Yeah I'm going to forget about this picture 5 minutes after looking at it. That's all I really have to say.
Actually, a few months ago. We knew people would be excited for the upcoming forge tools and wanted to make good on our name. But without a solid release date it was hard for us to plan for it. Pretty much the whole team is in Seattle right now but when they're all back we can make moves.
**Done** Subjectively: The best looking Halo 3 map to me was Guardian. IMHO the best looking Halo 5 map by far has got to be Mercy. Yah we had fun playing Nerf Arena Blast the weapons were really done with love and there was hella variety. I mostly played the one map though, lol. I loved the over the top colors, which funnily enough was also a thing I loved about Halo. Those massive battles with a crayon book full of colors lighting up the darkness. It's also part of what I hate about the Promethean weapons. Imagine how much more interesting it would have looked if each weapon and each enemy had their own glowing colors. It wouldn't have helped the game much but visually it would have been more pleasing. I love that Sci Fi Garbage, it's part of what drew me to Halo. Although I do get what you mean. Just looking Sci Fi, which is cool to me, isn't enough to make it worthwhile. It's always the Big Oak tree on a level that I want to hang out by, or the uniquely odd random ancient monolith or such. It doesn't need to be visually noisy to get the point across. Then again if the theme is strong enough, which I feel it is in Mercy, then I feel that it's hyper detail is welcome.
I don't think there's anything officially listed but lower-end builds and up can run this fine with the right settings. After all, it's using a modified version of ODST's 9-year-old Blam Engine. However, higher-end builds can go up to 4k 60 FPS (60 is the engine's hard cap) if need be.
To me it looks ornately ritualistic or palatial. I don't find it too much considering the theme that is involved.