Alan Wake Official "touched up screens" statements and other FAQ

[NightAntilli]

dahuman said:

NightAntilli said:

@Dahuman: *Sigh* I'll say it again. You can not say UC is more technically advanced than Alan Wake because their focus lies elsewhere. UC is linear corridor shooter with scripted events, extremely linear paths, and very bright artistic design for visual appeal. AW is a bit more open world, is much darker, focuses on atmosphere and mood, and uses LOTS of lights and shadows everywhere in dark environments for visual appeal. The lighting in AW is more advanced than any console game out there (don't gimme that KZ2 lighting crap with their pre-calculated light mapping), KZ2 probably has the best particle effects (smoke and the like) and UC2 probably has the best animations etc. There's no such thing as a game that's technically better than any other game on every front.

As for your video, it compares two things in exactly the same game.. You can not do that for games that have different goals and aspects. Don't throw "technical" words on me to appear smart. Won't work.

Now can we drop this?

Uh, I don't even have KZ2 on my list as anywhere being impressive so I don't know where you got that from, I'm mainly a PC gamer and I don't think the KZ2 engine is impressive in anyway, it's not about systems or exclusives for me, it's about what the engine is able to do, UC2 runs on Naughty Dog Engine 2.0 with Havok on the side, so it's a multipurpose engine not limited to shooters whereas AW's engine is literally called "Alan Wake Engine" +Havok on the side, on top of that, UC2 isn't as corridor as you might think, the draw distance in that game is actually much further than the 1.2-1.3 mile distance in AW. You can check here- http://forum.alanwake.com/showthread.php?t=1216

The open world aspect of AW has been dropped ever since they canned the PC version, so it's not as open world as you might think anymore. Again, this doesn't mean that AW won't be as good of a game as UC2, I'm just comparing the engine themselves based on what I've seen in UC2 and from the AW forum+some AW preview videos based on how much optimization they were able to do on the console hardwares they are running on.

Are we even on the same topic?

Guess the answer is "no we can't drop it". Fine then.

 

First, no you didn't say anything about KZ2, but I know someone would eventually, since people somehow think that lighting is amazing, while it really isn't.

2nd, so now we're basing how technically advanced a game is on how the engine is named? And what makes you think the "Alan Wake engine" could not be a multi-purpose engine? 

3rd, UC2 is a corridor shooter period. Being able to see the horizon doesn't mean it's not a corridor shooter. It might look huge, but it doesn't count because you can't actually go to the background locations to see the details. Not to mention the "fixed" camera (though it's some awesome camera work..). Whether you're climbing, or you're going through a town or whatever, it remains a linear game. As for the draw distance, you're being fooled. There isn't any complex tessellated geometry or terrain in that game. The popular "huge draw distance" part with the mountains, pretty much uses simple geometry (low poly meshes) more than anything else. Dynamic environments are pretty much non-existent, especially far away (some exceptions of course..). 
Alan Wake isn't trying to be open-world like GTA or Oblivion obviously. Same as how Bungie is calling Reach a sandbox game now. It's not like GTA, but it's not a small path that you're forced to follow either. From what we've seen of AW, the level of exploration is much greater, you'll rarely be going through pure corridor levels. It's a big environment. Being in a bigger environment forces you to compromise in the graphics department. So you can talk all you want about "I look at what the engine can do", but you refuse to look at limitations and priorities and refer to "what I see on screen determines what's more advanced or not, and gameplay doesn't matter", and that's completely false. Gameplay will ALWAYS have an influence on how far you can go with graphics.