Not tech savvy at all, I'll admit, but it's been a while since I heard something that messed up.

Not exactly. The ghosting or double-vision issues I was talking about with Reach just look like a flat-out mistake or problem to me. You can freeze-frame Reach footage and literally see 2 images of a spartan as its moving overlayed on top of each other.

No, I understand that. That's a different thing. That's the temporal anit-aliasing, which is gone now. The ambient occlusion is different. The edges of geometry in the original Reach look much "softer," for lack of a better term. The new Reach is similar to your example with the wall in TLoU Remastered. The edges of the geometry are much more defined, and they look a little less natural than they used to, much more obviously like video game geometry. It's a testament to Bungie's design that it still looks fantastic and fairly real, but it would look better with the proper ambient occlusion.

If you're interested, here's the Digital Foundry video. I think Cody is vastly overstating how big of a deal this is (as it still looks great, and it's much easier to pick this stuff apart when just watching a video, and it's much less noticeable when actually playing the game), but I do think it could look better if this stuff was working correctly. I think depth of field is even more important than ambient occlusion in terms of keeping the aesthetics of the original game. It was used heavily, especially in cutscenes in the original version of the game, and it's basically completely gone from the MCC version.

The stuff I'm talking about starts at 10:49. There's also a sound comparison that starts right at 15:00.

As my TLoU example illustrates, sometimes an improvement on paper actually harms the overall look.

And this is the one I am most curious about, because I never played the PS3 version. For me the remaster was 'normal'. I should try it on PS3.

It's sort of a funny example to choose while defending the MCC Reach port, because the ambient occlusion bug is sort of the same thing he's talking about, being able to see where geometry meets in a particular way.

I think the MCC version would undeniably look better with the original ambient occlusion, but I also think it looks completely fine as is. It does make it look noticeably like an old game running at higher resolutions than it was ever intended, though, but that was always going to be the case.

Not exactly. The ghosting or double-vision issues I was talking about with Reach just look like a flat-out mistake or problem to me. You can freeze-frame Reach footage and literally see 2 images of a spartan as its moving overlayed on top of each other.

TLoU is more a case of art assets being polished to the level that was appropriate for the screen resolution that was available. Increasing the rendering resolution brings geometry outlines into sharper focus, but it makes the lower-resolution texture graphics more apparent. It’s kinda like me looking at a painting of a tree from 50 feet away without my glasses on. If the painting is detailed enough, it might look utterly real to me. But as soon as I put my glasses on, I can see that it’s just flat. That’s TLoU remastered in my eyes. Better image quality just made it more obvious when certain things looked fake.

Sticking with the same analogy, the original Reach felt like looking at the painting while being blasted drunk, while MCC Reach is like looking at it while sober, lol.

As my TLoU example illustrates, sometimes an improvement on paper actually harms the overall look.

And this is the one I am most curious about, because I never played the PS3 version. For me the remaster was 'normal'. I should try it on PS3.

It's sort of a funny example to choose while defending the MCC Reach port, because the ambient occlusion bug is sort of the same thing he's talking about, being able to see where geometry meets in a particular way.

I think the MCC version would undeniably look better with the original ambient occlusion, but I also think it looks completely fine as is. It does make it look noticeably like an old game running at higher resolutions than it was ever intended, though, but that was always going to be the case.

As my TLoU example illustrates, sometimes an improvement on paper actually harms the overall look.

And this is the one I am most curious about, because I never played the PS3 version. For me the remaster was 'normal'. I should try it on PS3.

What I'm hearing might not be super noticeable, I suppose. As I said, the mix just doesn't sound great, like all the sounds are always competing with each other, but that's a problem that I think every Halo game has always had, so I don't think that's a bug, necessarily.

The gun sounds, though, are the real thing. They are still as loud as they should be, but the actual effect sound itself sounds muted or muffled somehow. I noticed it immediately with the assault rifle and the pistol, but I can also see how someone legitimately might not notice a difference. Look up a comparison video and you'll be able to tell if it's something you legitimately didn't experience or just didn't notice.

I'm playing on a One X.

I haven't really looked into, maybe there are multiple, separate issues across the different builds, but the One X version definitely did not sound right or particularly good to me.

Are you using a surround setup, or stereo?

What I’m wondering is if the issue is directly related to the audio stream being sent to the Xbox’s optical audio output, or the optical and HDMI outputs, but NOT the controller (which would explain why I didn’t experience any audio issues through my headset).

I haven't really looked into, maybe there are multiple, separate issues across the different builds, but the One X version definitely did not sound right or particularly good to me.

I maintain that if you have to look at a side by side comparison to even notice it (which you totally do for almost every single one of the things Digital Foundry talks about), then it doesn’t matter.

Play the MCC version of Reach without having someone point out those issues, and they’re not even noticeable. Cruel is right—it just looks like Reach.

I disagree with him on the sound, though. That was immediately noticeable to me. It didn’t really affect my enjoyment, but I knew something was off the entire time I played.

I played through half the game using nothing but my TV speakers with the volume way down, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed any problems with the audio unless they were extreme. But when I played through the 2nd half of the campaign, I was wearing a stereo headset (plugged straight into my controller). I didn’t do any A/B comparisons, but the audio sounded just as I remembered it.

What kind of issues are you hearing?

Headset user here. Voices were obnoxiously loud in the mix. Everything else was in a can. I laughed outloud at how bad it was. Was glad my friend and I were just messing around in campaign and having a good time.

If I was going through "seriously" solo I might get irritated enough to just stop playing.

Yeah, I didn’t have any of those issues at all. Very strange. Was your headset plugged into the Xbox, or into the controller?

Or is this specifically a PC issue? I’m on Xbox One X.

My point here is that we really have no way of knowing which elements of Reach’s visuals were purely artistic choices, which were purely technical issues, and which were some kind of compromise between the two. I suspect that almost everything to do with game development falls into that 3rd category. But even if we could say with certainty that specific elements were purely technical in nature, it isn’t obvious that changing them would be an improvement. As my TLoU example illustrates, sometimes an improvement on paper actually harms the overall look.

Playing MCC Reach, I was quite impressed by the overall clarity and crispness of the image. Had the light bloom been cranked up, the visuals might not have made such an impression on me. Or, perhaps I would have liked the look of the game even more. Who knows. My point is that ANY changes are nonetheless changes, and whether or not a player likes or dislikes those changes is going to be a question of personal taste.

I also don’t think the mix in general is particularly good, but I think that’s true of the original.

I maintain that if you have to look at a side by side comparison to even notice it (which you totally do for almost every single one of the things Digital Foundry talks about), then it doesn’t matter.

Play the MCC version of Reach without having someone point out those issues, and they’re not even noticeable. Cruel is right—it just looks like Reach.

I disagree with him on the sound, though. That was immediately noticeable to me. It didn’t really affect my enjoyment, but I knew something was off the entire time I played.

I played through half the game using nothing but my TV speakers with the volume way down, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed any problems with the audio unless they were extreme. But when I played through the 2nd half of the campaign, I was wearing a stereo headset (plugged straight into my controller). I didn’t do any A/B comparisons, but the audio sounded just as I remembered it.

What kind of issues are you hearing?

Headset user here. Voices were obnoxiously loud in the mix. Everything else was in a can. I laughed outloud at how bad it was. Was glad my friend and I were just messing around in campaign and having a good time.

If I was going through "seriously" solo I might get irritated enough to just stop playing.

I maintain that if you have to look at a side by side comparison to even notice it (which you totally do for almost every single one of the things Digital Foundry talks about), then it doesn’t matter.

Play the MCC version of Reach without having someone point out those issues, and they’re not even noticeable. Cruel is right—it just looks like Reach.

I disagree with him on the sound, though. That was immediately noticeable to me. It didn’t really affect my enjoyment, but I knew something was off the entire time I played.

I played through half the game using nothing but my TV speakers with the volume way down, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed any problems with the audio unless they were extreme. But when I played through the 2nd half of the campaign, I was wearing a stereo headset (plugged straight into my controller). I didn’t do any A/B comparisons, but the audio sounded just as I remembered it.

What kind of issues are you hearing?

Play the MCC version of Reach without having someone point out those issues, and they’re not even noticeable. Cruel is right—it just looks like Reach.

I disagree with him on the sound, though. That was immediately noticeable to me. It didn’t really affect my enjoyment, but I knew something was off the entire time I played.

I think there's probably some additional reasons why Destiny isn't quite like this

I have written about this before:

https://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=35662

The answer is the investment system combined with the Journey style seamless matchmaking.