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greenmedic88 on 24 August 2009
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CGI-Quality said:
greenmedic88 said:
A fair amount of people posting on this seem to prefer the "embellished" reality seen in most video games when it comes to women and characters in general. As in the one with no basis in reality (or gravity).

It poses an interesting question of whether photorealism or distinctive character designs/art direction are more suitable for the medium. I'd argue either could be appropriate depending upon the specific project.

In the case of Heavy Rain, the developers are clearly going for a photorealistic, cinematic experience with the added advantages (forks, player determined consequences, etc.) the game medium brings to the story telling table.

On a related note, the Gamescon 2009 trailer showcased a lot of new footage from the highlight reel. While it looks very good, I'm no longer convinced this will be the best looking PS3 game to date (assuming the footage is from the post beta/gold build of the game).

It's not a deal breaker for me personally, since the story, characters and potentially the structure of the game (branched story based upon player performance) have been what piqued my interest.

What game do you think tops it, just curious?

Just so you know, that footage is still Alpha too, the game isn't set to release until the Spring. Lots of dev time left.

It didn't look finished. Particularly the lighting. The body animations looked a bit stiff and motion generally lacked "weight." That's an animator issue more than anything. Clothing textures weren't particularly noteworthy.

Face models in particular looked on par with the best seen to date; I suspect a fair amount of attention was placed on recreating actor expressions as it shows. Great effort was also placed on setting the tone and atmosphere, appropriate considering the nature of the story.

Some of the previous footage I've seen looked better which made me wonder what phase of development the Gamescon trailer was showing, and if it was from an old build, why use it as they're getting closer to release date?

These impressions are only off a two minute trailer; I'm hardly one to say "This is the greatest looking/most impressive/paradigm shifting game ever!" on the merit of something that small. I need a playable demo or a retail copy.

All I can say is that the Gamescon footage took my expectations down a notch as far as overall visuals go, which is generally better than using prerendered, doctored, etc. footage and trying to pass it off as the actual product, but I'll withhold any final judgements until I actually play the finished game.