The Pillars of Halo’s “Native” PC Releases – A Master Chief Collection Update

343 Industries and Splash Damage have released a blog post which details the current state of The Master Chief Collection’s upcoming PC releases, detailing what the company’s plan to deliver on to PC gamers. 

In one word, these developers want to create a “native” experience, “best-in-class” versions of the Master Chief Collection’s assortment of games that feel like true PC experiences. With this in mind, the developers of The Master Chief Collection’s PC releases have created a series of “Halo PC Pillars.

 

This set of pillars include support for 4K resolutions, native aspect ratio options that range from 4:3 to 21:9, support for high refresh rates and support for FreeSync and G-Sync variable refresh rate monitors. FoV sliders will also be available in each game whenever possible, but only to the “extent each game can realistically support”. 

Below is the full list of PC targets for Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC, which includes support for dedicated and integrated video cards, support for low latency controls on both keyboard/mouse and on gamepads and proper handling of shortcuts like ALT-TAB and ALT-ENTER. The image below also showcases an early version of The Master Chief Collection’s options menu for Halo Reach.   

 

    HALO PC PILLARS

When building games, there are different frameworks people use to communicate the vision for that game to the team and to our community. One way to communicate the vision is through a series of pillars that clearly articulate priorities of the game along with attributes that support each pillar. When we began planning the PC version of MCC, we set out to define our pillars. The three defining principles we are focusing on are three key pillars; PC Native, Legacy, and Engaging & Evolving.

PC NATIVE PILLAR

Being PC native means that we deliver a best-in-class PC shooter as measured by PC gamers that require the following specifics.

Controls

– Robust action mapping options
– Great mouse/keyboard input across the entire game
– Low input latency by leveraging raw input and latency validation via slow motion cameras
– Support for a broad set of mouse and gameplay options

PC Native UI

– Updated UI controls familiar to PC users
– Robust video and game options that allow users to tailor the experience to their hardware
– Support for FOV sliders (to the extent each game can realistically support)
– Text chat

Runs on a variety of hardware and takes advantage of what is there in both UI and gameplay

– Range of resolution and aspect ratio support for monitors
– 4K resolution, native aspect ratio support from 4:3 up to 21:9 Ultrawide
– GSync/FreeSync support
– High refresh rate support
– Mice both high or low DPI
– Multiple styles of Keyboards
– Video cards, both dedicated and integrated
– XInput supported controllers
– Loading optimizations

High quality window handling

– Borderless full screen
– Flexible window resizing
– Gracefully handles keyboard shortcuts such as ALT-TAB/ALT-ENTER, etc.
– Using a combination of competitive analysis, internal team playtesting, pro team testing, usability testing, and flighting we are iterating on great controls and building a PC native experience.

Our goal is that we can deliver on the gameplay experience that makes Halo unique while meeting the expectations of modern PC shooter players in terms of usability and game feel. For control and options settings, we are experimenting with a variety of mouse and keyboard values.