rox360

I really have no idea what Nintendo is doing with their hardware, anymore. I just... I don't know, man...

@Ghostin said:

@AngelN7: Rant was used simply to mirror the headline. I feel the same about nearly all commentary by any developer, they should do their talking with their games.

I'm sorry, but that's insane. Open communication is one of the most important things this age of computing has brought us. If fans or customers want to know more about a product, they should have the right to ask. If the developer wants to explain, they should have the right to speak. The fact that it's possible to do on such a personal level like this is incredibly precious to everyone involved. You'd be a fool to want to take that away.

@Spellbot5000 said:

Good god, I had a bet going with a friend that Brad was going to bring fucking SC2 up again right after E3. Where are the articles about chess championships or Boggle Tournaments? You know, stupid things like SC2 that no one gives a shit about except their core base of nutter fans.

"Stupid things that no one gives a shit about except the core base of nutter fans"? You mean like TrackMania? Or ancient, way out of fashion Sega/Atari/Intellivision/Dreamcast games? Or insane indie titles like Minecraft or Dungeons of Dredmor? Yeah, thank god this site only covers new games that people care about.

@vinsanityv22 said:

I don't understand how you can be so dumb. Yes, the game is sharp-looking. And sure, all of ILM's custom renders and their attention to detail is quite eye-popping. But implying it can't run on current gen hardware is beyond shortsighted. For fuck's sake, you're RIGHT NEXT to games like Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls. Putting it on cutting edge PC hardware may keep the game's resolution very high and keep it from screen-tearing, but this is TOTALLY DOABLE on modern hardware still, Brad. Fuck. This has been the no.1 most annoying thing the internet has said at E3 all year. Dumb fucker journalists kept saying the same thing about Ubi Soft's new IP, Watch Dogs, until they just came out and said, "It's for PC, 360 and PS3 people".

It's running on Unreal Engine 3, even. Their custom engine for Force Unleashed was probably more taxing to the 360.

Those characters look to have about twice as high a polycount as I've seen on anything this generation. I could barely spot any individual polygons at all, even on ecorative objects that normally are condemned to be square or, at best, pentagonal. Do you realize how high the mesh resolution has to be for cloth physics to behave as smoothly as they do in that video? I haven't seen that kind of polygon density used anywhere in a modern game. And for it to be calculated to move that smoothly with zero signs of clipping at least in the brief section where it's possible to scrutinize... No, I'm going to have to argue. You can't do that on the current generation of consoles. Not while keeping a respectable framerate in a complete scene with explosions, action and, most importantly, player control.

The Last of Us and Beyond look great - for 360/PS3 games. But they both still look like something that could've come out a year ago, or two, and no one would've blinked. Plenty of muddy textures, plainly visible polygons and obvious graphical compromises in both those demos, and I didn't even look closely. This is beyond that.

I promise not to be sore if I'm wrong. I would be indescribably happy if that turns out to be the case. Because that, in the most honest use of the word, is unbelievable to me.

Edit: I just watched it again, and I need to stress my point about the cloth physics. Modern games barely use actual cloth physics, if at all. You see it now and then on an exaggerated scarf or a hero's cape, or a stylish trail behind a spear or something designed to be very noticable. In this video, it's on the guy's freaking sleeves. We simply do not have the polygons or computing time to waste on animating a goddamn shirt sleeve on the current generation of gaming platforms. It's not something anyone would ever notice, so it's not something anyone would ever make, unless they truly had the power to make everything else look better than anything you've ever seen and still have oodles of power left to draw out of the system.

Edit 2: Unless they specifically use those highly detailed, animated models in cutscenes and seamlessly swap them out for lower resolution ones in combat. It's hard to tell, but that may actually be the case. But then... No, I don't know, something still doesn't seem right. Now you've got me hoping this is actually a current generation game. That would be the most impressive thing I've seen since... hell, since I got into gaming.

Video review! Seems pretty cool. It would be awesome to get several boxes and combine them into something grand, like these guys did.

Awww. Oh well.

Can't wipe the grin off my face. This is horrible stuff, but I'm so excited to be reading about it. So awesome...

I just...don't get it. I never have. The idea of "here's a world, do whatever" is either too free-form or too restrictive (??) to me.

Isn't it really the same thing, though? You either tell the player how something works through text, or you do it by adding hints in the environment. Both are ways of telling the player how the game works, they're just two different ways of doing it. I have to agree that a game that manages to work the tutorials into the progression seamlessly often comes out a better game, but having some text describing something isn't necessarily always a bad thing.

Okay, with the greyscale digital camo on that walker thing, and the fact that it's a large, square-ish walker, how am I not supposed to think of Battlefield 2142? Seriously, it looks almost exactly like someone took the EU APC from that game and stuck the EU Walker's legs on it.
 
All this is doing is making me want a 2142 sequel...