Halo Reach’s Sound Is Buggered

So Halo – or at least Halo Reach – is finally on PC, and it’s been a blast to play. But why is the sound so damn dull?

It’s been the number one complaint from users since Halo: Reach‘s launch last week. Instead of guns having the oomph and impact they should have, gunfire and explosions sound distant. It’s something you can hear for yourself in some ranked footage I captured a while ago, which should give some context to the complaints below.

The funny thing is, sound issues have been a problem in Halo: Master Chief Collection for a while. YouTuber Nighterlev put together a great comparison between Halo Reach‘s sound on the Xbox 360, and the sound of the guns from a Halo: MCC build in October.

Everything is completely off. The difference between the AR and DMR particularly in Halo MCC and the original 360 version is night and day. The Gravity Hammer just has no force behind it at all, and even the plasma weapons sound like they’ve been deliberately mixed to be quieter.

It’s something that’s come up in the recent Digital Foundry analysis as well. The backward compat version of Halo Reach, as played on a Xbox One X, has a much stronger audio mix. Guns are more present to the user, but on Halo: MCC, everything is just muffled. And this is a first-person shooter – if the guns don’t sound good, the whole game feels off.

It’s a known problem, as well. In the list of “top issues”, audio problems are the first thing 343 Industries cited on the Halo Waypoint support site. “This is a known issue present at launch and the team is working to resolve this,” 343 said.

“Unfortunately, it is not a quick fix and is one that will require quite a bit of work and time to resolve. The team is already working on it and will share an update when more progress and details are available.”

It’s nice to play Halo Reach at 60fps at 4K … but like when Halo: MCC launched, the PC release needs a bit of work. It’s nice to ALT-TAB in and out of games of Halo again, but the series deserves better than this.


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