Halo Anniversary - how NOT to do a remaster

hello i am noodle and as you can see i am live at the quiet island today we will be discussing why halo anniversary should be documented as a war crime however this is the warning part of the video where i tell you that if you haven't played halo 1 i made a whole damn ass video about why you should instead of spoiling halo for yourself you should watch that and then go play halo also marty o'donnell's been saying some kind words about your boy here and there so uh hey you know marty you're watching hit me up would love to interview you about sound design and adapt to music and how you're doing let me know uh yeah that's all so uh halo anniversary is stinky because hold on sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir what do you like my entire audience have dick and ball yes then you need manscapes today's sponsor and the number one reason i can pay my rent i'm leaving no you're not what is manscaped it's a shaving and a hygiene for people who have the penis take a look at 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graphic but yeah i mean generally speaking uh better graphics are obviously better having it play better and run better also important i'll take it however and this is a big big ass however you gotta maintain the character of the original otherwise you risk losing what made it so good in the first place halo has more character than i have head shots in cod which is like so many how about some context the original halo was made by bungie who partnered with microsoft in 2000. together they loved and cared for halo until their eventual divorce in in which microsoft took the kids but still let bungie see them on weekends after a while though bungie moved on and so microsoft found halo a new stepdad 343e industries their first project was halo anniversary a joint effort between 343 who presumably oversaw development and saber interactive who presumably did most of the work now a lot of people like to talk shit on anniversary not enough but a lot of people the thing is i don't think most of them really get to the heart of the problem the the problem with forced anniversary if you will by far the most common complaint you'll hear from fans of the original is that the remastered visuals are too bright and they're not wrong but to just point at a light source and call it a day is more than a bit reductive not to flex my gigantic pulsating brain but the reality i think is a bit more nuanced than a botched gamma slider if combat evolved was a little engine that could anniversary is the little shit that didn't the way this game was updated signals to me either a lack of care or understanding of why combat evolved looks and feels how it does i can take the cut scenes for example weird thing to start on i know but bear with me here combat evolved did not have groundbreaking animation by any means but it got the job done and the vocal performance is more or less made up for what the animation lacked you can't imagine the wealth of information the knowledge so much so fast it's glorious now sabre's approach to updating these cutscenes seems to have been a sort of hybrid between adapting the original and implementing motion capture which in theory sounds fine but on paper a lot of things sound good like feeding your dog chocolate or going pro in smash motion capture does not invariably lead to a better or more realistic animation it's a tool got no way to use a tool gotta use the right tool for the right job until you establish spam where you use hammer no point is unless the dude in the suit is really good at his job it might just be better to do some stuff by hand especially with fucking voice lines and physical movements are recorded separately because otherwise the guy in the suit has to effectively mine with their body the acting decisions somebody else made in a recording booth and that's hard so hard in fact that unless you do it perfectly people tend to notice this shit is weightless gratuitously overacted and occasionally just just actually broken it reminds me of food fight do you need do i got a clarify do you need more explanation well that's nothing that's no big deal here's where the level of fuck goes from middling to obnoxious remember the animations from the original game and how they weren't great because gee for an sd card of someone's brain cortana sure moves like a fucking robot huh i leave home for a few days and look what happens this won't take long so not everybody got the mocap treatment obviously did they just forget to animate her face what what is this a realistic iteration of a character moving in an unrealistic way is not a good replacement for the cartoony version moving exactly how you'd expect you know cartoonish just look at how much better the exact same animation looks when it's applied to the model it was designed for instead of the one that comes from a different video game with a completely different visual style they even change the camera angles you're not supposed to see it this way it just looks worse you cannot just drag and drop high-res assets into an experience that doesn't take it into account but just expect it to work mario and unreal the dated animation makes with the overacting comes off so amateurish that it becomes distracting and when your goal is to tell a story distracting the viewer with weird technical hiccups is the worst thing you can do because it actively removes you from the experience now this isn't to say that a mixture of hand animation and motion capture couldn't have worked halo 3's manual animation holds it pretty good and the motion captured stuff from reach looks great both of these methods can work hell i mean the halo 2 anniversary did the exact same thing as the first game but over here looks amazing probably because it was made by people who knew what they were doing oh did i mean to say that out loud and with a bit of budget they could have completely overhauled these scenes and and breathed new life into them but no instead what we end up with is the worst of both worlds an experience that is at its best inconsistent and at its worst fucking embarrassing yank me okay now we're getting warmed up y'all know the flood level right the big reveal in its original form this thing is a master class in building tension we go from five straight levels of gung-ho upbeat alien euthanasia to oh god what the hell i don't like this this is dark i didn't kill him how did he die oh what instead of wave after wave of cubby bitch enemies are scarce scattered why are they running how that dropship crash was this little man on my screen could it be foreshadowing i don't know i am the seven say goodbye to the sprawling mountains and sunny beaches you're stuck in dark swamps and cold corridors it's a great tone setter but it ain't perfect the interiors of a level can fuel for boating yeah but the the lighting and the colors here don't really say much to me what i'd love is to see this level overhauled to more clearly telegraph a foreboding atmosphere i like the idea of it feeling cold and damp seeing is how a parasite is beginning to change the atmosphere and and also this is the swamp level some mist here some reflections there and a sort of green fog to contrast the foreground's purple falls right in line with halo's color palette foreshadows the flood and in my opinion just you know this looks pretty good a reimagining of this level one that leads harder into the barren atmosphere and dark moody lighting with modern day graphical fidelity would be amazing it could make this level storytelling even more effective today than it was in 2001. but for real for real though for real do you want to be scared because i don't want to be scared no nobody wants to be scared this this doesn't even look sci-fi here's what you gotta do turn that off put some blue get that tan on i think just fuck it right already so much better so much better but we got we gotta go further i want this to look like it was made by the people who make gaming computers yes yes yes yes [Music] yes 34 sabre got gotta say love what you did here just awesome stuff just one question did you play the fucking game did you do that why is everything so goddamn bright what is the purpose of these whose bright lens flared idea was it to have all this wall redesigned by tony fucking stark what exactly possessed you into looking at halo and thinking to yourself huh not brown enough like i get the sun is setting which is another unnecessary change you didn't need to make so inevitably everything's going to look warmer but i mean save for the higher contrast and the brighter colors it almost resembles a 7th gen piss filter which mixed with the patches of dirt and the foliage that you added gives halo much more of an earthy quality you know what halo's not earth we're in space and your decision regarding our first interaction with an alien planet is to make it look more like home what is wrong with you the graphics are so far detached from their source material that halo anniversary is at points more indicative of a fucking fan project than a professional release because it basically is the original halo is simple by design if it's on the screen it probably serves a purpose its strength lies in its minimalism and in its oh oh good great good job everyone even when you didn't mess that up you just couldn't resist fucking with all the colors could you here's a shot from the original it's pretty good it's very old there's a new one this is actually pretty good there's a catch though it's actually not the anniversary it's a multiplayer map made by a different company here's the real one i crave death halo has these cool ass purples and greens that made it feel so unique why are we not leaning way into that instead of piss yellow look i'm aware these are subjective artistic choices that i happen to disagree with but the problem with these decisions are that they stand in direct conflict with the narrative halo trays to tell let's look at the cartographer its interiors are intentionally a little bit spooky and a subtle update to the textures models and lighting could go a long way in making it feel more modern just kidding paul who likes vaporwave am i right guys brb gotta go make a night level look like it was filmed in a fucking studio it's so fucking bad it doesn't it doesn't work and okay you know you know what does you know what made you know what made forerunner shit work was its brutalist minimal architecture it felt imposing and foreign a feeling accentuated by how large these structures are and and how unnatural they appear compared to the rest of the environment what you all have done here feels more like it's shooting for the aesthetic of a windows vista screensaver i just shit it off i don't know whether you felt like you had to go that route after lifting assets from other games with completely different art styles but it doesn't work because you're not taking into account how such drastic changes in visual language impact the feeling or the flow of a level hey don't think you've got a cartographer that's a great example it's got a ton of callbacks to halo one's level design but it reimagines them in a way that fits better into three's combat and art style the room is bigger so the textures have more room to breathe it's a lot more complex in halo one but it works because color lighting and negative space are used to retain visual clarity as opposed to anniversary which looks more like someone slapped a big shadow on a forge map and it's not just the mood that they ruin time and time and time and time and time again the gameplay suffers too here let me explain in combat evolved enemies are almost exclusively adorned in bright primary colors as opposed to the backgrounds which tend to have a more subdued neutral palette this is intentional at a glance you already have all the information you need and you're more prepared to kill that elite i'd call it a sang healy but i i have sex so obviously this is great and so obviously they had to change it now enemies blend right into the background and the backgrounds are complex as shit all the time if they weren't moving it'd be like playing fucking where's waldo awesome great love it this may sound really obvious but how a game looks affects how it plays and changing those graphics without taking into account how it will affect the game as a whole upsets balance it leads to a messier less polished less engaging experience i mean yeah maybe some people prefer it stylistically but when the subjects and their setting become more difficult to tell apart that is an objective disadvantage i feel like if i gave you guys the mona lisa you'd say the paint is old and we should fix it using fucking crayola silly sense you you'd think the complete obsolescence of the flashlight would maybe set off a red flag or two you know okay halo makes constant use of light and dark to convey information and to set the mood but when everything's real dark you can't see anything that's why you have the flashlight limited visibility paired with impending danger is a tried-and-true horror tactic and from a gameplay standpoint creates an interesting new challenge for the player flashlight's got limited battery making it a resource to be managed another piece to the combat puzzle is it annoying yes am i glad halo 2 removed the battery also yes however the player having a flashlight allows developers to make places dark which in turn helps build atmosphere who'da thought anniversary says fuck that shit i didn't even know it was possible for a game to feel overexposed but here we are even when it's supposed to be night time shit's lit up so good you think the fucking messiah's returned every level and i do mean every single level feels like there's some kind of high contrast filter over it it is textbook overkill i want you to think about this for a second it is now more tactically advantageous to switch to the new graphics than it is to actually use the flashlight at any point during gameplay with the one exception being the flashlight tutorial what the fuck you know it's ironic i looked into the development of anniversary and it's not like they didn't care about halo they went really far out of the way to ensure the gameplay remained untouched from the get-go 343's design philosophy was to update the visuals and add features without interfering with how it plays this was done by running a remastered version of the game directly on top of the original all the physics ai animations everything could be directly referenced in real time eliminating the need to recreate any part of the game from scratch which is honestly genius we can do this we can make the game look like a current generation game and we can do it by using the original halo 1 engine however this approach comes with some limitations the most obvious thing being that nothing about the way halo works can be changed for better or worse the geometry of the old game hold on actually side note for those who aren't aware uh 3d objects in space are made up of polygons this is true for movies games vr porn everything that's what wireframes represent that's why i hear people talk about polycount like it's a big deal generally speaking the real world isn't usually super blocky so the more polygons something has the more realistic it'll look and the more terrifieds per mega shits you need in order to process all of it without so if you're making a remake you're going to want to update or replace the low poly objects with newer high poly shit but hold on our remake is still running on top of the original's geometry so so all the physics are based off that old stuff so what happens if the old stuff and the new stuff is different a piece of shit video game there is nothing more infuriating than carefully lining up a shot and then realizing after you take the shot that oh sorry you actually hit a tree that's a couple yards wider in width than you're able to see is it really that much to ask of you saber to just make a tree the correct size see you're never gonna run into a problem like that in combat evolved because the physics are based off the geometry you can actually see not a loose interpretation someone with their brain on the wrong way thought looked cooler and no i'm not saying that the new geometry has to be a hundred percent accurate all the time but oops you shot another wall you can't fucking see should not be a reoccurring theme it shouldn't even happen once noodle you're getting too worked up it's not a big deal no good graphics don't mean shit if the game is measurably worse to play and and most of the time the graphics are fucking downgrade why can't you be like your little brother look i'm not just gamer angry because i didn't get something i want that's only part of it it's just it's so frustrating because buried underneath this clusterfuck of post-processed polygons there is a gold mine of potential go to your room for every 27 missteps the remaster will get something just right or make a creative decision that enhances the experience instead of just changing it because it can the terminals often kind of suck but a few are actually super interesting the one with keys is amazing the sounds in the remaster are better on almost every front ambience too the soundscapes are super detailed and fit the environment perfectly [Music] but it's all overshadowed by an overwhelming lack of restraint a more is better approach to modernization that turns stark clever level design into a convoluted mess you know i would say i don't know what the hell you were thinking but you posted concept art so i guess i got a pretty good idea and you know what this isn't bad i mean it's not great it's still a huge departure from its source material it's still too bright and verges on over complication but it does look very pretty and it invokes a sense of wonder same here it's too bright it's too complex but it has a sort of foreboding energy to it and that's the most important thing so how the fuck did we end up with this what kind of butterfly effect have an ass event led us to a reality where we share oxygen with flat earthers moon truthers and this level design what does blue and tan say about the story nothing you can't just toss in details wherever you want i can't just toss a joke in wherever i want and expect that to work you have to look at the source material and really think about why exactly it looks the way it does how does the layout guide the player what does the color say about the tone what can i do to improve on this design without losing what makes it work to begin with there are tons of ways to implement bold or minimalistic art direction without sacrificing fidelity just look at super hot mirror's edge minecraft griss frogger katamari inside control shadow of the colossus fucking halo infinite is a perfect example it's crisp and detailed mostly but clean almost cartoonish sound familiar this kind of design would fit a remaster perfectly well they didn't do that how do you think this impacts a newcomer's first impression think about it whether it's a remaster remake redux reboot soft reboot sequel prequel or whatever he told you to call it when a newer version of an old thing is remade for modern hardware that more people have access to with added features and bonus content and improved visuals and whatever else it implies that this new version is the best version and at this point i don't think i need to really tell you that sometimes that is just false you'd be lucky to even find the old graphics goddamn hidden so good in menus that i shit you not i've had multiple people tell me that they didn't even know they could swap between versions until hitting tab by mistake it's like they don't want us to remember that bungie made this stuff the credits and the thank you messages are all cut from the collection dude microsoft actually forbade anyone on the remake team from speaking to bungie veterans while making anniversary microsoft said you're not allowed to talk to marty o'donnell about these remasters they were actually prevented from talking to me about remastering the music look despite what my rose tinted glasses might have you believe i'm fully aware that the graphics age like grandma no offense grandma you're just old to me somebody who grew up playing this game and was alive during a time when this was the best games had to offer it's easy to ignore the low poly count the blurry textures the primitive lighting the dated level design the janky animations and on and on it's easy to forget that somebody today especially somebody super young doesn't have the same nostalgia for this lack of fidelity that i and many of you have what many of us looks charming is to many others just primitive and unappealing for some the barrier of entry for a game this old is just too high and they may be unable to look past the game with such a dated presentation with the release of the master chief collection on xbox and pc there's a whole bunch of people out there who continue to experience halo for the first time whether due to personal preference or a lack of knowledge the majority are likely to choose what i can confidently say is an objectively inferior way to experience the game and that really sucks but hey three four says taking inspiration from ce to work on infinite maybe that'll be good maybe that'll be good if

Channel: Noodle

Views: 1,143,402

Rating: 4.8500814 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: MyeCb99cb2Q

Length: 25min 21sec (1521 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MrCallum17]

I feel more issues came from them using the gearbox pc port instead of the og xbox version.

The gearbox box port made ce very lifeless compared to the console version

[u/JagarTharn3E399]

I get all of his points but it wasn't THAT bad

[u/Rampage470]

In today's episode of "Internet people referring to their opinions as objective fact"...

[u/Rampage470]

I find the complaint about Anniversary making the Halo environment look like Earth a very strange one since... it already did, just turned up to 11?

[u/benjibibbles]

Watching a video that uses the EgoRaptor Sequelitis affectations in 2020 is pretty jarring