Videos from the G-Star Demo

Jazz_Lafayette

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#1 Edited By Jazz_Lafayette

Completely out of left field we get footage from a vastly polished version of the demo being played at G-Star. I'll point out what new stuff I managed to notice for each segment (I don't know that they're entirely in order). Keep in mind that the video quality isn't great.

The Tequatl fight has jumped the scale from "visually impressive" to "shit's poppin' off left and right". I don't know if it's a result of higher player participation, the implementation of more skill animations, or if the animators just decided that everything needed to look about 70% crazier.

Evidently the armor on the player character here is higher-level stuff, which I guess is just for increased visual flair in the starter area. You can also see some additional faces that have been added to humans (all eastern Asian-looking, because after all, it is a Korean demo).

We need to get this out of the way right now: THE NEW CUTSCENE ANIMATIONS ARE FANTASTIC. Whatever they're using to lip-sync the VA (in a foreign language, no less) is spot-on. General improvements have also been made to other animations from what I can tell. The Earth Elemental now uses more varied attacks and more frequently than he did before (hopefully this is an indication that static bosses can get savage). I'm pretty sure the whole "NPC running up to shout at you about a nearby event" deal hadn't been implemented in the last demo. Also, we get to see some of the environmental effects of event chains. In this case, the centaurs have completely fucked up the garrison that they're now occupying.

EDIT: Now noticed that the player had a full bar of weapon skills by the end of the tutorial, which indicates lower unlock requirements. The map has a legend now, which seems like an obvious step forward. And of course the entire personal story sequence at the end with the bandit disguise is new. Hopefully that's a representation of the sort of mission variation we'll get based on our biography choices (for reference, this character is a street rat).

I can't see any of the content or systems changes that ArenaNet has been talking about recently, but everything here just has an extra, much-appreciated layer of spit-shine on it. That in itself seems insane given how much praise has been heaped onto previous versions of the demo for their "AAA" levels of polish.

If you're astute enough to catch any alterations or improvements that I haven't, make sure to point them out below.

12 years ago

Troncek

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#2 Edited By Troncek

Yeah, finally proper cut-scene mouth animation. That was one of the weak points, until now.

12 years ago

Vexxan

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#3 Edited By Vexxan

Want this game so badly but it feels like it's still far away.

12 years ago

Jazz_Lafayette

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#4 Edited By Jazz_Lafayette

@Vexxan said:

Want this game so badly but it feels like it's still far away.

I'd say about half a year at most, given that most of the remaining info (last profession, WvW, closed beta) is on track to be shown before 2012. Not too bad considering how fucking incredible the game is looking in its current pre-beta state.

EDIT: Here's some high-res screenshots of the (seemingly?) improved character models.