Gears of War 12min Xboxyde

Wow, that new trailer looks fucking awesome.

 

You never played Rune?!

Edit: Damn it some one beat me to it. Carry on...

 

There is some stutter and I think I noticed tearing in the scene right before he dives into the building hole... or maybe its my machine...

 

Personal preference for the music aside, I like that they took a risk and went with it. I think it does give the whole video an overall sense of gravity, moreso than would have been with just sound effects and de facto 'action music'. I believe it will play well on TV commercials and in theaters and grab people's attention. Reminds me of the use of the 'soothing female voice' in fighter planes, its so out of place you have to notice it.

Was that a tear that falls into the water near the beginning of the trailer?

 

It starts to rain, so that's hard to tell...

I don't see stutters, and I think they would have cut that from the commercial anyway. There are some strange cam movements though.

 

I noticed the video stuttered on my machine as well the first time I played it. The second time it didn't happen though.

 

That was done to leave it to interpretation, its up to you whether its a tear from marcus as he studys the ruins around him (which works with the lyrics also) or its just starting to rain to signal a attack from the locust.

 

Poor guy? 1 Post, inaccurate flamebait posts hardly represent a "poor guy".

Oh really? Lets take a look at his points and see if they can all be factually conceded:

Lets define static environment. Most games, specifically FPS, have worlds where outside of blowing up windows (and sometimes not even that) the worlds are very static. In GOW we have seen buildings crash, the ground crumble and monsters crawl out, and most importantly a contextual cover system where various sorts of cover provide different amounts of protection--from nearly undestructible cover, to crumbling cover, to cover that is easily penetrated.

In the context of console games, specifically this genre, the environment are hardly "almost completely static" and provide not only some eye candy based environment changes but also environmental destruction that impacts gameplay. At this point in time you cannot ask for much more than that.

Oh come on, this is an UE3 strength and GOW has very, very good texture quality. If you are going to "factually conceded" this as you state, then the bottom line is you are not comparing GOW to console games at all.

The core models run in the 10k range. Overly normal mapped is subjective, but the detail tradeoff for finer detail is in favor of normals over the expense of true geometry and hence almost the entire industry leans this way. As for the relationship to blurry character detail (have not seen it in any 720p direct feed...) the only thing I can think of is LOD, but this impacts all games in regards to texture and mesh detail, and I would go on a limb and say GOW is on the better IQ end in regards to character detail.

1. Since the threaded renderer was added, can he show one example of frame drops due to firefights?

2. In the past the framedrops were actually not limited to firefights.

I see this point as a total fall back: Many games, in heavy action, drop framerate, so one size fit all accusation... right? Hardly. GOW during development, like many games, demonstrated framerate instability. Since they have stabilized the engine every media and press account I have read have noted the stable framerates.

This may or may not be true of the finished product, but the most recent available media doesn't substantiate this point.

The water (rain, puddles, drain and spouts, sewer flow, etc) is excellent, in addition to many other effects.

I guess you agree with him that the texture quality is poor and so forth.

Hardly. While it can reward party line thinking and posting, and at times punish for not following suit, I have a lot of negative posts/threads about all the companies and products. But in general, I will say this: People with higher rep reward independant and well thought out posting, regardless of positive IF you are fairly and honestly evaluating the topic. Now, there are posters who never, ever give me rep and there are some I get negative rep from on a near weekly basis lol.

But one purpose of the rep system is to identify trolls right off the bat... and in this case it worked perfectly. It is a red square, not a big deal. Easy enough to get ride of if so desired... and kind of irrelevant to begin with. And getting rep isn't hard... I was gone for ~ 6 months, all it takes is an objective tone, fair posting habits (even with preferences... everyone has 'em), and thoughtful/respectful replies. And in general you have to maintain such -- people see through phonies. Anyhow, I sense your defense of him is either you agree with his infactual points (which your comments indicate in places) and, as you noted, your dislike for rep. With all due respect, his post absolutely deserved neg rep because of the tone and errors. 1 post wonders are on a short leash on a technically oriented forum like B3D.

 

I really have to reply to that one - I guess you missed my second post:

So as you can see, the only 2 points he made that I partially agree with are the effects and the slightly low-poly characters. And I don't think those are infactual.

However, your (and scoobie's earlier) critique that I'm not really comparing it to any released console game is true, as (1)I don't play many FPS and (2) if I do so, I do it on my PC. Still (this is now directed at an earlier question by scooby), saying that the armor is more detailed than anything out now is IMHO wrong (unless you are referring to consoles only, there I wouldn't know) - I just played Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and the armor, while of course completely different in style, is at least equally detailed. Great game so far btw, try it!

 

I take it you havn't seen Crysis or Alan Wake then. Or UT2007 for that matter

 

Crysis and Alan Wake has such graphical details that it is hard to digest for some! Neverthless they are still to be released next year compared to GoW which is released next month if memory serves friend.

 

Tim Sweeney, GOW and MSAA

Like GRAW PC .... is true ?

 

Which begs the question, why would nvidia/ATI spend so much effort improving MSAA on G80/R600 if it can't be used for many next gen games, especially the all important UE3. So perhaps there is more to the new AA mode in G80 than most people are giving credit for.

UE3 + AA on G80? That would really be something!

 

Can you provide some screenshots because i have played the demo and i believe that the armor is not even close in detail with GoW

 

Hmm... Reality check! (just kidding!)

Heres some screens of Might and magic and well you be the judge (hint: check the armor curves!).

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/736/736193/img_3968551.html

EDIT: As you see GoW is superior to this game in polygon count, mapping, detail and much more.

 

But are the devs forced to use deffered rendering for the UE3 engine or can they change thoose parts to be compatible with AA but maybe less detailed lightning/effects?

 

I hope that you kidding because this is only the 1/5 of the detail that the Markus armor has. I supose that you havent seen other details of his armor aside from the breast part. Check again some hi def videos with gameplay and notice the back side of his armor. As i said Dark Mes. is nowhere close to this in detail.

 

I dont know if this already discussed ;

http://www.siliconera.com/index.php/2006/10/26/from-the-gears-of-war-hollywood-launch-party/

GOW , limit of Xbox360 ?

 

The trailer just looks amazing. If they can maintain a decent framerate, it puts almost anything else out there to shame. While some of the critism is valid, others I don't understand. Let's not use this game as a passive-aggressive proxy to put down MS or Epic. The game looks incredible and I'm glad to see something this good-loooking in the 360/PS3 generation. I don't even have a 360, but if GoW can play as well as it looks, it deserves all the hype it can get.

GoW puts every developer on notice. The other Unreal engine games, Mass Effect, Bioshock, etc. will all need to step up to match this. That's how good GoW looks.