E3 2011

[CDFN]

It's not an obssession, it's just curiosity, I wont be buying one anyway. Though the creative aspect is more important to me, when I enter my favorite gaming worlds such as Mass Effect, the Witcher or Uncharted, I want them to look as good as they possibly can. I love exploring these worlds and these characters and I want them to come to life.

When the facial expressions on my favorite characters such as Geralt, Shepard or Drake become more realisitic in their ability to transmit the feelings of those characters, that matters to me. When I enter a house in the witcher 2 and the game allows me to see every kind of detail I could possibly hope to find in that house if it existed in real life, that matters to me. I want to experience things like running through a moving train while a helicopter destroys it behind me with missiles like in Uncharted 2. I want to see a sunny sky turn into a thunderstorm in real time, with the sun that is shining through the forest's canopy replaced by drops of rain that change the appearence of the surfaces they touch and force the world's inhabitants to seek shelter, like in the witcher 2.

These things bring immersion and are only possible thanks to technology. You say you are looking forward to the Team Ico games. You don't care about the tech that is inside the PS3 but you're looking forward to a game based on interacting with a creature that is probably providing Team Ico with the biggest technical challenge that anyone had to face when creating a character this gen. Creating a creature that looks and behaves like that wouldn't have been possible without the hardware.
Same for the collossi in SOTC, it's the tech that allows that idea to come to live.

I used to say that I was happy with the tech back in the 16 bit days when sonic the hedgehog was blowing my mind. It looked so much better than my commodore 64 games. But with 16 bit tech we would never have experienced all the games I mentioned above.
I'm as worried about the lack of creativity as anyone else and I support new ideas, Catherine and TLG are already pre-ordered and Journey will be a day 1 download. But when games like the witcher 2 come along I can't help but be grateful that this industry has evolved as much as it did as far as the tech is concerned.
Nintendo used to raise the bar, the Super NES was a beast when it was released.

[Vanguard]

The thing is, not all games need that level of detail. Honestly, it's ornamental.

Does a game like Mario Kart need realistic thunderstorms to be fun?

[CDFN]

The thing is, not all games need that level of detail. Honestly, it's ornamental.

Does a game like Mario Kart need realistic thunderstorms to be fun?

Maybe not all, but I play all genres of games.

[GrimReality]

Hmmm. I don't WANT things to look TOO realistic. I don't want picture perfect faces. It actually takes me out of the game world. I far prefer more stylized graphics. Kinda like how I'm not a fan of Dreamworks(Robert Zemeckis specifically) animation efforts to replicate human beings. It's just creepy. I'll take Pixars stylized people every time over the creepy husks from The Polar Express, Beowulf, etc.
It's also a reason(besides not liking the first person perspective) I avoid all these modern shooters going for ultra-realism. It doesn't appeal to me.
I play games to get away from the real world, not get back into it.

[CDFN]

Well, it depends on the game but the principle still applies, even with a stylized look you still want good animation, high levels of detail, good lighting and clean edges. Pixar may not go for realism, but they use the most powerful rendering technology in the world to create those movies.

[Eusis]

The thing is, not all games need that level of detail. Honestly, it's ornamental.

Does a game like Mario Kart need realistic thunderstorms to be fun?

I also suspect it simply won't get much better than it is now in regards to doing those kinds of thing. Perhaps they'll manage more seamless worlds but that leads to RAM, and that's the one thing I'd want them to gorge on now given it can most easily lead to larger game areas and, when used smartly, kill a lot of load time.

Anyways, I'm personally only interested in strong specs in that I don't want to see Nintendo's platform to be immediately made irrelevant by the other two this next generation. Have it be more like the PS2, weakest but close enough it doesn't matter, rather than the Dreamcast, much stronger than the prior generation but too limited (GDs and one analog stick!) to keep up. Probably closer to the PS2 though, given it'll have a blu-ray type disc and everything but presumably L3/R3-type buttons on the controller.

[GrimReality]

Well, it depends on the game but the principle still applies, even with a stylized look you still want good animation, high levels of detail, good lighting and clean edges. Pixar may not go for realism, but they use the most powerful rendering technology in the world to create those movies.

Very true. The increased power will benefit those with loftier artistic ambitions just as much as those going for ultra-realism. Too bad the ratio is so tilted in favor of the latter.

[CDFN]

Sly 4 gameplay:

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2011/06/16/e3-replay-sly-cooper-thieves-in-time/