The look of Reach beyond anything of Halo 3...

Once more into the echo chamber I jump...


Edge has some comment from Bungie about the way they are using the Xbox 360's actual hardware and the AI Reach will have.


“The AI system is super robust, and is taken for granted as a rich simulation,” said community director Brian Jarrard. “A lot of people don't necessarily appreciate how much of a difference that makes in their experience, the fact that everything is simulated, nothing is bolted down. You can throw a grenade in a room and it's all physically simulated. Even in our giant environments you see films in which someone will throw a grenade and it will send a Warthog flying through the air and it'll kill someone on the other side of the map. It’s one of those things which is so hard and complicated to do, but it's just underlying the whole game. It's kind of delightful that people don't appreciate how hard that stuff is to make.”



Halo Reach's creative director, Marcus Lehto said “We are… taking every advantage of everything on the CPU and GPU, and every bit of memory in order to produce the look of Reach beyond anything of Halo 3.” 


“We're pushing it as far as we can go. With every iteration we understand what more we can exploit with the hardware.”


Lehto also said: “The difference between the fully scripted experience, like Uncharted, or the organic experience you can receive in a Halo game speaks to its longevity. You can keep playing singleplayer missions over and over again and get a different experience. And it's certainly the case for multiplayer, which plays for years and years.”


And that's the thing - did you ever play Perfect Dark Zero when it came out when the Xbox was released? I thought the game sucked but my point its the graphics were below par. Now that people who make Xbox games have practically mastered how to utilize the resources the Xbox hardware offers, the standard one expects in terms of graphics for games have increased so high it's almost like people will never accept anything less than the last great game. 


This is perhaps fair enough - in New Zealand big signature games cost 100 bucks - that's the high end anyway. People expect quality for their money. 


So it's interesting to see Bungie talking about how they reckon they have the mechanics of the Xbox cracked - it only adds to the fuel and feverish speculation (and demand!) that Halo Reach's graphics will be the best in the Halo series yet. 


The comments about AI are also interesting, I reckon CE set the standard and the other games are just trying to catch up to the pace the Halo series has set. 


What do you think? Which Xbox game has the best AI?