The Finer Details of The Master Chief Collection

So we’re still a little busy catching up on the IGN first news of the past week as a new week dawns of the IGN First coverage on Halo: The Master Chief Collection.  Needless to say, there some minor details going into this November’s big title that Halo fans will want to know before jumping on board.  IGN gave us a quick overview of some of the big changes taking place with the games included in TMCC, most notably of which are 1080P, 60FPS, dedicated servers, and 1-50 Halo 2 style ranking system.  In their bonus facts not mentioned in the video, there are a few little caveats to the games as you knew them coming into the collection.  Some of the more notable ones are as follows:

• No word on pre-ordering or pre-loading digital editions
• Halo 3 and Halo 4 make use of the Xbox One controller’s impulse triggers out of the box, and Halo: CE and Halo 2 may have that functionality added in via a game update shortly after release.
• The Scorpion tank is available on Bloodline, but you have to add it in Forge.
• Halo: CE Anniversary’s Kinect features are not supported in MCC.
• Halo: CE’s multiplayer maps are the PC versions of the maps due to resolution, but their settings, such as spawn points, are set to make them play exactly as the original Xbox versions (i.e. the Banshee won’t be on Blood Gulch).
• Halo 2 Anniversary’s campaign doesn’t run at full 1080p, but at 1328 x 1080 at 60FPS due to running both the original and anniversary engines (graphics and audio) at the same time. According to 343 executive producer Dan Ayoub, “During development we were really pleased with the way the engine and buffer allowed us to switch instantly between classic and Anniversary engines that are running simultaneously – however that, as you might expect, put a hit on resolution. The campaign of Halo 2: Anniversary looked fantastic at 720p with the level of detail and clarity it gave us, but like every other aspect of the game and tech, we wanted to push it further.  So in the last weeks of development, our teams were able to meet a stretch goal and the campaign of Halo 2: Anniversary now runs 60 fps at a crisp resolution of 1328×1080, which is a significant and meaningful boost in image quality we think fans are really going to appreciate. All of the other games across the entire package of The Master Chief Collection run 60 fps at 1920×1080 native.”

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