Halo Infinite Dev Defends Its Visuals; Game Uses An Upgraded Audio Engine

Halo Infinite finally had its big gameplay debut last week, and it didn’t exactly go as well as Microsoft would have liked. Hardcore Halo fans had plenty of reasons to be excited, but by and large, the consensus has been that the game didn’t blow anyone away. One aspect in particular threw quite a bit of criticism is the game’s visuals, with many suggesting that it looked far from the flagship Xbox Series X launch lineup it’s being positioned as.

Microsoft have addressed those criticisms since the gameplay reveal, suggesting that it’s still a work in progress and is going to improve visually in the time before launch. Speaking recently with Wccftech, Halo Infinite Chris Lee spoke of the criticism for the game’s visuals as well. Lee remarked that in 4K, the game looks significantly better (which is true enough, in all honesty), before adding that 343 Industries will be polishing and finetuning the game between now and its launch this Holiday.

“I think for the response on the graphics, the thing I hope is that folks get a chance to check out our 4K streaming assets, I think that really lets our game show itself in full fidelity,” Lee said. “We are definitely still very much in development, we have some polishing and tuning that the team is working on to really bring the full potential of our experience to our fans later this year in Halo Infinite. We definitely are excited about the ambition of the title, of this open expansive campaign and we’ll make sure that it’s polished and ready to go when fans get their hands on it this Holiday.”

Lee went on to explain how Halo Infinite is doing much more impressive things than its predecessor, saying that is has “more than 10 times the processing power per pixel” as Halo 5.

“The gameplay demo is a great example of how we’re running on Xbox Series X, you’ll be able to run at a solid 60 frames per second at up to 4K resolution,” he said. “We’re bringing the highest fidelity experience that we’ve ever created. We’re able to do more than 10 times the processing power per pixel that we were able to do in Halo 5, which just allows us to create this experience that’s unlike anything that we’ve had in Halo before. In Halo Infinite we’ve really harnessed a lot of advanced rendering techniques, but also the immense power of the Xbox Series X.”

Another area that Halo Infinite is stepping up over its predecessors is the audio department. After noting that the game’s soundtrack is being co-composed by Curtis Schweitzer and Gareth Coker (the latter has worked on the Ori games as well), Lee mentioned that Halo Infinite also uses an upgraded audio engine.

“Music is also incredibly important to Halo and to our fans, and I’m really excited that after Curtis Schweitzer, a composer that we talked about last year at E3, we got to announce our second composer that’s joining Curtis, Gareth Coker,” Lee said. “Both Gareth and Curtis have been doing an incredible job and throughout the demo today you’ve been able to experience some of the music that Gareth has worked on. We also upgraded our audio engine to create a new acoustic system and leverage a lot of extra processing power and streaming power with the Xbox Series X to be able to really surround the player in a much more realistic audio experience.”

Halo Infinite is out this Holiday for Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC.