The more I think about it, I think I have a theory as to why it looks so average... See yes it's being held back by xbox one but we have red dead redemption 2 that runs on the xbox one and that game's environments, lighting and etc still looks a lot better than Halo Infinite. My theory as to why I think Halo looks the way it does is because they are targeting 60fps on the Xbox One as well like they did with Halo 5. And because of that, they had to sacrifice in visual quality since a lot of the open world games this gen and probably next gen as well are running at 30 fps and sometimes lower.

How does that explain it? The footage we saw is for the xbox series x, who knows how much worse the xbox one version will look. 

To be fair, the game was never intended to be a next gen game, it was designed with base X1 hardware in mind at 60fps with an open world design.. which is quite ambitions for base X1. 

I will assume the cost in visuals is to accommodate major events in the game as well, like maybe fighting multiple Scarab Tanks or air missions just like the original games etc.

DF said the demo isn't running ray-Tracing which we can again assume will be implemented for the Series X and high/mid end PCs.

I get the feeling too many gamers are too graphic focused these days. Halo was never a Crysis when it comes to visuals, Halo always carried great art styles and offered top of the line gameplay for its genre. Halo 4 and 5 was where 343 tried to go for the more realistic route and focusing on visuals over gameplay which was some of the major criticisms for those games at the time. Infinite seems to be focusing on what made Halo great in the first place, unfortunately that comes at a cost.

Fingers crossed we will see improvements with added Ray-Tracing if they offer it. If they don't, it doesn't bother me, i play Halo for the story and gameplay foremost so i am more interested in seeing what the game offers in those terms.  

Well we know that there's a post launch update that's coming for the Series X that will add things like ray tracing. So this isn't the final Series X version.

While the footage we saw is for the series X, it's most likely that the xbox one version will look similar just with somethings toned down like draw distance, lower resolution and etc. Similar to Gears of War 5. Xbox One version cranked to "Ultra" settings if you will for the Series X. I am just speculating of course until we see the xbox one version.

Trailer looks good. I didn’t have a problem with the reveal trailer. It didn’t look jaw dropping graphically but the gameplay and sounds were incredible. Classic Halo feel and I can’t wait to see how the open world design fits in. You could see a “missions” button when they brought up the map, makes me wonder if you juggle multiple quests/missions at a time. Exciting stuff.

Except they are going to use that game as the Halo platform for this generation. Are they planning to update visuals substantially along the way?

Some MMO's do this, like Eve Online, but then you get games like World of Warcraft which looks just as hot garbage as ever. If they plan on updating significant parts then your argument is okay, but if just minor updates then Halo For Series X will look mostly like this until their next base game, which will probably be on the device after Series X. Halo Infinite is where all their multiplayer/story updates will be delivered through for the next 6 years of the Series X lifespan, if what I've read is correct, so it needs to be "next gen" and not current gen, imo.

Regardless, I'm hopeful that the demo being old combined with the months remaining in development will improve it significantly.

I really don't think the base Xbox One Model support is the problem here, because I fully expect the Xbox one version to be 720P 60FPS with smaller draw distance.

I think the prime reason for the odd graphics are caused by the use of dynamic lightning like digital foundry pointed out. I'll will add to this that dynamic lighting prevent the use of sub subsurface scattering which would greatly help model feel less plastic. Classic halo artstyle might also exacerbate visual oddities.

There's also the fact that we have seen only one Biome which felt empty, previous trailer have shown other environments, some with more vegetations.

Pop-in was also a problem but I fully expect this to be fixed by released.

The question here is would I want better visual over dynamic lightning? I need to see more of the game before I made my decision on this.  

I don't know what you mean by standard gens but Ninty is most distinct from generation to generation. All Xbox and PS consoles have just been boxes with more graphics and basically the the same controller scheme but more refined and a few tweaks. Ninty has had all sorts of wonky gimmicks and controllers to define generations. 

Regarding Xbox and Halo, my point is it doesn't matter what you or I say or whether or not it ends up looking a lot better than it does in this build or not, it will sell a shit ton and it will sell a lot of Xbox series x consoles as well. That was my basic point. The name Halo itself will make sure of it. 

But I do agree that Ninty has made breath of the wild in such a way it will still look gorgeous after maybe even a few decades while Halo will look aged in 3-5 years.

The problem is they made the game with xbox one in mind and upscale it to Xbox Series X. Think of it this way, if I took a low quality image and adjust it in photoshop I can make it look better. However, there is only so much you can do and it still won't look great. Overall, I think Halo infinite looks okay for an open world series x launch game that is 4k and 60 fps. They just need to get the popups under control and get ray tracing out as soon as possible (should help with lighting).

Game assets are always created in higher quality than needed and then scaled down to fit specific power requirement. That is true even when there's no new hardware on the horizon. No reason to believe that this demo was not using high quality texture & mesh that differ in resolutions/complexity from the ones the Xbox one will be using.  

Edit: That said it might just be true that we are looking at a scaled up Xbox one game which still lacks specific optimization to take full potential of the Xbox Series X hardware.