Coming This Week on Digital Foundry (Week 49) (Patreon)

Hello! We're closing in on the end of the year now but nothing - I repeat nothing - will stop the #content juggernaut. Of course, that begins with the arrival of the first of three huge videos on Halo Infinite. This kicks off with John's incredible 46-minute epic out now on the channel and available for download. Following that will be Alex's deep dive into the PC version, which will have the optimised settings, performance metrics and more you've come to expect.

Last but certainly not least is the cross-platform comparison, which required something of a pivot last week. Come Wednesday, it quickly became apparent that the scale of this task was going to be way beyond the capabilities of just one person. We're looking at four Xbox versions of the game, three of which have both quality and performance modes. And on top of that, getting meaningful comparison data was challenging because you cannot replay missions in Halo Infinite. To get the data we needed required seven playthroughs from scratch. So, to get something approaching the definitive picture here requires some time.

Some initial comparison assets can be viewed right now on the Eurogamer article version of John's tech review, where all seven renditions of the game have screenshot zoomers to check out, plucked from my Adobe Premiere timeline last night. Pro-Tip - choose the full-screen versions of each shot, not the head-to-head default... there's simply too many versions: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-halo-infinite-tech-review

Let's move on to a more detailed content breakdown:

* Oliver is polishing up his Oddworld Soulstorm piece, which focuses on the new Xbox Series versions and the Enhanced Edition upgrades.

* Alex will be returning to Halo Infinite once again after his PC piece to revisit the area of the game found in the controversial 2020 gameplay reveal, to deliver a more granular look at what's happened to the game in the last 15 or so months. 

* Rich (ie me) continues to try to work on the Forza Horizon 5 studio tour/deep dive which had to be put on hold when the scale of the Halo Infinite cross-platform comparison became evident. 

* John is working on some exciting embargoed content. I'm not sure if we're in a position to reveal what it is, so we're checking - if so, I will update!

* Tom is obviously working hard on the Halo Infinite console piece which should hit before the campaign is available to play, but after that, he's going to be revisiting the excellent Guardians of the Galaxy to take a look at the RT upgrade on consoles, viewed through the lens of the PC version.

There may well be other stuff, of course. Will is promising point blank that the Ryzen 5700G review may actually happen this week. The Game Awards is coming and who knows what 'wurld prm'ears' we may need to cover? Audi is also working on a special Christmas surprise in our downtime too... 

Hope you have a great week!