‘Halo 2: Anniversary’ Not 1080p According to Microsoft and 343 Studios
The Halo 2: Anniversary port has been confirmed will not be a native 1080p resolution according to Microsoft. Eurogamer is reporting that the upcoming Halo 2 remaster that is part of the Master Chief Collection will not meet the 1080p resolution stretch goal, but rather run at a reduced resolution in order to achieve the 60 frames per second goal.
Speaking to IGN, the executive producer of 343 Studios commented:
During development we were really pleased with the way the engine and buffer allowed us to switch instantly between classic and Anniversary engines that are running simultaneously – however that, as you might expect, put a hit on resolution.”
Like the previous anniversary edition of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2:Anniversary will feature the option to press a button and see the game in its original engine, complete with less complex characters and reduced visual fidelity as you can see in the comparison at left. Ayoub said that while they could get the game to run smoothly at 720p, the push to 1080p was not working and therefore the game was reduced to a 1328×1080 resolution. This gives the game a “significant and meaningful boost” in the quality of the image and allows the game to run and a silky smooth 60 frames per second.
While the lack of a native 1080p resolution will not be noticible to the majority of gamers, the most common battleground for fan boys between Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One has been the One’s struggle to output a true 1080p render for many games due to the more complex internal workings of the Xbox One. While most developers are confident this issue will be gone as developers become more familiar with the hardware, it still remains yet another sticking point. Adding to the fact that this is an internal studio with the full power and resources of Microsoft behind it, this setback shows that the issue may be around longer than Microsoft had probably hoped for.
It does not help that all other games in the Master Chief Collection will be running at 1080p natively with 60 frames per second.
The Digital Foundry, part of the Eurogamer family that gives extensive tech breakdowns of hardware and game performance, stated that the decision to keep both the original and remastered engines of Halo 2: Anniversary running concurrently is not the best idea if the goal is to achieve a true 1080p render of the game.
Richard Leadbetter, one of the writers for The Digital Foundry stated:
It’s the developer’s insistence at being able to switch between remastered and classic modes that explains the sub-native presentation: two entire framebuffers need to be held in memory while 343 itself suggests a rather more ambitious set-up – that two distinct game engines are running simultaneously, side-by-side.”
This was confirmed later by a thread on NeoGaf where franchise director for Halo Frank O’Connor responded to questions posed by the gaming community. Specifically, one question asked why Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was running at 1080p when Halo 2: Anniversary was not. The answer echoed Leadbetter’s speculations:
Two game (graphics) engines – the OG H2 and H2A, and the original audio (music and FX) and completely new music and FX. And the switch is instantaneous. If it weren’t running the OG engine it could in theory run at a higher resolution but that’s not the intended nature of the project.”
While this is something that the average consumer of video games will not likely notice, it will of course continue to fan the fan boy wars between the two consoles. Regardless of the resolution, the chance to play one of the most iconic games in the genre in one collection is still an impressive package and one you should not pass up if the opportunity presents itself even if Halo 2: Anniversary is the only title not running a native 1080p
Image Source | 343 Studios
