The character models in God of War III are the same during the game and cutscenes. It's not like Uncharted 2 that has pre-recorded cutscenes with better models than the ones in-game. There are like 4 or 5 pre-recorded cutscenes in God of War III, you can notice it because of the compression (why the hell are they so compressed if it's a Blu-Ray? :S).

You probably can't notice it because the camera is too far away from Kratos while you play, but there are some sections in which you can get close to the cammera and see the character model closely.

Try getting close to the camera in the section where the topless lady with the chains is... you know... after kicking the dogs through the portal to get the elevator down. I took a pic of that place with my cellphone but the quality is crap.

You can get close to the camera and see all details that way. And remember, the cutscenes (apart from the 4/5 prerecorded ones) in God of War III are all running in real time, they're not pre-rendered/pre-recorded like in Uncharted 2 and the character models are the same. I thought it was obvious. For example, the second picture I posted in the previous post is from a cutscene that ends with a close up to Kratos. Right when it ends, you can see how Kratos was standing more erected during the animation that was part of the cutscene and then bends a little bit because the animation for the cutscene ended and the camera starts moving away from Kratos. It's all realtime, not pre-recorded.

This is the cutscene I gave you as an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtumkW_ITOI

I can't see the dog kicking puzzle in this clip though lol.

Okay, so Kratos is rendered in real time even in cut-scenes. But he still doesn't look just as good as that dragon in the UE3 demo from 2004 in my opinion. It's pretty close though.

Also the lighting in the UE3 demo is superb. Look how realistically the light projects on that Gears of war grunt at around 4:15 in the video and how it's casting proper soft shadows.

And the physics are great too.

About Uncharted 2, it has superb textures that are indeed at the level of the demo, but there isn't any scene with buildings in the game that is as impressive and detailed as the opening of the UE3 demo. Some scenes in Uncharted 2 are pretty close though, but not right there. Also, Uncharted has clearly worse lighting & shadows than the UE3 demo and it doesn't have nearly as impressive physics either.

All in all I'd say that the best looking modern games often have individual elements that are on par with the UE3 demo but no game has several or all of those high quality elements at the same time, except for maybe Crysis.

Yeah, I agree. They have individual stuff that are on par or not seen in the UE3 demo but they don't have everything shown in the demo at the same time in the same game. Let's hope the latest tech demo is easily achievable on next gen consoles and that some games surpass it :P

EDIT: And sorry I didn't reply earlier =P

I forgive you lol

If they wanna make next gen really powerful they need to wait until 2013 or something to release new hardware. Then this demo, and more, would be possible.

Yeah, if they go with Nvidia, look at the performance per watt they'll get in 2013.

http://www.madboxpc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/gtc-600x315.png

That's awesome... if consoles release in 2012 and Nvidia launches Maxwell the year after, consoles will be outdated super fast. But if they launch in 2013 with that, then it'll be awesome. A video card based in Maxwell will outperform a GTX 580 with way less power consumption. Imagine a videocard that consumes the same as the GTX 580 based on Maxwell... imagine the performance, lol.

Yes!! I forgot about that chart. If Next gen gets GPUs based on Maxwell, wow!

But that chart looks just too good, it really cannot realistically be just as fast as they show, but obviously they're confident it will be  a huge step up from current GPUs such as Fermi.

I can't wait!

Wait those screens look like any current gen PS3 game. I definitely am not ready for the next gen if this is what we have to look forward to. Nothing at all special. Not very many people I talk to are ready for the next gen. It feels like this gen is just hitting it's peak. Stronger consoles means stronger life cycle. Still have many games to look forward to in 2011 and beyond. 

Wow, looks great!  Excieted, but I hope its still a couple of years away, so the tech price comes down, and we get Avatar quality graphics in real time!

Seriously, those pictures looked amazing.

New video released:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cvNJPvXook&feature=player_embedded