-mapping and particle effects

Certainly not representative of screen resolution though, unless the xbox can display 1600x1200 on any TV.

Re:half-truths

[simoniker]

To be fair, Frank O'Connor did say, in the larger development update:

"The resolution is a little sharper thanks to the way screens are dumped from the frame buffer."

There just wasn't room to include that fact in the above Slashdot under-150-words synopsis.

Re:half-truths

[bigman2003]

Umm...because it is not competing against the PC, the Xbox is competing against the PS2 (and Gamecube).

In which case, it really does have 'amazing gaphics'.

Re:half-truths

[fredrikj]

In which case, it really does have 'amazing gaphics'.

Super Mario World has amazing graphics too. Better than Halo 2's if you ask me.

Re:half-truths

[Phil Wilkins]

Not necessarily. It's almost certainly rendered on the XBox, just not output on the display hardware. We do a similar thing for our PS2 game. One method is to render multiple viewports (either as tiles, or by pixel-fraction offset) of the scene, and then stitch them back together as a post-process.

It's still a reasonable indicator of the lighting, effects, and the detail in the models. Just not what you'd actually see during gameplay. However if you don't do this, then you get a million fanboys crying about "anti-aliasing".

Oh man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn those Red and Blue guys! They're at it again!

When will they ever learn?

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't look any different from the first one. Will it have more than a handful of multiplayer levels? Will I be able to make my own mods with the engine? (for the PC version obviously) Is it going to be as damn repetitive as the first one?

Its going to get pushed back, you know it.

[Cap-America]

I'm sorry but I have a bad feeling that the game is going to get pushed back again. It always does, we get closes to the release date then bam, pushed back another 4 months.

On another note, I'm really not to impress by the screen shots It does look a lot like Halo 1. The big deal with Halo 2 for me was Xbox Live. But now with Halo for PC I'm finding myself careing less and less about Halo 2. I have everything I wanted for Halo on my PC and I don't have to pay for Xbox Live.

Whats the point of Halo 2 now that we ahve the PC version?

Re:Its going to get pushed back, you know it.

[SeaEye420]

"I'm sorry but I have a bad feeling that the game is going to get pushed back again. It always does, we get closes to the release date then bam, pushed back another 4 months."

Where have you been? This is the delay. Originally, it was going to be out last Christmas. On the main page at halo.bungie.net is this choice quote:

"So remember last year when we told you we don't announce release dates until we're confident well meet our deadline? Well now were confident. Halo 2 will ship in Fall, 2004. Please make a note of it."

Sounds like they're pretty sure this will be it...

Re:Its going to get pushed back, you know it.

[Radius9]

Being a game programmer, and more specifically, having worked on the XBox, I have to say you are wrong. Halo 1 did not push the XBox hardware that much, the machine has a LOT more power in it. And as a game developer, sure I can do things on the PC that I can't do on any of the consoles, but I effectively have to write the game twice, once for the low end PCs, and again for the higher end hardware. Either that, or I have to cut out the lowed end PC market, at which point its probably no longer worth it. In addition, although consoles have technically lower specs than a PC, we can often do more with it, primarily because developing a game takes 1 to 2 years, at least. This means that on the PC, I am trying to write code for a system that doesn't even exist yet, I'm trying to hit a moving target. On a console on the other hand, its a static target, and the longer I work on a particular platform, the more performance I can I get out of the machine.

Nine month slippage?

[*weasel]

This is starting to feel an awful lot like Crimson Skies. Hoopla, playtesting, major rework, Hoopla, playtesting, major rework.

At least you know Bungie's not just rushing out anything wrapped in the Halo logo to capitalize on the buzz. And they're not blaming it on some half-baked code-leak or anything. (Really, what would Valve have to recode due the leak? the network encryption? That shouldn't take 6 months...)

Well, Crimson Skies turned out to be a damn fun game. So if they're holding Halo2 back to similarly refine the gameplay experience, good on em - I'd rather wait than have a glorified expansion sully the franchise.

I'm just hoping the (xbl) multiplayer is up to snuff, and they hit that 24/server xbl target.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

"...entirely representative of the lighting, polygon counts, bump-mapping and particle effects"

That statement screams "doctored picture". And on closer inspection there are a lot of things that don't make sense about that image:

(1) This is not a 1st person perspective picture. It's not representative of a 1st person shooter. The viewpoint is too low and there's no HUD. You will never see screens like this when you own the game.
(2) It's a bit too well composed. Almost like they paused the game, then moved the camera around to try and get the best picture. Or used photoshop.
(3) The blue player on the left appears to be shooting at the blue player on the right (with the shield effect). This is indicative of clueless compositing, unless all the players were completely incompetent.
(4) Note the faint motion blur on the ejected machinegun shell that's rotating in mid-air. Um.. motion blur? This suggests badly repaired interlaced video capture, not direct digital framebuffer capture.
(5) Odd stairstepping in places. Check out the antenna on the rear of the car. Why is it so blocky? Also look at the edge of the canyon wall on the right side of the picture - it's clear this image has been resampled. And resampled up - not down. This is most odd.

This picture definitely has some fishy elements to it - motion-blur and antialiasing at 1600x1200 not withstanding. The very early trailer video they released of Halo2 Xbox (which I believe was in-game since all the movies in the 1st game were) was basicly 640x480 with no antialiasing.

Re:Translation

[fowlerserpent]

the blue player on the left is not shooting at the blue player on the right. The blue player on the right is being shot by the red player on the right. Notice that the red player and the blue player are pointed at each other firing their weapons, thats how you can tell.

The weird blocky effect on the antenna is a result of the antenna "wobbling." Perhaps you'll recall the antenna on the scorpion tank in the original halo. It flopped back and forth. The antenna is apparently not supposed to be a stiff metal rod, but bendable. It wobbles when the vehicle moves. Load up Halo, get in a scorpion and check it out.

I loaded up the image in photoshop and dropped it down to 640x480. It looks a lot shittier, big duh.

Re:Translation

[cabra771]

This is not a 1st person perspective picture. It's not representative of a 1st person shooter. The viewpoint is too low and there's no HUD. You will never see screens like this when you own the game.
FYI, Bungie has built in camera settings to their engine to stop any kind of action, move the camera where they want and take a snapshot. This really isn't all that new. Think of it similar to Quake 3 when playing online and being able to "fly" around the map when your not playing and watching the other players duke it out. This is the main method that companies use to create their press release stills and such. What did you think they do? Hold a camera up to the monitor and take a picture? Bungie had tons of pictures like this from the first Halo, and I believe that someone actually has created a small program or found out how to use this camera for taking pictures in the PC version.

Halo 2 and production values

[MBraynard]

In determining the quality of Halo 2, Exhibit A is the original Halo. However, just playing the game for most people can only give a partial picture about the production values of the game.

The official Xbox magazine has a demo disc and, for several months, this featured a series of discussions with the Bungie development team discussing in detail various aspects of what they went through in making Halo, giving a far greater appreciation for there work and revealig production values that I had not noticed, despite beating the game on highest difficulty.

They go into great detail about things I never would have noticed - like the way a wall and floor looks with the player's headlight turned on versus off and how ther are three layers of passthrough transparency.

I'm not sure how long we are going to have to wait, but the example Bungie set with Halo makes me anticipate another 'game of the year.'

disappointment

[Undefined Parameter]

Bungie never announced a release date for Halo 2 up until today, so nothing's been "pushed back" or "delayed." Still... FALL!? I recognize how much of the H2 demo played by the Bungie guys was scripted and limited in scope, but it was still an example of where the engine was.

The screenshot released today shows that they have functional multiplayer now, too. Beta testing should take a few months, but it seems to me that Halo 2 is clearly past the alpha stage at this point.

So why 8-10 months more? Even IF they're still in alpha, they've got to be in late alpha by now... I just don't see how it'll take that long. Maybe that's my fault... perhaps a lack of experience with game development and emotion are clouding my vision on this. I'm willing to accept that, and I don't think that I'm "owed" anything, even an explanation... but damn it, I'm disappointed and saddened by this news.

Even on the off chance that Bungie is just screwing with our heads, I've still lost some of my confidence in them. Hell, if they ARE screwing with our heads, I'll be angry at them for toying with their fans' emotions.

I'm going to go distract myself before I get depressed.

~UP