It's impossible to forget the World Premiere gameplay demo of Halo Infinite that dropped at the Xbox Games Showcase this past July, but unfortunately it's both for good and for bad reasons.

The negative side of things centres around the poor reaction to the demo's visuals, which were considered by many to be below par for a next-generation title, and developer 343 Industries has today shed more light on this.

Speaking as part of a Halo Infinite December progress update, art director Nicolas Bouvier weighed in on the behind-the-scenes of this demo, admitting that the art and visuals ultimately weren't up to scratch:

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"The primary goal for the Campaign demo in July was showing Halo Infinite gameplay for the first time. While that aspect generally landed as we wanted, the reality is that the art and visuals weren’t at the bar we hold for Halo – even in a work-in-progress state.

Much of the feedback we heard from the community aligned with our own views and work we were already committed to doing around things like indirect lighting, material response, foliage and tree rendering, clouds, level-of-detail transitions, and character fidelity. Still, the feedback was humbling, and it also pushed us to look at additional opportunities for improvement."

Additionally, development manager for the Halo Infinite graphics team Ani Shastry went on to admit that "July was indeed a very much work-in-progress slice of the technology" with various features still in active development, and that the team was primarily focused on ensuring the demo was achieving high resolution and performance.

Ultimately then, it definitely seems like it was a good move to delay Halo Infinite to Fall 2021 - we'll just have to wait and see what 343 Industries has in store for us when the game finally makes its way to Xbox next year.

What did you think of the visuals in Halo's gameplay demo back in July? Let us know down below.

[source halowaypoint.com]