The Graphical Issues of Halo 3 (MCC) 

Reminder that if people want these issues fixed, the best way to draw attention to it is to file support tickets for them on the Halo support site, one for each issue! EDIT: Also, a issue I noticed that's sort of important is that the leg viewmodels when playing as an elite are higher up and obscure more of the screen in multiplayer (maybe campaign too?) especially but not limited too when the Halo Online leg armor is equipped. If you're even looking slightly downwards with an elite and you jump, your thighs cover like the entire screen.

While some would say these things are too minor and insignificant, I do think there is some importance in preserving these games to be as faithful to the original as possible, rather than letting it wear down. CE and 2 got such treatments, so I have faith for now that other titles will get a tune up as well.

For those who are reacting to this by saying "this is too nitpicky" or "that change was probably intentional, why are you making a big deal out of it?" please understand. He is not picking a fight with the Devs here. He is not saying the port is awful until they change everything back to the way it was. This is simply a video to document various differences between the original game and the MCC port. It is presented as neutrally as possible and is not assigning blame or even saying it should necessarily change, simply the fact that it is different from the original. These differences can be reported to the Devs and they can decide whether they are dealing with a visual bug, inconsistency, or even an intentional change. This is a natural part of conversation between fans who love the game and want to see it at its best, and the developers who make ongoing strides to present it that way.

4:27 I seem to remember that was a case where the final asset wasn’t being used. They found the asset and updated MCC to use it which was fixing as oversight from the original Halo 3 release!

If it wasn’t for you (along with a few others) I doubt CE and 2 would be fixed up like they are now. I hope 343 continues to follow your lead for fixes.

Time to submit this entire video to Halo Support lol, good stuff Why!

For some reason in mcc Sargent Stackers appears sickly White

Great vid! I've noticed some other issues as well. Such as... 1) When playing on higher framerates, the motion sensor doesn't blur anymore. 2) When playing in 4:3 on the MCC, the game's cinematic bars won't squish the screen to 21:9 like it does in legacy. It just Squishes it to the same amount as if you were playing in 16:9. Oddly enough, this is fixed in ODST. 3) Also when playing in 4:3, the game's hud doesn't use the proper arrangement that was seen in legacy. Instead, the hud still renders in 16:9, but is vertically squished leaving a lot of room between the top and bottom. 4) With the lowered crosshair, zooming in with weapons doesn't raise the crosshair. This is broken in every other MCC update so it's rather frequent. Right now; it's broken in every game except CE, which didn't have it, and ODST. This is probably the reason the crosshair is slightly higher than normal since it looks like it's stuck in the slightly higher position.

Really appreciate you focusing so much on these differences in MCC and all the game. Please keep up the great work! 👍🏻

I had the bug where the rings didn’t render on “The Covenant” just the other day.

The shotgun doesn’t play the pump action in third person after you fire a shotgun shell

I recently booted up my 360 copy of Halo 3 on my Series X and was amazed at different it looked compared to MCC. Aside from some slight sharpness aspects due to its age, I honestly think it's more worthwhile playing the 360 version for the campaign. At least for now!

Hi thanks for sharing this. I submitted a ticket about this issue. Got no response so did it 2 more times and I'm still waiting for a reply from 343 waypoint...they kep closing my tickets without a resolution 🙄

There's also a few glitches with certain enemy encounters and events like some sniper brutes on grav lifts being faced a different way not really reacting to the player until attacked on Tsavo Highway and events like the beams that fall down and scrape the floor during the warthog run on Halo, they just fall on the ground and no moving and scraping it like they did on 360.

Wow thanks for noticing all of these things. I hope 343 sees this. MCC is in a GREAT state but more improvements would always be good!

Another issue is that Missing stuff + NPC And NPC's noticeably more terrible AI Pathfinding

I hope certain things stay optional like the hud visor outlines if they get changed like with CE's hud. It's funny they always bugged me in legacy but not as much in MCC so it's nice to know why. That said I hope they get to Reach soon cause that game was already quite muted in tone so the bloom and colour issues really make it feel much duller than it was

This makes me sad and super appreciate of how high the bar was when halo 3 was released. The gaming industry has been gutted 😭

Don't forget that shadows still update at 60fps as even when your frame rate is uncapped

I hope the dev team sees this video

Doing gods work as usual I see. Thanks Why!

You’re doing some awesome work, hope 343i notices and (at least) fixes some of the more prominent issues outlined here

Glad to see your back!

Many thanks Why, compiling this known issues in this format is great to bring attention to the matter as game preservation is absolutely important.

i absouletly love these videos

I doubt they'll ever fix these but it'd be nice to have them notice this video somehow

It's nice to see just how faithful the conversion is for Halo 3 to PC. It's a farcry from the botched up job Bungie and Gearbox did for Halo CE, and the port Bungie and the MS porting team did for Halo 2. Along with the skins, armors, and maps. 343 really seems to care about Halo 3. It's either favouritism or the Halo 3 engine is just the easiest to work with (Probably the latter.)

can we all send this video to 343i in a ticket < They need to be aware of this before the next update imo lol

Excellent overview. I was not aware of most of these. Thankfully these problems are not as annoying as Reach or pre-patch 2 and CE imo, but it would still be nice to have them fixed. The only visual issue I knew about in MCC Halo 3 is the stronger than OG bloom. Stuff like the beam rifle model and jackal shields have stronger bloom on MCC vs 360 from what I've seen. Cortana's model also looked more washed out to me on MCC because of this bloom. It's just really interesting what small things can break when porting games.

Absolutely great work! Keep it up.

“Doesn’t match legacy” . That’s 343i’s model since day 1 in 2011

Albino SGT Stacker and the SGT voiced by Nathan Fillion is also albino on MCC.

We need this fixed

this is important for game conservation, although the original experience (not online) is still available on the xbox 360. thanks for sharing, i saw one of these made by rocket sloth (i think) a long time ago, and although they have made some changes to H1 and H2, i hope they continue to do this type of work. we just got to bring it up. thanks again, really well made video altogether. it was easy to contrast the 2. the emblems was something ive personally always noticed

Always had a feeling some of the lighting in the PC Halo 3 version just felt... off.

Forgot to mention shadows dont transition properly, its easiest to see this in ODST firefight (same engine as 3) crater (day). Walk outside and down the stairs, you'll watch your hands shadows flicker to hell and back. Hands are also WAY too orange in ODST.

For anyone who watched this video, make sure every single one of us reports these issues. Then we will know if 343i really cares or not

4:58 Given how this also happened in CE we can only conclude that Forerunner bumpmaps are being censored by ONI

Great video. I always felt like some of these things felt slightly off, but it's been a decade since I played the old xbox version, so I just assumed it was nostalgia.

Halo 2 fx and soudtracks sounds also seem too low

I think the hud thing was done for ultrawide support

Unlike the other graphical problems with MCC I'm fine with the "color change" as you put it. In MCC they have a wider dynamic range, in the OG xbox footage a lot of colors are blown out and look incorrect (Sandrap's sand has a more natural color in MCC). So technically MCC has better quality/higher quality graphics in this regard but as a result of this, the colors are slightly faded out compared to the old graphics.

On the covenant the ring never load for me, literally ever, maybe Like once I had it but I have never seen the rings after that

The two most prominent differences in visuals I'd say are the cutscene where Chief reunites with Cortana and Johnson's death scene. Both of these cutscenes look WAY too bright on the areas, but weirdly enough, the characters themselves look to stil lhave the correct, darker lighting on them, so it makes a really weird contrast seeing how bright the areas are, yet how dark the characters are

Hope you do ODST next! Please?

Nice videos

Got the feeling the HUD fade-in around the borders is there because you can play the game in widescreen ratios like 21:9 perhaps? So that the player can't see a clear cutoff when they can see beyond the original 16:9 aspect ratio.

I always love these videos. I really hope 343 see these problems and fix them.

did you mix up the two at 1:09?

Great points covered here an it does become noticeable, they should remaster halo 3 an ODST 🙌

thank you.

Well I guess we'll have to break all MCC mods for the 1000th time with another update.

Some of the changes I quite like... like the hud transparency changes... but I do agree on most bitmaps & lighting issues.

Any chance you can make an update video to show what here has been fixed and what hasn't?

4:34 I believe these backdrops were mislabelled as the more detailed new one is labelled as 360 while the lower detailed one is labelled MCC

Great comparison! Could you please make a Halo CE Anniversary 360vsPC(mcc)! I recently played the 360 version and I find the lighting and shadows much better despite the low resolution. I mean the anniversary version of course.

thank you!!

Huh, I really never noticed any graphical issues untill now, you really need to compare the two versions. But glad you pointed these out though.

The split screen issues can pass unnoticed for most, but honestly need as much attention. The screen zoom is worse in reach, I haven't check if it still is bugged.

It takes 343 17 years to get basic features into their current flagship title. These issues will most likely go unresolved.

is there a way I could get the matte paintings or just skybox images raw from either the game or someone who has them?

I feel like the hud detail fade has probably been added for more visibility

Man, it looks like there was a colorspace issue with some of the textures. The same kind of thing happening to a matte painting thats causing textures' normal maps to look flat

I think the fade part for the Hud is for people who play wide screen

Would i have the same issues if I put the disc of halo 3 in on my series x?

3:13 good lord you can see the tiles in the water on MCC... Is the water resolution fixed & doesn't scale to screen resolution? I know the bloom resolution in reach was similar

7:03 Is THAT why Jackals in Halo 3 are particularly annoying to get headshots on? Or is there something with the Jackals' hitboxes on top of that?

And now maybe 343 will actually fix Halo 3 when someone points out the flaws and folks complain about it. Because they obviously weren’t going to care about it until now..

Finally!!

The pale marines issue was fixed by a modder recently. Shocking...

the worst instance of bad lighting ive noticed is when the forward unto dawn lands during the ark mission in halo 3. the shadow casted by the frigate is extremely lightened and pale and genuinely bothered me

What we really need to fix is the fps stutter on PC. I used to get 155fps, but only get 40-80 on some of the campaigns now

4:34 you got the 360 and MCC backwards on this. bc literally right before this, you were showing this painting on Cortana was the opposite for both platforms

Are you use that gamma issue isnt just pc’s typical full range vs limited? Full and limited “levels” are not the same

What was so hard for 343 to get this right?

I knew the game was duller than 360! Always knew something was off! Even though H3 still look great. I use ReShade color corrections to better emulate the look and feel of H3 but maybe one day I won't have to anymore! Also please, I hope you will read this, HDR Eye Adaptation is framerate dependant and this is a HUGE problem, I hope you will publicly say it in your videos, as I've done several tickets but it was never fixed, this issue affects campaign AND multiplayer and is very distracting! And it is wrong even at 60 FPS! Correct speed is 30 FPS. There's also the portion of the screen that's used to regulate HDR Eye Adaptation, not sure if they fixed this one, but back when I created the tickets, at 4K only the inner 720 square of the image was being used to regulate Eye Adaptation. Those issues are also present on Reach and ODST by the way. As for the shadows, same, I did tickets back in the H3 release on PC, and it was simply ignored. I redid them today, we'll see how it goes.

I can let a lot of this slide if they would just fix the jittery lip-sync in Halo 3. :(

The issues in Halo 3 is definitely not as bad as Halo 1 and 2’s… but the fixes would be nice!

3:00 I don't know if that's really an issue. In my opinion, it actually looks better darker.

I appreciate your hard work in helping preserve Halo! And the pale ass marines! Haha

Halo forever

The zoom camera on Halo: Reach has the same crosshair position error. happens only with your crosshair is still in the middle of the screen.. Plz, a hope you see this :3

Are they fixed yet?

The warthog lights are turned 90 degrees l

the cortana thing seems to be more of a feature than a bug lol

Do one with the CEA graphics of halo ce. Cortana looks goofy

Damn, i always thought the colors look drab in Halo 3, but never knew it was an issue with the MCC version.

I swear that binocular issue also happens in Reach, H2 and H4. And its so annoying

Why

hack programmers and abysmal management at 343. business as usual i guess. OG bungie was a well oiled machine.

Are you sure you have some of the matte paint comparisons labeled correctly? MCC looks like a downgrade in a couple.

Microsoft should pay you for these.

while there are some of these visual changes i think do need a fix, there are some changes i don't see a huge problem with

1:53 MCC Cortana has much better lighting, the textures look flat on the 360, but yeah the horizontal lines should be fixed

I would rather they fix the gameplay issues and stability issues first in halo 3 then aesthetic ones; Tank shots not registering, unreal 4 crashes, etc. still nice list though.

i can barely notice the differences

Fans of typical remasters/rereleased: aw geez it doesn't look as good as it used to but man I love this game still. Halo fans seeing slightly worse graphic fidelity in a 15 year old game: I'm going to keep talking about this for 8 years straight

I mean it’s not like 343 had to redo the older graphics from the 360 to work on the Xbox one or anything.

MCC has original graphics and enhanced graphics settings. Which did you use?

How anyone noticed all of these is... insane to me