From Frank O'Conner at Bungie:

yea, i'm excited... if they can get the polish way up on the single player... this game is going to rock... they have nailed the gameplay.

The graphics it the beta are an extreme dissapointment, I think they'd have to do more then just 'polish' the game. Halo 3 needs a complete graphics overhaul. "Will always be tuned for performance and elegance" Elegance in a multiplayer Halo game?? He really lost me there.

He means framerate, feel, and overall performance. If you've played the Halo 3 beta and also played Gears multiplayer, you would know what he's talking about. Gears is often a nightmare and the shotty is usually completely useless in multiplayer. I've played about 50 Halo 3 matches and have seen it lag to "average Gears" levels only two or three times and even then it was gone within 15 seconds.

The Halo 3 netcode kicks the crap out of H2 and Gears. It's the smoothest game I've ever seen that's hosted on non-dedicated servers.

That's good to hear, lag was a major issue with the online for Halo 2.

Is Blue screen still there?

Overall though, I'm very dissapointed. And I highly doubt this game is going to "set a new high water mark for next generation games" as it was stated it would do. The beta looks barely next-gen.

 Why does it need a graphics overhaul? Just because you say so does not mean there actually is a need.

I can't speak for H3 because I have not tried the beta, but gears can be quite frustrating at times. You can tell every now and then when you start a multiplayer game on gears and it takes several seconds to load the textures occasionally. I'm not a big Halo fan at all but I am impressed that someone from Bungie actually said that.

I'll concede that while compared to games like Gears, H3 looks rather mundane in multiplayer.

But after nearly breaking my X360 controller dozens of times because of Gears' crappy netcode, if Bungie sacrificed a few visual effects for solid multiplayer, I'm perfectly OK with that.

I pointed this comment out by O'Conner more for the people who were comparing R:FoM single player screenies to H3 multiplayer screenies. You can't compare the two.

I'm pretty excited to see H3 single player screens. I wonder how long it will be before we see some...

I feel it needs a graphics overhaul becuase the budget for this game should warrant it. Also look at what they originally said about this game, it was going to  "set a new high water mark for next generation games" yet with those decidedly mediocre graphics I don't think It's going to happen.

Also a major selling point of Halo 2 was the fact that when it was released, it had some of the best graphics seen in a console game to date. The same cannot be said this time around.

So are you saying that sacrificing graphics for gameplay is a worthy trade off?  Interesting...considering this is what Wii proponents have been claiming for awhile now.  I totally agree with you as well, especially when it comes to multiplayer games with lots of people.  Doesn't matter how nice it looks if it doesn't play well.

I don't want to derail the thread, I just thought it was an interesting observation from someone outside of the typical hardcore Nintendo fanbase.  As for the game itself, I can't really comment since I never finished Halo 1 or 2.  I'm hoping for the fans sake that Bungee has pulled out all the stops for this guy though.