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Halo Wars 2 Open Beta to take place next week - June 13 to 20 [Up: Screenshots Leak]

D

Demoncarnotaur

Member
Nirolak said:
For comparison, this is what the other major upcoming RTS looks like:
Click to expand...

IMO that looks a lot better. Everything is crisp, clean, and pops.

HW2 looks a bit muddy, but the art style a bit cartoony. It's like a weird middle-ground that doesn't quite pull off realistic or stylized.
 
T

TheVoidDragon

Member
Poodlestrike said:
RTS standards are different, IMO. Can't go into this expecting it to look like a AAA TPS or what have you, it needs to be clean enough to be able to process what's going on the screen, which is a LOT at any given moment. Tons of units, tons of fire. By those standards, this looks pretty great. I'd give the air units (that tentacle'd thing) a more prominent shadow, but other than that, I've got no complaints, visually.



Brutes, bro.

Anyway, I like the 343 styles, but storywise we're following the Spirit of Fire, which is still using decades-old tech.
Click to expand...

I know there are brutes and they have different looking vehicles, but there's a Ghost and that other walker i forgot the name of (not the scarab) that aren't smooth like the rest of the Covenants vehicles, they have slightly raised areas.

It's still basically a prequel, but i was worried they'd retcon things to look more like the 343 style, which doesn't fit in with the UNSCs theme at all.
 
S

SpartanSlayer117

Member
Oh my God it looks great! I need this now!!

Edit: Elite pairs confirmed! And tanks have rocket pods! New artillery unit and that Cyclops with machine gun!
 
A

Alexious

Member
Demoncarnotaur said:
IMO that looks a lot better. Everything is crisp, clean, and pops.

HW2 looks a bit muddy, but the art style a bit cartoony. It's like a weird middle-ground that doesn't quite pull off realistic or stylized.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Though we need a trailer to see everything in motion before truly judging.
 
B

Barrel Cannon

Member
btw i hope they keep the advanced Terrain tech that Halo Wars 1 had. That was something truly special that Ensemble accomplished that they don't get enough love for. People should check out their presentation on it.
 
O

Obliterator

Member
I love that this looks like a true follow up to Halo Wars 1. I got slightly nervous they would mess with things too much and try and "redo" the franchise but at least from the screens it looks like the following up hardcore fans of the 1st want it to be
 
S

Sou Da

Member
ElzarTheBam said:
Y'all be ready for Warthog rushes 2.0
Click to expand...

JUST

hqdefault.jpg
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Obliterator said:
I love that this looks like a true follow up to Halo Wars 1. I got slightly nervous they would mess with things too much and try and "redo" the franchise but at least from the screens it looks like the following up hardcore fans of the 1st want it to be
Click to expand...

I think they would have just made a new subseries and not hired something like Creative Assembly if they wanted a turn based strategy game.
 
M

Mindwipe

Member
TheVoidDragon said:
I know there are brutes and they have different looking vehicles, but there's a Ghost and that other walker i forgot the name of (not the scarab) that aren't smooth like the rest of the Covenants vehicles, they have slightly raised areas.

It's still basically a prequel, but i was worried they'd retcon things to look more like the 343 style, which doesn't fit in with the UNSCs theme at all.
Click to expand...

Agreed, I was afraid of 343 reconning in their terrible redesigns and that doesn't seem to have happened much.

I'll certainly give this a shot if it'll run on my PC.
 
P

Pooya

Member
Demoncarnotaur said:
IMO that looks a lot better. Everything is crisp, clean, and pops.

HW2 looks a bit muddy, but the art style a bit cartoony. It's like a weird middle-ground that doesn't quite pull off realistic or stylized.
Click to expand...

You should see that DoWIII shot in full size, those released shots look extremely cheap....yeah. Compared with Relic's own past efforts it's just awful, probably too early, visuals were never a weakness to their games.

Halo Wars 2 looks how Halo looks like and it's quite detailed for an RTS game.
 
O

Obliterator

Member
WadeitOut said:
Why did you even think would it be turn based...?
Click to expand...

I wasn't confident it would be I just didn't know what direction MS was going to take the franchise. For as well as the 1st one sold MS never really gave the impression they were happy with the titles performance. I was just nervous they would look at this as a "reboot" and make some radical changes. Luckily though it looks like they know what fans loved about the 1st because this gives off strong Halo Wars 1 vibes especially the aesthetic. I love how it still captures the art style of the original but with and updated look
 
F

FunkyDealer

Banned
These screenshots look pretty good. I would have liked to see more dynamic lighting from explosions and such, but that can wait for 3.

I just hope there's more than two factions. Preferably four-six.
 
T

Trey

Member
give me pc and give me anders (or gauss hog rushes), and I'm there day one.

really just give me gauss hog rushes and I'm there day one, I am weak.

DZOsGRd.jpg
Click to expand...

reapers sure fell from grace, consigned to heavy artillery work for the covenant
 
O

Obliterator

Member
I'm really curious from a sales perspective what MS is planning on this performing like. The original did 630k it's first NPD and hit 1 million global in its first 3 weeks on the market. Frankly that's a pretty amazing performance for a console RTS and really it's solid for an RTS in general. But MS weirdly never gave the impression they were happy with that. I can't see this hugely outperforming the 1st so I hope they have their expectations reasonable
 
W

WadeitOut

Member
Obliterator said:
I'm really curious from a sales perspective what MS is planning on this performing like. The original did 630k it's first NPD and hit 1 million global in its first 3 weeks on the market. Frankly that's a pretty amazing performance for a console RTS and really it's solid for an RTS in general. But MS weirdly never gave the impression they were happy with that. I can't see this hugely outperforming the 1st so I hope they have their expectations reasonable
Click to expand...

PC sales will help. And Halo Wars was a bit of an experiment with an RTS and a controller.
 
N

NippleViking

Banned
Nirolak said:
This is probably one of the best looking RTS games visually, especially when you adjust for this likely being the Xbox One version.

Units tend to be heavily stylized in RTS games so you can immediately tell what everything is when looking at a screen with 30 guys on it and quickly trying to determine what to do.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I suspected it was a design-choice.

Wasn't what I expected, but it's definitely charming to look at. Aesthetic's very easy on the eyes, which is great. This will surely be 60FPS right?
 
C

cartesian

Member
This is really disappointing. I don't like the art style at all. They've changed the design aesthetic of the UNSC and Covenant units so much that it hardly looks like the Halo universe I used to love.

Obviously, RTS games need to have 'readable' visuals for gameplay purposes, but they've clearly made a conscious decision to go well beyond what is required and adopt a cartoony art style. I don't even like it as a 'colourful' art style - it looks very poor compared to the unit designs in StarCraft or the stylised rendered in Planetary Annihilation. I think the unit designs in particular are pretty poor, generic stuff, neither classically Halo nor particularly original.

I understand that a lot of people like the colourful chunky aesthetics thing, but for me the Halo setting is the USP and they're diluting it so much that it looks like a GameLoft title - certainly not the same universe seen in ODST, Halo 2, etc.

After seven years I would have thought we'd have something that looked really fresh compared to the original game. I'm going to be in the minority on this one, but I don't think the wait was worth it.
 
O

Obliterator

Member
WadeitOut said:
PC sales will help. And Halo Wars was a bit of an experiment with an RTS and a controller.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm just hoping MS realize they are dealing with an RTS here and aren't going to get the kind of performance of a main Halo game. It was just so weird for fans of the 1st because the game sold well, you could always find a match quickly for years, and yet MS oddly dropped all support quickly for it, stopped talking about it like it didn't exist, and at one point even said they were going to turn servers off while there was an active community playing the game. It was so bizarre
 
Captain Zyrain

Captain Zyrain

Member
Looking forward to this!

Free Rocket League until Sunday, then Halo Wars 2 for the next week! Ahhh and the EA Access is free too.. need. more. time.
 
W

WadeitOut

Member
cartesian said:
This is really disappointing. I don't like the art style at all. They've changed the design aesthetic of the UNSC and Covenant units so much that it hardly looks like the Halo universe I used to love.

Obviously, RTS games need to have 'readable' visuals for gameplay purposes, but they've clearly made a conscious decision to go well beyond what is required and adopt a cartoony art style. I don't even like it as a 'colourful' art style - it looks very poor compared to the unit designs in StarCraft or the stylised rendered in Planetary Annihilation.

I understand that a lot of people like colourful chunky aesthetics but for me the Halo setting is the USP and they're diluting it so much it looks like a GameLoft title, certainly not the same universe as ODST or Halo 2. I might as well just play Command & Conquer.
Click to expand...

Going to have to agree to disagree with you there.

This looks more like OG Halo aesthetically than anything else we have had since Halo 3.
 
Kibbles

Kibbles

Member
HW1 didn't catch me but I'll try this out again
. I just always feel like these should be $15-$20 XBLA games not $60 full priced.
 
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