Bungie’s in-house composer Marty O’Donnell today debunked traditional internet clamour over the legitimacy of Halo: Reach’s apparently engine-rendered trailer, claiming that its “actually from the game”. In carefully constructed delivery, O’Donnell closed out his quote, adding “for all intents and purposes” with the subtle mastery of The Thick Of It’s Malcolm Tucker.

“I mean, we’ll obviously probably adjust it” O’Donnell continued, cautiously allowing release leeway to avoid short-hand libel and a repeat of Halo 3′s similar trailer furore. “There’s some text and graphics that won’t be in the game, but this is the way the game plays right at the beginning”.

Eurogamer’s excellent Digital Foundry recently ran an article delving into technical analysis of the recently unveiled trailer. The piece concluded that while the graphical step-up between ODST and Reach was indeed marked, the video, while rendered honestly by Bungie’s engine-in-progress, exhibited ramped post-processing and resolution scaling impossible to comment on honestly without comparison footage from the title’s eventual release.

Trailers and pre-release assets are becoming gradually further from the living room truth, with anti-aliasing, refresh rate and resolution frequently upped, tweaked and expanded to showcase clarity simply unfair to peg as in-game. Marty O’Donnell’s words, although seemingly encouraging, do little to actually answer hordes of forum questions as to the real graphical shift between Master Chief’s previous sub-HD outing and Halo: Reach’s turn of the decade promises.

Via: CVG