Over the weekend, Halo Studios released a 6-hour video of the Halo: Campaign Evolved main menu, which, as you’d expect, contains the iconic Halo music from the original game. But what you might not have expected is the debate the remake’s new Halo ring has sparked, and some fans calling it too detailed.

Fans are comparing this remade Halo ringworld to the original from the 2001 first-person masterpiece, fussing over any changes they spot. There are clear differences, and indeed the remade ringworld has more detail to it. But why would this be a problem? Some fans say that the details on the ringworld are too large, and so it gives the viewer the impression that the ring itself is smaller than it should be. Thus, this main menu ringworld doesn’t have the sense of awe and scale of the original, which relied upon simple shapes and abstract markings to convey mystery and impossible scale.

This has become a significant talking point within Halo circles, with some offering an explanation of sorts. The thought is that the sense of scale isn’t being portrayed properly here, not just because more detail leaves less to the imagination, but because of where we’re viewing the ring from.

“Yeah it's for sure a mixture of camera techniques and lighting causing this effect,” redditor Haijakk said in a comparison thread that’s had over 1,400 upvotes. “The main menu just looks like I opened up the model in Blender while the cutscenes have the sauce.”

“Halo 1 really had an almost Death Star quality to the back of the ring,” suggested Deroqshazam. “Ton of tiny ambiguous details and lights appeared larger than conceivable. (Could have been 70s influence or just art style bc of engine limitations but I liked it).”

“It's the macro details,” added ArmorOfMar. “As someone here pointed out, the original had a design reminiscent of the Death Star or a Star Destroyer. Vast, mostly flat surfaces covered in countless glimmering lights and tiny panel details gave the impression of something truly astronomical in scale.

“With the new Halo, there are too many oversized structural elements. Huge beams and chunky metal sections dominate the silhouette, making it feel more like a large machine than a megastructure. The finer details that sold its immense scale are largely gone.”

“The new design is full of pointless technological greebling,” Zwarlie concluded. “It’s all way too readable. The original ring’s exterior was gray and with a bunch of tiny little lights. It was also darkly lit and you couldn’t really tell what was on the exterior other than that it was gray metal and was obviously artificial.

“This new version is bright, with a ton of shiny reflective silver and bright blue lights in discernible shapes and geometry. Now that you can see everything on the exterior it looks much less mysterious and more like a cliche sci fi 3D model.

“The lighting also doesn’t help as you can just see everything on the exterior which kinda ruins the sense of scale.”

Ultimately, this is just the main menu of Halo: Campaign Evolved, and not how the ringworld necessarily looks in cutscenes or gameplay. But it goes to show how invested Halo fans are with every little detail — even when there are too many — in this high-profile remake.

This isn’t the first time Halo: Campaign Evolved has sparked concern, and some of that has even come from former Halo developers. In October last year, Jaime Griesemer, one of the key developers behind Halo, did not sound impressed when he reacted to the Halo: Campaign Evolved reveal, saying: “I made it right and they are breaking it for no reason.”

Still, there is a great deal of excitement around Halo: Campaign Evolved — as well as a spot of drama around way split-screen co-op works on PS5. Halo: Campaign Evolved is due out across Xbox Series X and S, PS5, and PC on July 28, 2026.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

When Rockstar announced GTA 6 pre-orders would kick off on June 25, it did so with a short, looping video posted to the official website that offered a fresh look at Vice City. It’s meant to be viewed as you scroll down, a cool piece of GTA 6 media that sets the tone for your experience on the website. But this is GTA 6, and so everything is analyzed to within an inch of its life.

Look closely at the image taken from this short video, below, and you’ll see a ferris wheel in the background. It’s lit up, as you’d expect it to be given this is a night time scene, but unlike the buildings around it, the ferris wheel does not have a reflection in the water. Fans spotted this omission almost immediately, dubbing it GTA 6’s “vampire ferris wheel.” And while it sparked plenty of “literally unplayable” jokes, the tech experts at Digital Foundry did their thing, and have come up with an explanation for what’s going on here.

DF’s Tom Morgan suggests that the missing reflection is the result of a “ray tracing related quirk.” As we know from the two GTA 6 trailers Rockstar has released so far, the game uses ray traced reflections, and as you'd expect they’re used for the reflections we see in the water here. But for some reason the ferris wheel misses out. That is to say, we should be seeing a reflection for the ferris wheel. As Morgan says: “it's clear that the ray traced reflection on the water here is not accurate to the lighting or shading of the scenery above.”

As for the why, the object (the ferris wheel) may have been excluded from ray tracing to save on GPU costs. “This alone would explain the missing Ferris wheel reflection,” Morgan suggests. “It's an object in similar range as the surrounding buildings, and yet one that's seemingly not flagged to reflect using the ray tracing approach.”

The camera distance may also have had an impact, Morgan said, although there’s no way to know at this stage. “It's likely a ray tracing related quirk that, perhaps, will be tweaked in the final game,” he continued.

There’s been a lot of fun reaction not just to this vampire ferris wheel, but to Digital Foundry doing its thing with it. Some think fussing over this sort of thing is overkill, and of course it is, but this is GTA 6 we’re talking about. Expectations are perhaps higher for this game than any other in history, and the technology underpinning Rockstar’s games is a huge part of the excitement. Just look at Red Dead Recemption 2, now eight years old, and still wowing fans with its many systems, realistic visuals, and tech prowess.

And let’s be honest here, if we’ve got fans spending months charting the planetary positions for every Rockstar trailer drop since 2007 to try to work out the release date for Trailer 3, then analyzing this brief browser video for reflections shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

We’ve even done a spot of GTA 6 analysis ourselves, taking a close look at the recently revealed official cover art. Not long now!

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Last updated 18 June, 2026 - We checked for new Dead Spells codes!

Looking for codes for Dead Spells? IGN has you covered. We've jumped into the game and checked for all the newest and working codes for the Dead Rails inspired game. This fantasy survival game allows you to play as various classes including Gnome, Mushroom, and Goblin as you set off on expeditions.

All the codes above have been tested as working at the time of submission. However, codes with unknown expiry dates may stop working at any time. Spotted a new code we haven't included or tried one only to find it's expired? Let us know by reporting them here.

As of this month, these codes have now expired:

You'll need to find the blue lizard in Dead Spells in order to redeem codes, so to find it and get your rewards, follow these steps:

We check for new codes every day, so the best way to find out about the latest Dead Spells code is to save this article and keep checking back. You can also hunt for codes in the dediated Discord server, where codes are also announced.

If your code for Dead Spells isn't working, it's likely for one of two reasons:

If a code is not accepted in Dead Spells, it will say "code does not exist or is expired." It doesn't make it clear what the problem is, you'll just know the code hasn't worked. The good news is, if you use our article, we'll move codes into expired when they stop working, so you can tell the difference. If a code is in the active and working list, however, be sure to copy and paste it exactly as you see it here. We test each of the codes before uploading them, and Roblox codes are often case-sensitive, so it's important that it's exact.

Lauren Harper is an Associate Guides Editor. She loves a variety of games but is especially fond of puzzles, horrors, and point-and-click adventures.