unforum

[thunderclap8]

[thebruce]

[VMVash]

Wow thebruce, your vary passionet about stunning visuals. I like the name 'ambient visuals'. It tells you what it is and implys a quality level that we haven't seen vary much lately.

[krystyn]

Maybe it's because I've spent a lot of time on Warlock and Turf (mm, textures) that I am not really getting the argument, here. Also, you're comparing an XBox title with a 360 title. I do not know, off-hand, what the processing/rendering difference is between those two consoles, but I do know it's significant enough that comparing them is unfair - especially when speculating about Halo 3.

I'd rather have really fun gameplay, honestly. It's why I want a Wii right now.

Jokes about man cannons > standing and looking at the rain, only to get chainsawed



To each their own, man.

My own experience with Gears of War had me sort of flinching at some of the realism in a way that I never really have to deal with in Halo - the chainsawing, the curb-stomping (the associations with that action actually make me feel a little ill), etc. And yet, I haven't seen the uncanny valley effect in GoW, either: the facial modeling and some of the super-fast combat moves and tactics remind me constantly that I am playing a video game.

Halo is more cartoony in that we don't have character faces, and the aliens bleed purple blood, and the maps are pretty bright and navigable, which is awesome, for me, the girl who played Halo CE as "Myst with guns." I don't need gritty realism to feel as though I am coordinating a war effort with my teammates as I sit on my couch and drink beer or whatever. A certain amount of flash helps, but I am not so sure some extra piles of rubble or individual blades of grass are suddenly going to transport me into this world any more than I am already.

I directly credit ilovebees with my third year of XBoxLive subscription, which I currently use only to play Halo 2. It's about the people, and the gameplay, first and foremost. I love the art of the graphics, and I am all for more 'realism,' but I can tell you right now that prettier pixels will not automatically contribute to my enjoyment of a game.

*trundles off to play some Bushido Blade*

[ubersaurus]

I play my 360 on a standard def tv in s-video, and the visuals aren't so far an improvement over what i've seen the previous gen that I'm not going to declare them a benchmark to be passed. I'm sure they're gorgeous and all on HDTVs, and I could sit and stare at some dirt on a long ruined building for hours, but they don't look that much better than, say, Zelda on my set.

Considering the only truly Halo 3 texture we've seen so far is the Chief himself, and the fact it's a brand new platform, better visuals are a given. But Halo isn't as dark and gritty a series. Gears deals with cityscapes and abandoned mines, destroyed due to a prolonged war between combatants on the ground. Very few parts of Halo really involve that, since the Covenant don't believe in domination so much as glassing.

[twiztedmatt1007]

Actually Krystyn that is a problem I originally had with the gore in Gears. I turned it off for a few days but I noticed that it is harder to tell if you have killed someone with a headshot with the gore off then it is on. The best thing I can suggest doing if you need the gore on is don't fixate on it. I just do it, by that I mean headshot, chainsaw, or shotgun someone, and not pay to close attention to the guy that is dead/dieing as to the guy charging me with his shotgun blazing. If there isn't someone charging me to try to splatter me I am strategizing what I should do next depending on how many enemies are still alive and how many allies are still alive. When I really get into an intense combat situation I don't have time to look at the gore and parts, I generally just have enough time to react to what is happening around me. So what I'm saying is that when I'm in combat I really don't notice the gore because I choose not to and use it to my advantage when I'm sniping or pistoling someone, and when you're that far away and their head disappears it's not that bad and it's very quick.

[Cherry Cotton]

[thebruce]

re gore: I never even really considered the gore aspect... when I was discussing artistic quality, it was always about the environments and visual realism... turn the gore off, don't care about it . Gameplay-wise, the realism for me is in the slower movement, a realistic gait, the 'feel' of the weapons...

I'd even compare Halo to GoW by saying that Halo is to Quake what Gears of War is to Halo... ID went with high speed, ultra-flashy gameplay (which also affected the artistic style), where Bungie went with a more realistic motion, and the environments had to follow suit. GoW took it an extra step and the 'feel' of motion is that much clunkier and slow than Halo. It could be similarly described by the difference between an arcade racer and a sim racer. It was even mentioned how one of the effects added to racing games to increase the sense of speed is a tunnel effect, wider camera angles, etc. Whereas in sims, cars appear to move slower, but you get more of a sense of its actual mechanics, and a realistic speed.
In shooters the developers have to decide a 'fun factor' - strictly speaking, how much adrenaline you get from the speed and gameplay. Granted, that's a very small factor these days, since the recent FPS have opted for the slower, more realistic motion, adding adrenaline pumping content in other areas...
Anyway, I guess my point is just that aside from gameplay, the visual artistic style of GoW is more realistc than most, if not all, other games at this point, though whether that's appealing or not is entirely subjective. War games even get it right in some cases with their realistic gameplay.

I totally understand your personal appeal for Halo 2 over Gears, Krystyn. And the fact that Halo 2 is a last-gen game is why I'm hoping that Bungie pulls off some quality realism in H3 (though again, that's a personal preference). We've only seen very little of the game so far, and even that's all months old. But of course gameplay is more important aspect... Like Cotton said, if the graphics are there but the gameplay sucks, then you've essentially got a doomed tech-demo.

Even so, Bungie has shown they can really pull out the stops in eeking out whatever power they can from a system. Epic has shown they truly know how to build an engine that can emulate a higher level of realism; Epic has also shown that their artistic vision truly takes advantage of that added technology to provide not only a technically advanced environment, but a visually realistically appealing (potentially, ymmv) environment.

Thus why I say the bar has been raised for Bungie. Can they develop an engine that gives that ability, and will their artistic style remain faithful to the Halo universe, as well as take advantage of that technical potential? Will their story steal our attention and not infuriate us again? But the final straw, and most important, is simply whether their gameplay is sufficiently amazing to keep our interest in the game. Technical improvement is a given; artistic vision is subjective (I personally favour greater realism); but gameplay will make or break the game.

Gore, I'd rate that as mostly gameplay. You can have an amazingly real game with little gore. But I guess that depends on what kind of weapons and 'events' happen in-game - in which case they become more fundamental to gameplay or plot than visuals. Too much is too much. In Gears' case, I agree it's visually over the top (especially that chainsaw; while fun, I'd rather not have the gore literally in my face).

[twiztedmatt1007]

Just to let you know when the gore is turned off, the worst thing would be the chainsaw. What happens when you chainsaw someone with the gore off is your screen gets a good coating of blood other then that there is almost no other blood in the game or any sort of dismemberment. After that the most disturbing part in the game would be one cutscene which the gore cannot be turned off for but all you see is blood and shadows and afterwards the reminisce of the body if you go over there but you do not have to, unless you want a COG tag that is.

[vortech]

All I know is I have never once looked at something in Halo and been unable to differentiate friend from foe from rubble. This happened quite a lot in GoW. Everything is in such a narrow area of colors. It's admirable that they got so much out of suck a limited set, but impressive in the way people who recreate the mona lisa on an etchasketch is impressive. The game has a prettiness, but it's not really a functional prettiness, that is to say it's better suited to directional media than interactive media.

Also, while I'm right with you in admiring much of GoW's level design, the character design is ridiculous. Every single man looks like a demon-animated pile of over-stuffed sausages. (and every woman - save the chief evil villain of the story - looks gaunt and frail, but I'll try not to read too much into it.)

[ubersaurus]

Who'd be interested in getting together on Gears of War one of these nights and going over the maps?

Unlike Halo 2, you can't explore them by yourself, and the pacing and styling of the game itself make exploration during a game with strangers extremely difficult.

Also give people a chance to improve at the game itself with some skirmishes!

[thebruce]

I'd be up tomorrow night or any time saturday...

[miss_seph]

[thebruce]

[djsampson]