Bungie Answers Critics of <cite>Halo 3</cite>'s Graphics

Though everyone is wild about Halo 3's multiplayer, some are less enthusiastic about what they've seen of the graphics thus far. Why isn't it pretty like Gears of War, they ask. Bungie's Frank O'Connor told Next-Gen that fans can rest assured that Halo 3 will be gorgeous when it's released in September, and that what players of the beta should be concentrating on is the gameplay, not the graphics.

Multiplayer is by necessity a more sterile iteration of our graphical style and will always be tuned for performance and elegance rather than jamming the screen full of pixels...We have a long time to polish and iterate on the largely complete game at this point. We’ll be working on some big ticket items as well as making sure that the little details, like decorators and shaders are all in place. Lighting and atmospherics are going to be big keystones in our look and feel, and those really haven’t been shown except in multiplayer to this point.

Bungie: Graphical Improvements Coming to Halo 3 [Next-Gen]