This is the very question my friends and I were discussing after the Sony conference, lol.

Shadow Fall's city-panning moments are glorious, but when comparing the combat sequences, the CGI render from 2005 looks far more sophisticated graphically.

ShadowFall looks a lot better. The level of detail in the textures is much better not to mention the texture resolution. The effects on the skin looks a lot more realistic in ShadowFall too, not to mention the sheer number of objects on screen during explosions or the superior view distances. I suspect the texture filtering in ShadowFall is is also better because the textures in the KZ2 tech demo look slightly blurred to me. The most impressive thing in the KZ2 demo is the smoke, but overall the techniques they've used appear less advanced.

KZ actually looked better than the 2005 trailer except for the facial animations.

The diference is that Killzone Shadow Fall is a real gameplay. I love this franchise!!

I was looking at the textures but they don't look particularly impressive to me. There's less detail on screen than in ShadowFall and the texture quality varies greatly depending on what you're looking at. Some of the walls just look low res whilst the road looks slightly more impressive.

If you look at the character faces in the CGI, they're good but pastelly whereas the in ShadowFall it looks like they've carefully used shader effects to give a more realistic look.

What really does it for me though is the fact the CGI looks relatively empty whereas ShadowFall is very busy with numerous characters, debris, particles and detailed distant objects. For me, ShadowFall has already surpassed the tech demo, let alone the PC games that are now coming out.

Am I the only one who thinks that E3 2005 trailer looks pretty poor? Animations and framerate are flawless because it's a pre-rendered video, character models are also very detailed, but other than that, textures and effects seem pretty poor and are worse than they actually were in the final product.

Anyway, Shadow Fall, no contest.

The final game of KZ2 employed more over-the-top filters and shaders to try to look flashier, but part for part it fell short of the 2005 teaser; character models, geometry, textures, animations, explosions, and other particle effects were all better in the CGI trailer.

Honestly, it wasn't even the graphics that appealed to me so much in that teaser, it was the visceral, fluid feel of the combat; it was almost like being in an actual warzone. Not a single game of any platform or franchise I've played has managed to capture this feel yet in actual gameplay yet.

I agree with mos guys here... the KZ2 final version is close to the KZ2 CGI... in fact choose in one of other is more personal because there are some aspects better in KZ2 CGI and other aspects better in KZ2 retail... overall both are close in graphic quality.

Shadow Fall is in another world.

The Killzone gameplay looks like actual warzone for me... so imersive with everything happening at high speed in the screen.

You mean KZ2 or Shadowfall? Honestly, while they do a good job, they're just missing that dirty, messy chaos that made the 2005 teaser so spellbinding for me. They're too organized.