Halo: Reach

By Richard Leadbetter Published 15 February, 2010

Pure alpha footage dissected.

Exciting times. Footage of Halo: Reach released alongside Microsoft's X10 event gives us our first look at the game actually running in real-time. No CG, no engine-sourced cinematics, it's all run-time, and it's clearly a hugely significant upgrade over the old Halo 3 engine, last seen in 2009's ODST.

There's just over a minute of pure gameplay footage within Bungie's curiously titled "ViDoc", interspersed with the game creators talking about the key innovations in the new Halo engine. You'll hear about the new AI engine that can handle your squad, eight other team-mates and over 30 Covenant opponents simultaneously. You'll learn how the new tech renders around four times as many polygons as the Halo 3 tech. You'll see the development environment in which the new game is being shaped, as well as Bungie's new motion capture suite. It's all extremely cool stuff.

But for us, the chance to check out the game running natively on Xbox 360 hardware, away from super-sampled screenshots and cinematics, is the main reason to watch. Here's where we get our first real experience of the visual make-up of the gameplay, along with a chance to see how this in-development alpha code actually performs. It's our first chance to see the actual game.

First up, here's a compilation of gameplay and cut-scene elements from the video, with our customary performance graphs. We prefer to measure the complete 60Hz output of the console, but in common with most internet video, Bungie's footage is encoded at 30FPS. However, some clips appear to be blending 60 frames down to 30, and even where this occurs, it still seems to be confirming that Reach runs at 30FPS. No real surprises there.

Halo: Reach gameplay footage compilation, with performance analysis.

What can we take from this? Overall performance is extremely smooth during gameplay. Not only do we see a remarkably solid 30FPS in most clips, it's clear that Bungie has added a great deal more in the way of post-processing work to the new engine. While Reach overall seems to run at the same frame-rate as Halo 3, it looks and probably feels smoother owing to a decent camera motion blur effect.

Only two clips - one cut-scene, one gameplay - show a consistent drop down to 20FPS. During the assassination scene (around 00:16), we do see torn frames though. It may well be the case that some clips have v-sync engaged, others don't. We have to remember that this is alpha footage, and presumably there's still a hell of a lot of optimisation to be done; however, it's likely that the fundamental elements of the engine are now solid and the performance overall looks promising.

While overall capture quality of the clips is low even in Bungie's own HD version, there are plenty of edges to measure and all of them seem to point towards a native resolution of 1152x720 for the new engine - a significant upgrade over Halo 3's 1152x640. Anti-aliasing doesn't appear to be employed, but the improvements in post-processing effects and resolution should make this far less noticeable than it was in Halo 3.

Hopefully we'll get to see more of Reach at GDC. There are plenty of teasers in this tiny sampling of footage that leave us hungry for more - the particle shower at 01:10 for example suggests that the new Halo engine still has plenty more surprises in store for us. PhysX look out...

Picture of Richard.

About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

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Comments (56) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • harzo #1 2 years ago

    The game definately looks a step up from Halo 3 and ODST. As I said before, it has the nicest sky I have ever seen in a game! I really hope they keep all the video editing features from Halo 3. I hated ODST and traded it in but it looks like I am going to have to purchase it again to get into the beta for this!

  • Geordiemp #2 2 years ago

    Surprised its not 1280 (full 720 resolution).

    As long as they leave lots of vehicle sections in, preferably the little purple shadow things in, and system link coop, then its a good un !

    Not as silly as above sounds, having large levels for vehicles is more important for me than lots of effects in a smaller play area...

  • telboy007 #3 2 years ago

    I don't know, there is a bit in ME2 where you pass a waterfall on one of the early missions. The sky and scene there are pretty god damn impressive.

  • mashk #4 2 years ago

    And there was me thinking the graphics were going be on a par with Killzone 2.

  • cianchristopher #5 2 years ago

    I WANT ANTI-ALIASING!!! AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!

  • Dizzy #6 2 years ago

    What? Only one page?

    Looks like Bungie is going the way of other devs by not using AA and using different tricks to hide that problem. The more (grey) lower contrast looking levels also help ofc.

  • gav_and_the_gavster #7 2 years ago

    I was very pleased with the look of the game. I much prefer the non-scripted, AI driven gameplay approach Halo takes and don't mind that because of that choice, the game is not as cutting-edge visually, as other 60fps, heavily-scripted shooters. In saying that though, this new footage has closed the gap a little on the best looking games out there, definitely a decent step up from Halo 3 & ODST (which was fine for the gameplay anyway).

  • Retroid #8 2 years ago

    Hopefully it'll end up almost as big an upgrade compared to the Halo 3 engine as the Halo 2 engine was to the first.

    Halo 2 looked like it could've been running on different hardware!

  • GooseUK #9 2 years ago

    For the love of god, anti aliasing is a necessity at these resolutions. Halo 3 would have looked great if it wasn't for the HORRIFIC jaggies, unfortunately it was hard to see anything as it looked like it was made out of lego. Mass Effect 2 has used cheeky techniques to hide the missing anti-aliasing, but it is still quite annoying.

  • Badassbab #10 2 years ago

    Looks really good, glad to see the frame rate is as solid as ever unlike a lot of other games that sacrifice framerate for visual fidelity these days *Cough Kilzone 2 Cough*.

  • NunianVonFuch #11 2 years ago

    Looks like what Halo 3 should have looked like. Gears 2 still looks better though.

  • altitude2k #12 2 years ago

    @ NunianVonFuch

    Gears 2's art style and grand scale of maps masks the relatively low detail in the models and textures. This looks a lot better, imo.

  • muscleblade #13 2 years ago

    @Anthony_Daniels

    Just to your MS hating eyes. Grow up little boy.

  • memeroot #14 2 years ago

    KZ2 and MWx are completely different games to HALO which is all about the environments and the AI.

    those 2 are closer to rez than to a proper fps.

  • Chazmeister #15 2 years ago

    Why bother with all this pointless speculation when it's just footage from an alpha build? Until we get some footage from the final version these types of articles are just a waste of time.

  • cianchristopher #16 2 years ago

    It's never about the graphics with Halo, it's all about the sandbox and the emergent gameplay/possibilities...

    Call of Duty is pretty-much a shooting gallery in single-player, Killzone 2 is somewhere between the two (though closer to Halo's sandbox than CoD's pop-up enemies)...

    I'm a big fan of Killzone 2, but a bigger fan of Halo...

  • TeaFiend #17 2 years ago

    Bird monster on front page scares me.

  • memeroot #18 2 years ago

    have got to agree with cianchristopher

    I simply dont get the atraciton of CoD... they remind me on on rails shooters - fine in the 80's I suppose but surely not today.

    I wonder if there is a game with such emergent play as H3 in a fp format except for the PC - which is where I'm back at having rather given up on this gen of consoles.

  • memeroot #19 2 years ago

    Not having spent a huge amount of time with kz2 I cant comment - however there is the argument that the enemies in FEAR were good despite the dull dull dull environment.

    HALO consistantly marries great indoor and great outdoor scenes - can anyone suggest a similar game with such successes?

  • photoboy #20 2 years ago

    Interesting resolution, still small enough to fit double-wide into the 10MB EEDRAM but a decent enough increase to give more detail. Plus the upscaling should offer some blurring to reduce some of the aliasing.

    The stats on the AI are interesting, they've probably dedicated a whole core to that, which is probably why there won't be any Natal support (not that I'd want to play Halo with Natal anyway). Only trouble is, in all the games I've played it's rare for me to notice if the AI is smart or stupid. The enemies always seem mill around out of cover whether the AI is any good or not.

  • cianchristopher #21 2 years ago

    @ Farticus - well, it's not quite "emergent" in Killzone, but nowhere near CoD's linearity/pattern-learning. You're right, it's the behavior of the individual AI that brings it up a notch (it's like FEAR in that regard)...

    @ Memeroot - no, I don't think any console shooters are close to Halo. Crysis on the PC has great, emergent gameplay... (As do many other PC games)

  • darleysam #22 2 years ago

    It's alpha footage, as the article so frequently points out. It seems there's a bunch of people who either can't read that, or don't know what that means.

  • Nithron #23 2 years ago

    Is it me or does the thing on the front page look like a guy in a mask?

  • FogHeart #24 2 years ago

    Given discussion of the framerate here, and some comparisons with KZ2, I'd be interested in a new round of input response times for the latest games. To see what direction things are going....

  • The_Inquisitor #25 2 years ago

    I expect this to be good, despite my waning interest in the series. Bungie aren't likely to release a game of this magnitude, and with the current competition on the market like MW2/BC2, without attempting to raise the bar.

    I hope the multiplayer gets an overhaul in turn to mix things up a bit.

  • karooo #26 2 years ago

    aaah this is what Halo 3 should have been. hope they go 2 DVDs as well I don't want a short campaign just because they added improvements.

  • onyxbox #27 2 years ago

    I think this version of Halo is looking very nice... and a massive improvement over Halo 3 and ODST which I felt weren't the leap they should have been.

    Looks like the movement is more fluid in this game somehow... I approve.

  • Negotiator #28 2 years ago

    How digital foundry can make assumptions about resolution, AA from bits of video footage taken from an Alpha build of a game is silly. Big improvements can be made in a game from Alpha to Gold, also they said the video was not of a very high standard anyway, a pointless analysis and waste of time, lets just wait for the beta.

  • AphoticCosmos #29 2 years ago

    Definitely looks much better than Halo 3. Hell, I think that ODST actually looks good, so I'm not hard to impress ;)

  • Pablo2k5 #30 2 years ago

    The graphics look worse than UT3, which came out about two years ago!

  • Les #31 2 years ago

    Graphic on the front page reminds me of Dark Chrystal. Which isn't a bad thing.

  • Badassbab #32 2 years ago

    Hurrah for Semitope for making it in here I was wondering where you had gone! Can't have a thread about a 360 exclusive or face off without our good ole' Semitope showing up to diss anything 360 related.

  • womble #33 2 years ago

    semitope, you are a troll, plain and simple.

    This game is looking very nice indeed. Amongst the very best console shooters so far, especially when it really is a sandbox, open-wide game environment, instead of linear gameplay and restrict game areas.

    I think people are getting overly worried about the AA issue. From what I saw in the vidoc, it's not going to be an issue.
    Edited by 1 at 15/02/10 @ 22:39

  • Badassbab #34 2 years ago

    Hey Semitope, what about the music so far, does it sound any good or is that overrated too?

  • Moz #35 2 years ago

    The graphics are nice, though not likeing the colour palette, much prefer the bright colours of the previouse halos, made it stand out, made it unique. They've gone a little too generic militar shooter with the look of it.

  • Zappa #36 2 years ago

    Still sub HD and jaggie.

    The Live video in HD doesnt look great at all compared to flash videos.
    Edited by 1 at 16/02/10 @ 01:09

  • warbo #37 2 years ago

    Looks really amazing so far, and super detailed for the kind of increased scale they're going for. That, if it's final, is a higher resolution than MGS4, and much higher than CoD4 btw.

    A pretty colossal upgrade overall, and should compete well with the top-tier on the consoles, graphically.

    Zappa: it's '720p' at the moment, 720 vertical lines, and hardly jaggy with all the blur and PP filters.
    Edited by 2 at 16/02/10 @ 03:58

  • Zappa #38 2 years ago

    warbo: its almost 100,000 pixels less than HD.

  • SaberEdge #39 2 years ago

    Halo Reach looks outstanding. Some of the best visuals in any shooter to date. When you consider the game's large scale it is even more impressive.

    The HDR lighting in Halo 3 always looked really nice, but you can see that they have improved the lighting much further for Halo Reach. There are now a lot of discrete light sources and the shadows they cast make the environments look very nice. The gun models are also hugely improved.

    It's interesting to hear that they can now use around 4 times the polygons as they could in Halo 3. The particle system has also been majorly improved, since in Halo 3 they could only have 100 physics based particles and now they can have thousands. As far as the character models, I think they are the best I have seen in any first person shooter.

    I love the new weapons and the fact that they are making a return to more of the open alien world feeling of Halo Combat Evolved. It is also exciting that they seem to be making Halo Reach a very story-driven game.

    All in all this game is shaping up incredibly nicely. I can't wait until they show us more.

  • Les #40 2 years ago

    Wow, which fangirl gave me a -1 for a harmless observation like that? It's a sad world...

  • Darren #41 2 years ago

    Halo Reach is looking graphically more impressive than either Halo 3 or Halo 3 OSDT but only to the extent that it now looks like an engine running on a current gen system rather than one ported over from a last gen system. It's disappointing to hear that the resolution is still not quite 1280x720 and that anti-aliasing is still absent. IMO, Bungie should have stuck with the lower resolution of Halo 3 and used 2xAA to mask the sub-720p resolution. It works very well in games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which is sub-720p.

    Whatever, the gameplay is the most important aspect and it sounds like Bungie are really going to town with this game and even at this stage it comes across as being a hell of a lot more exciting than either the disappointing Halo 3 or the even more so Halo 3 ODST. I hoping it recaptures the feeling of playing Halo for the first time rather than feeling like a retread of the previous games. Fingers crossed.

  • Negotiator #42 2 years ago

    Again people are taking the digital foundry assumptions as fact, you have to remember they are not looking at game code here, this is a video of a documentary with some footage of the game. Also they said themselves that the video is not of the best quality and this again is an early alpha build.

  • laudy #43 2 years ago

    @ farticus

    Jim Carrey got away with pulling the same faces for years...can't see it stopping any time soon...

  • seanthejackal #44 2 years ago

    Killzone 2 still has better graphics and still has a deeper/bigger multiplayer. Killzone 3 will have co-op and be a hundred times better than any shooter the 360 produces. buy a ps3 you fools!!!

  • mojo_x #45 2 years ago

    I can't believe that Bungie still can't employ atleast 2x AA on a fifth generation next-gen game? Wow. ODST was awesome but playing a game without AA these days makes my eyes bleed. Once you're accustomed to 8x AA on the PC its hard to go back.

    Personally, I'd take 2x AA + proper 720p along with the reduced shader effects / geometry to accommodate for change. But 99% of other gamers don't seem to care about jaggies or screen tearing these days so I'm clearly in the minority. It blows me away that were in the year 2010 and consoles still don't commonly employ AA, which PC gamers have had for a decade now.

    I'm a Halo fanboy but this one might not be a day one purchase for me. Crackdown 2 on the other hand...

    Oh and for the member that mentioned the lack of the bright colour pallet... I totally agree. It looks pretty, but its strange to move away from the high contrast vistas of Halo CE and move to the standard & dull generic FPS pallet. However, I'm all for the maturation of the Covenant Elite.

  • Les #46 2 years ago

    "It blows me away that were in the year 2010 and consoles still don't commonly employ AA, which PC gamers have had for a decade now."

    All about trade-offs given the fixed specs of the hardware. And while PC games have had AA for years now, in all likelihood the actual number of PC gamers that has made real use of the feature is but a fraction of the total population.

  • mojo_x #47 2 years ago

    "All about trade-offs given the fixed specs of the hardware."

    You're absolutely correct. I just feel that they are focusing on the wrong areas. But as I said, I'm in the minority here.

    I disagree about PC gamers not using AA though. A $100.00 Graphics Card can do 2x AA at resolutions > 1280x1024 in 99% of games. I find your assumption that only a fraction of PC gamers use Anti Aliasing to be quite... unfactual. Do you have any links that can support this?

  • Les #48 2 years ago

    "I disagree about PC gamers not using AA though."

    It was more a response to put you mentioning that PC gamers have had the option for AA for over a decade in perspective. I don't have hard figures. But I know that even on services like Steam (on which I assume hardcore gamers are overrepresented) the average hardware spec of the userbase is well behind the tech curve. So that's one. And second, I assume I'm not the only one in valuing other graphics effects over AA when I'm configuring the graphics options for a game.

    So on a console game it's either there or not. On the PC it's an option which in practice means that not all PC gamers will actually use it.
    Edited by 1 at 17/02/10 @ 09:38

  • mojo_x #49 2 years ago

    "So on a console game it's either there or not. On the PC it's an option which in practice means that not all PC gamers will actually use it. "

    Fair response. I completely disagree but you're entitled to your opinion ;). Surely we'd all be playing 8-bit console games still if the console graphics hardware/software tech never kept up with the arcade or PC games over the years. I'd use the Steam against your argument as well... 90% of the PC's connected to Steam have hardware capable of AA (which is enabled by default by a majority of games that I play on a very modest rig). I only ever adjust an AA setting to 2x or off on the chance that frame rate has become an issue.

    Again, I'm probably the minority here as I've always been an early adopter and own most game related platforms released since 1987 and have a relatively modern PC. I was just assuming that after a decade of the tech existing, that we'd actually have it employed in a console environment. As the majority don't seem to care either way, we might end up seeing another console generation infected with the 'jaggies'.

    Thanks for your thoughts. I write games myself so its good to get another educated opinion from a fellow gamer.

  • Badassbab #50 2 years ago

    Semitope-

    You said the graphics suck and will not improve in the final build otherwise you'll eat your shoe with ketchup.

    Now you say it's better looking than most average looking games but not as good as the best looking games but 'we'll' see how it looks in the end'

    You don't by any chance suffer from multiple personality disorder do you?

    Btw out of interest which console games this gen do you think looks good in your opinion? You can factor in the time of release.

  • Badassbab #51 2 years ago

    So basically the vast majority of games you will avoid. Unless you have a gaming PC in which case you'd have been gaming @ 60fps for many years by now.

  • RedSparrows #52 2 years ago

    Some real picky whiners in here, sheesh.

  • gafferuk1981 #53 2 years ago

    sorry badassbab but KillZone 2 is locked at 30 frames per second and has a higher resolution than Halo: Reach. It's ok being a fanboy but you don't need to make up crap. KillZone 2 is still the console FPS graphics king and so far Halo: Reach doesn't look to be challenging it.

  • Badassbab #54 2 years ago

    Above comnment- what you on about? Did I talk about Killzone 2? Which post it that? Oh and Kilzone may be locked @ 30fps but it definately does not stay @ 30fps throughout the game.

  • Badassbab #55 2 years ago

    Semitope-

    So in your opinion we have the following games that looks good this gen-

    Uncharted 2 (agree),
    Killzone 2 (agree- though not without some issues)
    Infamous (ok-ish, a jag fest)
    Ratchet and Clank Crack In Time (...agree)
    Yakuza 3 (looks like an updated Shenmue graphics engine- so no)
    FFVIII (Not bad but not brilliant- it's got boxy hands for starters)

    All PS3 games, no third party games (except FF) and no 360 games. Omits to mention Bioshock, GTAIV, FM3, Gears, Resident Evil 5, Batman AA, Mass Effect, COD, AC etc etc etc. All the just mentioned games looks inferior to Infamous, Yakuza et al (PMSL!). Just so those of you who don't know, our good ole Semi doesn't own a 360, only gives games 2 hours playtime to hold his interest (but still completed Mass Effect 2 which he didn't rate highly) and is now a PC gamer hoping to sell his (in his words) crappy PS3 but actually might hold onto to it because of HOW3 and amongst others.

    Conclusion- NOT ONLY A TROLL BUT WEARS FANBOY TINTED SPECTACLES. Also doesn't seem to be able to make up his mind from time to time.

  • subx #56 2 years ago

    More exclusive info on Halo Reach can be found at http://haloreachnews.net