[Editor's Note: This story has been updated to issue a correction: HDR is not part of the improvements. Rather, the improved 10-bit color palette provides the more vivid picture quality. IGN regrets the error.]

Microsoft’s Xbox backwards compatibility team is adding Xbox One X-specific enhancements to four high-profile Xbox 360 games that are already playable on Xbox One: Halo 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Assassin’s Creed

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Some titles now have 10-bit color depth unlocked where they previously were restricted to 8-bit by the Xbox 360, and all have nine times the on-screen pixels. I got to see Halo 3 running in a developer mode that clearly showcased the difference. The left half of the screen was standard Xbox 360 emulation on Xbox One, which already offers framerate smoothing and other subtle benefits. On the right it had the enhanced color palette and the 9x pixel count.

Above: A comparison of Halo 3 running on an Xbox 360 vs. an Xbox One X.

Xbox One Compatible 4 IMAGES

“It’s been genuinely startling to see how it looks [on Xbox One X],” said Halo franchise development director Frank O’Connor. Indeed, a look at the Last Resort multiplayer map’s palm trees saw greatly reduced “noise” on the palm fronds and fewer jaggies when looking at a large vertically oriented object such as the turbine in the center of the map.And with original Xbox backwards compatibility kicking off for Xbox One tomorrow , I naturally asked O’Connor if we might see Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 be brought forward to the Xbox One family. “Statistically [Halo 3] is the one by far we get asked about the most,” he said, which isn’t necessarily a denial!I also got to walk around in Megaton in Fallout 3 on the Xbox One X, and as the team used development commands to turn the X enhancements on and off the wires running across the streets and the ruined buildings in the distance were starkly different. First the jaggies were there, and then they were gone. A signpost with a lot of text on it also looked obviously sharper and clearer on the new console.Don’t miss our in-depth profile on the compatibility team at Microsoft , including the untold-until-now origins of the Xbox One backwards compatibility program.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews and Xbox Guru-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan , catch him on Unlocked , and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.