[0:02] Halo Combat Evolved has returned once
[0:05] again with the upcoming release of Halo
[0:07] Campaign Evolved, and I had a chance to
[0:09] sample two levels from the game on both
[0:11] PC and Xbox Series X. And as DF's most
[0:15] passionate Halo fan, I wanted to talk
[0:17] about it today. You see, at its core,
[0:20] Campaign Evolved marks another attempt
[0:22] at remaking one of the world's most
[0:24] iconic shooters, the original Halo.
[0:27] While the Xbox 360 Anniversary Edition
[0:29] offered then modernized assets, I've
[0:32] always felt that it missed the mark with
[0:34] a visual overhaul that lacks artistic
[0:37] cohesion and a flare present in Bungie's
[0:40] original designs. It also marked the
[0:42] beginning of 343 Industries Reign of
[0:45] Halo in conjunction with Saber
[0:47] Interactive, of course. And aside from
[0:49] stereoscopic 3D, I really don't care for
[0:52] it. With Campaign Evolved though, the
[0:55] development team has been granted a
[0:57] second shot. You see, while Anniversary
[1:00] Mark 343's first project, Campaign
[1:02] Evolved now fills that same role for the
[1:04] newly christened Halo Studios. Along
[1:07] with this though, and breaking with Halo
[1:09] tradition, Halo Studios has dropped its
[1:12] in-house technology and instead embraced
[1:14] Unreal Engine 5. And with it, we get
[1:17] some huge benefits, but also some rather
[1:20] noticeable sacrifices. So, let's dig in.
[1:23] The demo version includes two missions,
[1:25] the Silent Cgrapher and Assault on the
[1:27] Control Room. Two of the best missions
[1:29] in the game, I would argue. I started
[1:31] with Cgrapher and was presented with
[1:33] this gorgeous, albeit offline rendered
[1:35] cutscene. I was really hoping for
[1:37] real-time cutscenes like the original,
[1:39] but alas, they've gone with video. Once
[1:42] you're handed control, though, I was
[1:44] immediately impressed with the vision on
[1:46] display. It represents a visually
[1:49] striking evolution of the Halo aesthetic
[1:51] that feels both true to Bungie's
[1:53] original vision, but also light years
[1:55] ahead of Halo Anniversary. I ended up
[1:57] doing laps around the island in a
[1:59] Warthog to compare the versions. And
[2:02] yeah, I really like what they've done
[2:03] here, but it also highlights how these
[2:06] visuals can change the experience a
[2:08] little bit. The shift to ultradetailed
[2:10] rocky terrain means that your driving
[2:12] experience is a lot rougher than before.
[2:15] I mean, in the original Halo, these are
[2:16] just big flat open spaces with tiled
[2:19] textures, right? But in the new one,
[2:22] it's all much more detailed, and the
[2:24] Warthog now needs to physically react to
[2:26] it. Still, more detail doesn't always
[2:28] mean better, as we saw with Anniversary.
[2:30] But this time, I feel like all that
[2:32] extra detail actually manages to retain
[2:35] the atmosphere that this specific island
[2:38] has always been known for. It's
[2:40] different, but visually intriguing.
[2:44] Some other visual details I liked. The
[2:46] water system for instance is absolutely
[2:49] gorgeous. The waves lapping up on the
[2:51] beach as reflections of the surroundings
[2:53] dance across the surface. Just gorgeous.
[2:56] The Warthog of course actually reacts to
[2:58] it as well. A far cry from the original.
[3:02] Lighting is another important
[3:03] difference. Leveraging Lumen GI and on
[3:07] interior lights, Unreal Engine 5's mega
[3:09] lights feature, Halo presents beautiful
[3:12] dramatic sunlight and pyrochnic effects.
[3:15] The bounce of the afternoon sun off the
[3:17] warm sand creates some truly dramatic
[3:20] scenarios. Couple that with voluometrics
[3:22] and tons of dust effects, and it all
[3:24] just looks really cohesive. What's cool
[3:26] here is that even on Xbox, they're
[3:28] actually using hardware ray tracing even
[3:30] in performance mode. So, they sidestep a
[3:33] lot of the issues that we see with
[3:34] SDF-based tracing. In addition, as I
[3:38] mentioned, mega lights are actually used
[3:40] for interior and local lights, something
[3:42] you'll really appreciate when you're
[3:44] surrounded by tons of Covenant all
[3:45] blasting their brightly colored weapons.
[3:48] And in fact, color is one of the key
[3:50] things they really got right here. The
[3:52] original Halo was known for its super
[3:54] vibrant greens, blues, purples, and the
[3:57] like, right? That's what defined the
[3:59] look of the Covenant. And it's something
[4:01] that was completely missed for
[4:03] anniversary. This time it looks
[4:06] excellent, and it really makes these
[4:08] interior scenes feel super dynamic with
[4:11] lights and blasters going all over the
[4:14] place. Here's another example I really
[4:16] liked. In the original game, in this
[4:18] hallway beneath the island, it looks
[4:20] like this. There's a little bit of light
[4:22] pouring in at the end of the tunnel, but
[4:24] it's otherwise pretty dark. When they
[4:26] did the anniversary edition, it instead
[4:28] looked like this. It's super bright and
[4:30] garish. Honestly, I don't like this at
[4:32] all. For Campaign Involved, however, we
[4:35] actually see the effects of lumen with
[4:37] light pouring in through the door and
[4:39] then actually bouncing around the
[4:40] hallway, very subtly illuminating it. I
[4:44] think it looks absolutely beautiful
[4:46] here. And you get this effect on every
[4:48] version. And of course, all of this
[4:50] lighting detail greatly benefits the
[4:52] massive increase in object detail. Aside
[4:55] from the terrain and structures, things
[4:57] like, say, the Warthog, your fellow
[4:59] Marines, and the like are all lovingly
[5:01] rendered with an obscene amount of
[5:02] granular detail beyond anything we've
[5:04] seen in the series past. It feels like
[5:07] two generations beyond something like,
[5:09] say, Halo Infinite.
[5:11] Of course, there is a lot more to
[5:13] discuss here, but I want to save some
[5:15] things for the final game. The point
[5:17] here though is that they have managed to
[5:19] nail the art design in a way that I
[5:21] really like and it looks so much better
[5:24] than Anniversary. So, while we're
[5:26] talking about differences between the
[5:27] original and this new version, there are
[5:29] some things that really stood out to me
[5:31] that impact gameplay. For instance, at
[5:34] one point you need to make your way into
[5:36] the center of the island, and you go up
[5:38] through this area behind a tree, after
[5:40] which you make your way up towards the
[5:42] center section where there's a pair of
[5:44] hunters waiting for you. In the
[5:46] original, you could finagle the wthog
[5:49] into this space. Clearly, the tree was
[5:50] meant to block you, but if you played
[5:52] around enough, you could actually get it
[5:54] up there. But in the campaign evolved
[5:57] version, that tree is not there, and you
[5:59] can just drive the warthog straight up
[6:01] to the top. And if you want, you can
[6:03] even take it down into this structure
[6:05] right up to the switch. So this battle
[6:08] inside the room then becomes trivial
[6:10] since you can blast around in the
[6:12] Warthog. In the original, if you were
[6:14] able to get the Warthog up here, you
[6:16] could take it down into this area, but
[6:18] these covenant structures did not have
[6:21] physics applied to them. So the Warthog
[6:22] would get stuck here. You couldn't take
[6:24] it further. I also noticed a difference
[6:26] in item usage. So, in the original, if
[6:29] you landed on an overshield, you would
[6:31] be invincible for a second. And this was
[6:33] actually something I used a lot in
[6:34] multiplayer. But in the new version,
[6:37] items are something you collect. So,
[6:39] when you get the overshield, you
[6:40] actually have to select it and use it
[6:42] with the item usage key. There isn't
[6:44] multiplayer in this, I guess, so it
[6:46] doesn't really matter, but it is an
[6:47] interesting change. They also brought
[6:50] forward some of the features that were
[6:51] introduced in Halo 2 and beyond. For
[6:54] instance, you can now use the energy
[6:55] sword that is dropped with certain
[6:57] elites. You can hijack enemy vehicles
[7:01] just like Halo 2, which was a huge
[7:03] feature for that game. The Warthog now
[7:05] has its horn, which again introduced in
[7:07] Halo 2. And things like enemy damage
[7:10] values have been changed significantly.
[7:13] Hunters, for instance, went down a lot
[7:14] faster in the original version if you
[7:16] got in behind them and took out their
[7:17] weak spot. But here it takes way more
[7:19] ammunition even on the lowest difficulty
[7:22] setting, which is interesting. They also
[7:24] made tweaks and changes to the level
[7:26] design itself. So in Assault on the
[7:28] control room, those sort of like bendy
[7:31] hallways that were used to hide loading
[7:33] have been completely stripped out and
[7:34] now they're just straight short hallways
[7:36] into the next room. The rooms themselves
[7:39] have also been redesigned in many
[7:40] instances, likely to make them less
[7:42] repetitive, which was a major complaint
[7:44] for this level. As an aside, I did
[7:47] notice some weird graphical oddities in
[7:49] this demo. Like, what is this shadow
[7:51] here on his hand? I don't get it.
[7:53] Doesn't really correspond to anything.
[7:55] The registration email also mentioned
[7:57] that there's issues with foliage popping
[7:59] on sandy surfaces such as here on the
[8:01] silent ctographer. So, the severe popin
[8:04] you see should hopefully not be in the
[8:06] final game. And while we're here in
[8:08] Assault in the Control Room, this is how
[8:10] it stacks up to the original game. And
[8:12] yeah, it's pretty different, but I
[8:14] really like the way it looks now, at
[8:15] least overall. I don't especially love
[8:19] the way the snow collects here on this
[8:22] surface here when you're outside. It
[8:24] kind of gives the metal this sort of
[8:26] noisy, dithered look reminiscent of poor
[8:29] ray traced denoising, which brings us to
[8:32] our next major fault. And this ties
[8:34] directly into Unreal Engine 5
[8:36] specifically. The game does not
[8:37] effectively dn noiseise the image.
[8:40] There's so much sparkling, boiling, and
[8:43] temporal noise as you move through the
[8:45] world, especially in darker scenes.
[8:48] Compared to the RTGI and something like
[8:51] IDTech in Doom: The Dark Ages, Unreal
[8:54] Engine 5 really struggles to keep things
[8:56] coherent, and you certainly feel it
[8:58] here. Even on a high-end PC with maximum
[9:01] possible settings, it's a problem and
[9:04] something a lot of folks will notice. I
[9:07] would at least like to see Ray
[9:09] Reconstruction as an option for the PC
[9:12] version. And speaking of versions, as
[9:14] noted, this demo was playable for Xbox
[9:17] Series X and PC. Series S is technically
[9:21] playable, but we were told it wasn't
[9:23] ready yet, so we can't feature it here.
[9:26] Series X, though runs pretty darn well.
[9:29] There's both performance and quality
[9:31] options. Uh, and we can only show
[9:33] performance mode for this video, but
[9:35] that one targets 60 frames per second.
[9:38] And the good news is it really hits it.
[9:41] It's very, very stable. Impressively so,
[9:43] considering this uses hardware ray
[9:45] tracing and all the advanced features of
[9:47] Unreal Engine. Now, to reach this, the
[9:50] game deploys two levels of dynamic
[9:52] resolution scaling, which average around
[9:55] 50 to 75% of the output resolution,
[9:58] which means you're often at 1080pish,
[10:01] but it does look pretty clean. The thing
[10:04] that they did on top of this though is
[10:06] that there's a translucency pass, which
[10:09] varies the resolution of transparent
[10:12] effects based on frame budget. So things
[10:16] like explosions for instance, you might
[10:18] observe them becoming rather chunky and
[10:20] low res in a way that kind of reminded
[10:21] me of something like Killzone 2
[10:23] actually, but that's not a bad thing. It
[10:25] still looks excellent and it's a good
[10:27] way to save on performance without
[10:29] lowering the overall resolution to
[10:31] maintain 60fps.
[10:32] So clearly Halo Studios has a real
[10:34] handle on Unreal Engine 5 in terms of
[10:36] performance, which is great. But we also
[10:39] sampled the PC version on a range of
[10:41] hardware to better understand what we're
[10:43] looking at as we approach launch. To
[10:45] that end, we sampled it on a high-end
[10:47] PC, a mid-range system, and a lower-end
[10:50] handheld.
[10:52] So, as you'd expect, it runs very well
[10:54] on a high-end 5090 equipped PC. No
[10:57] surprise there. I actually had to
[10:58] capture at 60 fps for YouTube, of
[11:00] course. And that provided enough
[11:02] headroom to play with DAA enabled at 4K
[11:06] with maximum settings without an issue.
[11:08] You can see up here that the GPU
[11:10] utilization remains around 50% when
[11:12] playing with a 60fps cap. Now, playing
[11:15] above 60 fps definitely increases the
[11:17] requirements, but it is possible, and
[11:20] yes, frame generation is available,
[11:22] though there's a bug in this version
[11:23] that prevents it from working when using
[11:25] the Xbox store version, but that should
[11:28] be fixed for launch, I'd assume. It's
[11:30] also worth noting that Halo supports
[11:32] proper ultrawide. Not only does the game
[11:35] take full advantage of the increased
[11:36] FOV, but even the pre-rendered cutscenes
[11:39] actually fill the screen correctly
[11:41] rather than playing within a small box
[11:43] in the center of the screen. So, hats
[11:46] off to Halo Studios for actually
[11:48] handling ultrawide correctly. But what's
[11:51] more useful for our viewers, I would
[11:53] imagine, are the mid-range and handheld
[11:55] tests. So, on the mid-range side, we
[11:58] tested using a Ryzen 5 5600X with an RTX
[12:02] 4060 GPU along with 16 GB of 3200 MHz
[12:07] memory. We used the high preset with
[12:10] DLSS balance mode while targeting 1440p.
[12:14] The result, as you can see, is rather
[12:16] interesting. We largely were only able
[12:19] to achieve frame rates just shy of 60
[12:22] frames per second. It's smooth with VRR,
[12:24] but locking to 60 was a challenge. The
[12:27] main issue here seems to stem from a CPU
[12:29] bottleneck, which really drags down
[12:31] performance. Of course, we'll have to
[12:34] wait for the final game to pass
[12:35] judgment, but this does give us an idea
[12:37] of how it's currently running. And yeah,
[12:39] it is a heavy game. Assault on the
[12:42] Control Room, by the way, does actually
[12:44] run faster on the same machine. Then
[12:46] there's the ROG Alli X, a more powerful
[12:50] system than something like a Steam Deck
[12:51] as you know, but UE5 games are rather
[12:54] heavy and the results bear this out. We
[12:57] had to run the game using the lowest
[12:59] possible settings with low TSR while
[13:02] targeting 1080p output, which actually
[13:05] looks pretty okay on the system's
[13:06] internal screen. But of course, without
[13:09] a frame rate cap engaged, you can see
[13:10] that it's just barely clearing 30 FPS
[13:13] most of the time, which makes it largely
[13:16] suitable for a 30fps lock if you choose
[13:19] to do so. But hey, 30fps is the original
[13:22] Halo Target, so it's certainly playable.
[13:24] But I suspect something like say the
[13:26] Steam Deck, which is a less powerful
[13:28] system of course, will not be able to
[13:31] provide a decent experience at all. But
[13:33] we'll test that when we get final code.
[13:36] So, my current takeaway here is that the
[13:38] Xbox Series X version is really well
[13:41] done. Despite the shift to Unreal Engine
[13:43] and using hardware lumen, they've
[13:45] managed to hit a very stable 60 frames
[13:48] per second. Image quality does take a
[13:50] hit, but it's really not that bad
[13:53] compared to some other Unreal Engine 5
[13:55] games. The PC version, however, seems
[13:58] like it will be moderately heavy, mainly
[14:00] due to CPU limitations. And
[14:03] unfortunately, the options menu is also
[14:05] rather sparse with just the basic things
[14:08] available to tweak. But obviously, we're
[14:10] just scratching the surface here, and
[14:12] there's a whole lot more that we don't
[14:14] know. Not to mention things I'd like to
[14:16] talk about in the future, such as the
[14:17] game's audio, which has a few issues.
[14:21] Still, as far as previews go, my
[14:23] impressions are largely positive here.
[14:25] As someone that never liked the
[14:27] anniversary graphics for Halo 1, the
[14:30] results for campaign involved are a lot
[14:32] better now. Of course, I recognize not
[14:34] everyone is going to love this new
[14:36] visual design, right? We always saw this
[14:38] with Bluepoints games such as the Demon
[14:40] Souls remake, which I also love, by the
[14:43] way. But it's not like this will prevent
[14:45] the original Halo from existing. You can
[14:47] still play it in the Master Chief
[14:49] Collection or on original Xbox hardware.
[14:51] For newcomers and old heads that just
[14:54] want a fresh take on Halo, I really
[14:56] think this will be an interesting
[14:57] release. I also hope that it helps Halo
[15:01] Studios really understand what worked
[15:03] about the storytelling, lore, and
[15:06] atmosphere of Halo before 343 took over.
[15:09] They always figured out the gameplay.
[15:11] Halo Infinite plays like a dream, but
[15:13] it's everything around it that fell
[15:14] short in my opinion. This feels like a
[15:17] get back to basics kind of release.
[15:20] Plus, there's some cool new features in
[15:21] this version, such as additional skulls,
[15:23] new missions, and the option to remix
[15:25] existing missions. Something I did
[15:27] sample in the demo. Like here, you can
[15:30] drop enemies and weapons into the silent
[15:33] cgrapher that had no business being
[15:35] here. The flood on Cgrapher, sure, why
[15:38] not? Ultimately, as a longtime fan of
[15:40] Halo, I'm just happy to be excited about
[15:42] something Halo again, and I hope this
[15:45] marks the beginning of something great
[15:47] for the series. Until the final though,
[15:50] this is John signing off.