Halo 3 Legendary under fire

Bungie has responded to criticism of the quality of the remastered Halo and Halo 2 cinematics in the Legendary Edition box of Halo 3.

The packaging claims the extras disc features "completely remastered, hi-res versions" of the originals, but those of you who splashed out on the lavish edition have reported that that is far from the truth: apparently the clips are poorly compressed and washed out with considerable artifacting.

However, Bungie lead writer Frank O'Connor has since come out of his Halo 3-themed house and tried to clear it all up.

"The cut-scenes were remastered, the pop-in reduced and they were output as as high resolution TIFFs one frame at a time to improve the quality over the originals," he wrote, in comments reported by IGN. "They were not, contrary to popular belief, remastered in 'HD'. And this was always advertised as a DVD disc, which obviously can't play HD content anyway."

"Apologies to folks feeling ripped off, but the false advertising claims are well, false. Watch the remastered ones side by side with the originals to see how much they've been improved.

"And hopefully folks can see past our old school graphics and listen to the commentary, which is the important part of that content anyway," he promised.

The Halo 3 Legendary Edition sold for around GBP 70 originally, and went like hot cakes. You can now pick one up for around GBP 130.