Despite all of their faults, I must give 343 credit for making the visuals for these games better and better to match the original art, but in 4k with HDR. The value MCC has today cannot be overstated. They could have given up after they did the original overhaul of Halo 1, 2 and Reach, but they keep going for perfection. As someone who played Halo 1 and 2 a ton on PC, it's quite shocking how amazing these games look now. Halo 1 went from looking somewhat basic but cool in the Gearbox port to looking absolutely stunning. And yes, for those of you who have yet to try out Halo MCC in HDR... you should get going double time. Halo 1 and 2 especially look jaw dropping. Definitely in my top 3 best HDR games I've ever experienced.
They could have not used trash ports in the first place tho & just had some respect for what they were working on. It's nice to see them do the right thing, yes, but it would have been nicer to see them do the right thing from the get-go & not cut corners.
Yeah totally sucks that it took so long tho. The amount of times I’ve played halo before the changes it’s been so many years and now the product is only just coming up to par? So we had a shitter version this whole time and we’re supposed to be happy now it’s finally fixed? I’m an og fan but even I haven’t played recently enough to care about these “fixes”. Damn shame cos I loved halo growing up and it deserved more respect than this but companies don’t care once they’ve made the money.
One small issue that I noticed is with the Rocket Launcherr cross-hair in CE! When you aim it at an enemy it doesn't turn red but if you quickly switch to another weapon and back to the Rocket launcher's cross-hair turns red very shortly but then changes back to light blue.
@@OmarOmarOfficial Odd on my original CE copy on Xbox which is a German copy, I think I remember the cross-hair turns red when aiming at an enemy etc it makes sense! And honestly it's kinda weird that all the other weapons cross-hair turns red when aiming at an enemy, While only on the Rocket Launcher it doesn't!
@@mikyap02grunt_M2G Legacy HCE didn’t have the red crosshairs for the Rocket Launcher because the weapon didn’t have aim assist in the original. Gearbox changed this for the HCE PC release in the early 2000’s, and that change was reversed in MCC.
MCC caused a weird phenomenon of people misremembering Halo 2 as always having bad graphics. This could not be further from the truth. Halo 2 was a spectacular looking game in 2004 and the original Xbox version holds up surprisingly well. MCC being based on the Gearbox Halo and Halo 2 PC ports really ruined those absolute classics, though Halo CE I believe was played more on PC than Xbox so that may be a separate phenomenon of people simply never experiencing Halo CE on Xbox
Yeah having experienced both versions of 1 and 2 when they were released, there were a few things that were immediately apparent with the games, the default FOV in particular on PC for both titles were lower than the original Xbox versions. I was active in both the Xbox and PC Bungie forums around this time and particularly with Combat Evolved people were aware of the downgrades in graphical fidelity, though ultimately the game was still loved thanks to Custom Edition. Halo 2 was much more negatively received though I don't recall many discussions being made about the graphical fidelity at the time, most were aimed at its other flaws but that's another story. Hired Gun did the port for Halo 2, the studio I believe was closed shortly after the release. I am happy that the games are being restored to more closely match the Xbox originals, it's a shame they had to use the broken PC versons as a base but it's understandable.
Certain things in H2 always looked bad. Usually down to textures. Johnson for example always looked terrible and like a burnt butthole. Given that's in every scene, it must be texture based.
Halo 2 had bad graphics, speaking as someone who played on the original Xbox. The art style itself in several places looked muddy or off, and it benefitted a lot from the reimagining of the color palette we saw in Anniversary.
Halo 2 did have bad graphics. It sacrificed a 'lot' of visual fidelity in terms of texture resolution for the sake of using normal mapping where the benefit was having everything look like it was made of plasticine like baby's first PBR. Not that this was the only cause - a lot of the visual direction was clearly set when they were still trying to get pstencil to work & the backup lighting solution they resorted to really suffers as a result. CE while having less advanced graphics on-paper at least had some high resolution vegetation & detail texture maps without obvious tiling, gleaming beautiful specular & particle effects where some materials like rock, metal & water looked quite convincing, bright vibrant colour palettes, no obvious pixelation of textures at regular viewing distance, everything looked quite sharp and detailed with a lot of visual clarity. Halo 2 was pulled up in the wave of making games look drab & brown with the aim of chasing "realism", even the more colourful levels are noticeably desaturated. Halo 2's writing & score pulled its campaign through because otherwise it was an outright downgrade from CE in so many ways.
@@nagger8216 Idk man. I can actually find a match within a few minutes now, unlike when I played in 2015. If there are any bugs in MCC, they are almost entirely minor unnoticeable bugs.
Something I haven't seen anyone cover is the broken beam emitter on Forge World in the PC port of Reach. This has been an issue since launch, across multiple PC builds. The light given off by the beam effect is cast on the surrounding geometry, but the effect itself doesn't appear. The zoom-in binoculars also still have an off-centre pixelated effect. The horizontal line works fine, but the circular border is covered in uneven artefacts and corrupted image. Since the graphical fixes to the first two games, there's also been a bizarre glitch with how the Forge World sand renders - seems almost like a screen tearing effect that's just part of the game? Still a lot of little graphical fixes needed for Reach.
@@RayArquero On MCC Reach specifically (PC version) there's a section in the centre of the binoculars where dense artefacting happens, it looks almost like the image is corrupted or pixels have died. I'm not talking about the line cutoff which the 3 - Reach binoculars have. The original version of Reach didn't have this issue and none of the other games have it.
Can you please elaborate on the sand rendering bug? What platform are you experiencing this on (please mention GPU), and what graphics settings are you using? Thanks!
@@tsukopara2054 wait are you talking about the little bit on the middle of the- yeah no that's intended, it was on 360 reach i played 360 reach a while back and while the pc version is missing a fuckton of effects, that is intended
@@OmarOmarOfficial I tried this on an RTX 1080ti, a 2070 Super, a 3080ti and an RX 6900XT. There on every build. Tried on all graphical presets available, every FOV and multiple frame rate options, it's there in every one. Also on multiple monitors. The bug manifests as a series of faint black lines which gradually appear on the sand of Forge World while moving, stay within a set radius and move slightly.
The cutscenes for CE are actually still busted. When adapting CE (a 4:3 game) to 16:9, it needs to take the Halo 2 Classic approach by removing the black bars so we can see everything in view. The previous update’s cutscenes had the correct fov, but the black bars caused them to look too zoomed in. The current fix is definitely preferable to the last update, but because it’s now too zoomed out to accommodate the black bars, the fov exposes graphical glitches at the side of the screen that we’re not supposed to see.
If anything it's unfortunaly worse than before. The Helix mod that's meant for 3D vision users had the ability to disable the letterboxing while preserving the original framing, which is what MCC also did a few years back. Now the issue can't be fixed on the user's side anymore. For people who are bothered by this, please open a ticket asking for the cutscene's FOV to be reverted back to its previous state and for the letterboxing to be only there for non-16:9 resolutions: i.imgur.com/arV5Cai.jpg
They did the Halo 2 approach back in 2020. People complained about it. Short of just playing in 4:3, it's always going to be a compromised solution. It's hard to please everyone.
Glad the update fixed a lot of important visual effects that were lost, also not sure if anyone noticed but halo 2 anniversary water is missing some reflections, for example the pier and traffic tunnel and towers arent reflected during the beach part of "Outskirts", it looks unnatural because the rest of the game looks so good.
@@availingaxis2463 My guy, MCC is going to be 9 years old this year, I think we're well past the point of "Oh I'm sure they'll fix it if we give them more time."
@nagger8216 maybe so my guy but I still believe that 343 the team that is working on mcc anyway, can fix that problem is it gonna take forever absolutely am I gonna be patient and wait yes
Really appreciate these side-by-side comparisons of both remaining issues as well as fixes, both deserve attention, thanks the hard work in getting the footage!
@@Espartanica Too bad they didn't bother doing the bare minimum by fixing these bugs first before moving on to add new content. Or, you know, they could've just not used broken, half-assed PC ports and instead properly port over the original games. You can cope all you want, but it's been almost a decade and we're still dealing with these games being broken. I'd rather they just left it alone so they don't break any more shit at this point
I kind of wish they updated the lighting of CE Anniversary's graphics to be closer to the original game, the lighting kind of ruins some of the games special moments like the first encounter with The Flood.
They barely bothered to fix the lighting that got messed up when they ported Anniversary over to MCC, there's no way in hell they're actually going to change the lighting to look closer to the original
I was hoping they would fix the missing camo patterns and correct skin tones for characters in ODST firefight. Always bugged me since ODST firefight shipped to MCC.
@@CarvedStones After comparing screenshots from the original and screenshots from MCC, I can’t say I spot a difference. Maybe if you can show me with a link to some images?
@@OmarOmarOfficialI can definitely do that. The skintone bug seems to different in each map, either going with Dutch’s skin tone or Romeo’s. The arm gauntlets are missing the camo and just appear as black, this is the same with the leg camo for Dare. But I can try. It’s been bugging me since Halo ODST launched and I’m surprised no one pointed that out as an issue.
Main fix for Halo 2 is a restoration of a force field shield animation! It was totally missing before update. A bug is legacy and presents in OG H2. Now a shields looks closer to HCE shields!😊
I’ve been meaning to post a ticket about Halo 2 classic sounds being all imbalanced and the soundtrack missing in Mombasa, originally before the patch the soundtrack was really low and faint, but now you can’t hear it at all, not sure if any other missions are suffering the same problem when playing in classic mode, but I assumed so since the low sound was for every mission before patch.
a bug that really annoys me is that the prophet of regrets ship in the outskirts intro cutscene has been shrunk down its way too small compared to the legacy version
Your OCD attention to detail and perfectionism are greatly appreciated by those who suffer from the same condition! Please do another deep dive into Halo 1 and see if they fixed all the issues that still remained in your last Halo 1 video.
Despite the fact that development on the MCC has slowed to a crawl, I hope 343 continues to improve on Halo 2. There's just so much wrong with Halo 2 Vista that it makes Gearbox's Halo CE port look faithful in comparison.
I noticed a bug in halo 2 yesterday, i was playing the mission after delta halo, when you reach the section where a pair of hunters get dropped off, well it was about to happen, then boom, the phantom just vanishes, and the hunters also despawned with the ship
I wonder if they fixed the Frigate Autocannon projectiles on Tip of the Spear in Halo Reach. For a while it's been green plasma like bolts instead of the orange tracer bullets it was originally.
How are they tracking these bugs? Did they see your last video and directly address the issues you mentioned? Or is there another way to bring these to their attention?
I knew something was different on the MCC versions. I remember the graphics for Halo 2 were top notch when it first came out. I remember them saying they pushed the Xbox beyond its limits ( Like Vegeta )
Halo CE has a glitch in the cutscene of the level library and that when the camera moves toward the door where you should spawn it clipps through the wall and i think there is also a cutscene issue in the level 343 guilty spark when Masterchieff see through the helmet of the dead marine the marines that are in the pelican cutscene start glitching out where they start appearing and disapearing and this is also noticeable in the cutscene where they finally encounter the flood the marines start appearing and disapearing.
Halo CE has problems with Anniversary graphics, The game horribly loses fps at times, for some people it consumes too much RAM until it crashes. All that doesn't happen with original graphics
@@Espartanica Halo fans when a grown ass adult expects a finished product that they already paid $60 for nearly a decade ago and it's still not finished. You can lick those boots all you want but they're never going to appreciate it bro
One mistake in the video: the cutscenes in Halo CE have actually been broken and not fixed. The FOV was previously correct relative to the original xbox version (cutscenes were displayed in 16:9 with letterboxing within a 4:3 picture) and just needed the letterboxing to be disabled for 16:9 resolutions. Now the FOV is too zoomed out, which breaks the intended framing and brings pop-in issues. For anyone wishing to open a ticket, please ask for the FOV to be reverted back to what it was previously and for the letterboxing to be removed. Ideally, Halo Ce cutscenes should have no letterboxing in 16:9 and vertical letterboxing in 21:9: i.imgur.com/arV5Cai.jpg
But then the chapter titles display over the cinematics (or not at all), which is also wrong. It actually was like you describe back in 2020 but people (including the OG bungie devs) missed the letterbox. There isn't really a no compromises solution to this short of just playing in 4:3 imo. I'm sort of ok with the way it is at the moment because thats how it looks if one forces 16:9 widescreen on the original Xbox version, irrespective of the occasional pop-in issue. I can imagine the pop-in at ultrawide isn't great though.
Can some explain how the Halo Reach graphics have held up so well? Infinite looks horrible when it's not on max settings. Yet Halo Reach looks amazing running on an Xbox 360.
That's because Infinite is so unfinished even the lighting was never complete. That game is still missing basic lighting features and you can tell every time you look at it because it looks flat as fuck. It doesn't help 343 barely ever understood how lighting in games even work anyway. Comparing just about any AAA game from 2010 to Infinite puts it to shame
Oh definitely, especially when certain weapons show off the insides of arms and such, if you have it anywhere above default FOV. Energy Sword in H2, Battle Rifle in H3, and half your arsenal in ODST.
@@BlueMarsalis I like having my weapon super lower like with Quake and Team Fortress 2's minimized view models, it frees up alot of the screen... I like my rocket launcher slung under the shoulder like I'm hip firing it
Across the board it feels like 343 is pushing halo in the direction of bungies vision since new management took over. Hope the trend sticks. Even halo infinite has been getting decent amount of maps from the older games.
I'm giving it a whirl and for some reason, Cairo Station has some oddly bad drops, which doesn't make sense to me because it's a really straightforward and narrow level.
Anyone have any ideas or insight as to why my Xbox series x Halo MCC on Halo 1 and 2 were lagging and noticeably dropping frame rate? I have restored all the visual settings to defaults just to ensure that field of view changing wasn't affecting it and was still having that issue.
The teleporting effect in H2A not working really annoyed me at times. You don’t see it much but it makes the game look really unfinished. Glad MCC has become a great way to play Halo.
@@Espartanica"unfinished" That game is called Infinite. Halo 2 was finished. They only thing they did was cutting stuff off from the game so the Xbox could handle. 🤡
@@WonderMePartyStrip Are you telling me you're so blinded by nostalgia you can't handle that Halo 2 was scrapped and reworked in the last 10 months of development with a lot of things being cut out, a ton of glitches remaining, and the entire third act being axed, with Halo 2 being intended to be the end of the saga originally?
@@Espartanica HAHAHAHA "a ton of glitches remaining" What glitches? The button combos? Super jumps? I see you have only played the janky Vista version. Infinite is the game with most glitches of them all and they still fixing it 😂 It's so pathetic.
@@Edmitsu Hard to tell these days, there's been a lot of hate for the mods being xbox exclusive. I've seen a bunch of people insisting there was nothing in the recent update that affected Xbox at all
@@Espartanica I just want the cut content and junk for xbox. Getting mod access would be a bonus. While frustrated over it I know xbox still gets fixes or what not.
343 really screwed up the MCC… should’ve played it safe and just release Halo 2 anniversary. But nope, had to fly too close to the sun and for the first 3 years the game was unplayable till Microsoft had to put the foot down because the game HAD to be functional on game pass. It’s honestly pathetic how 343 handled Halo and I’m surprised they’re STILL around. Let another studio work on Halo already…
343 are better then 90% of other studios How is 343 fault ? If Bungie game code were actually good and didn't just break after every update then MCC wouldn't be in as bad a state as it is
@@joerowland2625 That's one of the pitfalls of dealing with spaghetti code. You'll never be able to squash all the bugs. You fix one, two more will take its place. I am not one to defend 343 by any means but I'll bet this has been just as frustrating for them as it has been for us.
They literally make Infinite content too. And it doesn't mean they'd stop making the MCC content if they made Infinite content more frequently, so I don't get the point of this comment
