343 Industries has elaborated on the kind of visual improvements that they have brought to Anniversary.

It has not been a simple matter of redrawing the game at a higher resolution with HD textures. 343 has altered some details that were originally used to save on processing power allowing them to create more depth to the game experience.

343 boss Frank O'Connor began: "343 Guilty Spark had a lot of fog, and people associate that fog with broodiness, mood, terror as the Flood came out. But one of the realities is that yes, the fog was there for all those reasons, but it was also in there as a performance saver, as fog used to be. [So we found] other things we could do to give it mood and give it a sombreness."

He elaborated: "We also said at some point, 'If we're doing something with the graphics, we should really do something with it, not just ape exactly what was there.' The Library is another good example. It had this big pillar in the center which was put in, again, to occlude objects so you dont have to draw every enemy in the game. We took this opportunity to re-light the level, do stuff with the textures, and some of the effects to make it much more navigable."

Halo Anniversary will be out on the on the 15th of November.

Thanks Gamasutra.

By Ewan Aiton