343 shows off Halo 3 on Xbox One, "really impressed" by quality of original assets

It's a "testament" to Bungie's talent, says producer


Combat Evolved might have started the avalanche, but for my money, Halo 3 is the greatest of Bungie's Halo games across Xbox and Xbox 360. Alas, the Master Chief Collection's remaster hasn't gotten much attention to date - 343 has placed the emphasis firmly on Halo 2 Anniversary instead. That changed yesterday when senior producer Dennis Ries treated OXM to a behind-closed-doors screening of an excerpt from Halo 3's campaign.


I can't show you the video itself yet, I'm afraid - filming wasn't allowed during the presentation - but I can tell you that Halo 3 on Xbox One looks like... Halo 3, but smoother and crisper. Ries promised that you'll "feel the difference" with a pad in your hand, but conceded that Bungie's original is already very pretty without further enhancement.

"One thing we noticed immediately as we started to get this up and running on the Xbox One is how good the assets look," he said. "It really is a testament to how well Bungie made the game back in the day.

"There are very high resolution assets, but they didn't shine through as much as they do now. The Xbox 360 just didn't have that processing power that the Xbox One does. So we're really impressed and happy with what we've been seeing and playing."

In particular, Ries noted that "the water, and a lot of the lighting and stuff really shine [in 1080p]. So we're very impressed, and we can't wait for people to play the game and see the progress it's made."


Halo 3 on Xbox One will be functionally identical to the Xbox 360 game, with one key difference - it and all the other games in the Collection will use Halo 2's player ranking system for multiplayer.


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Ubisoft is "ready to take risks" with Assassin's Creed - "we are very flexible"

"When we see an opportunity we'll be the first to jump on it."

Ubisoft has a Grand Plan all pegged out for Assassin's Creed, but according to Unity's senior producer Vincent Pontbriand, the publisher is willing and able to change should the right creative and commercial opportunities arise.


"We are very flexible," he told me at Gamescom last week. "We do plan ahead, we do have a long-term plan, but when we see an opportunity we'll be the first to jump on it. We're ready to take risks - that's what I love about it."


Last year's Assassin's Creed 4 is a case in point, Pontbriand explained - it came about because fans reacted so well to the third game's naval sections. This also bought the Unity team an extra year to work on their own game, which is more in line with the structure and mechanics of Assassin's Creed 2.

"Starting with Brotherhood, we realised that this brand had tremendous potential, so we branched off the core team - some of the core members started working on AC3, and then other guys went onto work on Revelations," he recalled. "The only surprise was Black Flag - that was partly planning and partly opportunistic, when we realised with internal testing that the naval battles were very fun, with AC3 we said they should just do an entire game about that.

"And because we followed up and used that opportunity, and it gave us an extra year to work on Unity. And our mandate was clear, our technology was starting to work, our ambitions were big, so we said 'OK, one more year will be just right to make it happen'."

Different teams within Ubisoft Montreal are free to bring their own ideas to the table, he went on - there's no hard-and-fast rulebook as to how each game should play out. "Again, this is about being very flexible. Although we do have brand guidelines, each team is free to introduce stuff, to challenge some of the fundamentals, and have the brand altogether evolve in different directions. So we had to also steer some of the stuff we wanted to do, because the previous games were not going in the same directions."


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