OXM

Rumours of the death (that's to say, exhaustion) of current generation console technology have been greatly exaggerated, it seems. According to Epic's lead level designer Jim Brown and People Can Fly art director Waylon Brinck, Gears of War: Judgment represents another quantum leap in terms of graphics and performance - and Brinck is confident studios can squeeze further gains from the hardware in future.

"I'm trying to remember if it was the transition between Gears 1 and Gears 2 or the transition between Gears 2 and Gears 3, there was like a million different changes to Unreal Engine 3 to get to that point," Brown told OXM at a preview event. "When we first released Gears of War, the first one, people were like 'woah, they're pushing the Xbox to its limits, they're doing crazy things' - and every single time we've been able to step it up and find some corner of the 360 that no one was aware of and more areas for us to push."

"Right off the bat there were two pillars of the game that we had to support by optimising like crazy," Brinck said of Judgment. "We wanted this to be the most intense game ever. More enemies on screen, more action, more dense action, less of that sort of downtime in between. We had to get those enemies in there, we had to stream them fast."

The new storyline obliged a different, more demanding approach to the franchise's proven aesthetic, he explained. "Then also, the other Gears games were post apocalyptic. It was all about the destroyed beauty. In this game, it is the apocalypse. The beauty is being destroyed. There's a lot more fire, smoke, collapsing buildings, just a much more active environment. Once you go down that path, you've got to find some tricks.

"We're pushing way more enemies, way more particles, the environments are a lot more dense than on previous games. Our rendering engine, we've even added a few new features that allow us to do richer lighting, more dynamic lighting, darker darks, brighter brights.

"It's the most colourful Gears game ever, which feels weird to say. But I think it also has the richest darkest mood out of any Gears game since the first one. So yeah, it was all hands on deck optimising this thing, we squeezed a lot more out of it."

So, I asked him - no need for next generation hardware just yet, then? "Yeah, there'll always be something more we can figure out, do better."

The latest Judgment trailer is below. Do you agree? Epic's art director Chris Perna would have us believe that Gears of War's art style has been "hurt" by copycats - if you think it's "generic", in short, that's because the franchise is so heavily ripped off.

i call this bull both consoles are maxed out

Isn't this a bit old now? Anyway, the last graphic pushing game on 360 was Halo 4 wasn't it? PS3 is still pushing it with God of War Ascension, the Last of Us, and Beyond Two Souls. 360 games could push the hardware more, if there were any games being made to do so, and you aren't going to see it from multiplat games. So unless MS makes some more titles for 360, it is pretty done except for some cross gen titles utilizing next gen engines. But then those will just be down ports and not nearly as nice as their next gen versions.

Somebody still works at epic!!

this

Judgement sure looks like it's proving this to be true. Game looks gorgeous.

Thing is that the engines evolve with time and so you can do more stuff with same hardware. That is why very few games looked better in 2005 than say gears:j although there was hardware which could outperform a 360.

I think it's now a case "what's the point?".

The next gen consoles are just around the corner and PC multiplats are really showing the gap between the best current gen and how the next gen will start. They can keep pushing the limits of these consoles, investing huge amounts into optimising game engines but the improvements at this stage are going to be relatively minor and require reducing other effects to get the right visual "look". Or they can just make new games/engines without the proverbial power ceiling.

Both consoles aren't 'maxed out'.. But is the extra work to push the envelope anymore worth it ?  No.. Game developers will not spend alot of time working on optimizations..they have to pay more hours of labor - and this means " Is the game going to make back what we spent making it"?  Again..the answer is no.. This is exactly why Sony dumped CELL!  it cost too much and took longer to make quality games..

People are now anticipating new consoles and game sales will slack some.. Some are already saving their money up..

To me this is also why seemingly perceivable hardware differences in the Nextbox and PS4 won't matter much..both systems will offer enough power that games will improve in different perceivable  ways..such as artificial intelligence of games.. More personality.. More depth.. graphics will not leap..they will improve but games will improve in new ways..

Also since Nextbox, PS4 are basically just PC's... You'll see more PORTED games then ever between them and even from PC.. This is almost a guarantee game quality will be close.....

Even if it's not maxed out it doesn't matter, who cares if they can squeeze out another 20%/30% or even 40% more performance if the next xbox has a 1000% of the performance the 360 has.