Hands-on with Revolution in the next GameInformer - Ubisoft's Red Steel, aka "Katana"

[Ooh-videogames]

I didn't post in this thread before because my opinion was based on the crappy cellphone pictures, but with these scans you can clearly see its current-gen in geometry and detail, in stills anyway. Im motion it could be a whirlwind of actiivty and special effects. Lack of shadows, low geometry...these firmly place it in the "not next-gen" pile. Of course not all next-gen games look quite next-gen either...

Well they do have 6 months of development time left, so we really can't view these scans or cell pics as what the final build will look like.

 

[StefanS]

The graphics do look very "Flipper II." Polygon counts aren't insane (Fat Man's tie is painted on ), there's no normal mapping on the characters (who are low-poly enough to need it), and some of the particles look "meh." However, I'm not seeing blatant Gouraud artifacts on anyone, and the lighting varies between "whoa, DX7" and "very nice!" Kinda reminds me of Half-Life 2 or Prince of Persia in that regard. But they do look nice. People forget that current-gen graphics can look very beautiful, the same way comic books and line drawings can look beautiful without looking overly realistic. I do hope the final result doesn't have that awful 6:6:6:6 color that we saw in a handful of Cube games.

I didn't notice the tie, but the persian rugs, who are definitely only a texture. The character certainly could use some more polygons as well. etc. From the looks of it the game seems to be a lot HL2ish. I'd like to see some more normal-mapping and bump-mapping though. So far it really looks like Hollywood doesn't have programmable vertex shaders. But these scans could be misleading.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

I didn't notice the tie, but the persian rugs, who are definitely only a texture. The character certainly could use some more polygons as well. etc. From the looks of it the game seems to be a lot HL2ish. I'd like to see some more normal-mapping and bump-mapping though. So far it really looks like Hollywood doesn't have programmable vertex shaders. But these scans could be misleading.

6 months

 

[StefanS]

6 months

So what? 6 months magically adds normal mapping, bump mapping, boosts poly-counts and makes it look like the infamous Killzone E3 trailer? Unless, you want to have a substantial discussion, you should refrain from making one-liners. Link
Don't expect wonders from 6 months more development. We all are aware of the fact that this is work in progress. We're commentating on what we see at the moment, not what're going to see. Judging from the status-quo I guess we can safely agree that Red Steel will not look like Gears of War. I am hoping for a more HL2 like look, though.

 

[Guden Oden]

So far it really looks like Hollywood doesn't have programmable vertex shaders. But these scans could be misleading.

How could you possibly try and determine wether any piece of hardware has programmable vertex shaders or not from a still picture, or even from moving images?

It's not as if they jump out and scream "here I am!" at you, you know!

 

[sfried]

Judging from the status-quo I guess we can safely agree that Red Steel will not look like Gears of War. I am hoping for a more HL2 like look, though.

I'm not going to put any expectatons on what "visual style" it should go for, instead I am expectng them to pull off the AI, the table pushing, and all the other features they think about implementing and hope they give it a "Goldeneye" polish (i.e. level balance, something that the original Perfect Dark had severely lacked).

 

[pc999]

I don't think I have sufficient privillages yet. Sorry.

I didnt remember that .

So what? 6 months magically adds normal mapping, bump mapping, boosts poly-counts and makes it look like the infamous Killzone E3 trailer?

Some games like PDZ and GRAW had put a lot of tech in their games in less time.

They are supossed to already have near final kits, but would they be able to use it by now, I mean if the new CPU is Gekko based but does have a VMX unit, or it is a dual core would they be able to use it in so little time since they get the new dev kits not long ago? The same can be said about any new feature on the GPU (althought they are very easy to implement there is a lot of things to have in consideration to that).

But it is interesting, it seems that the CPU is doing much more work than Gekko ever did, althought the GPU seems just a bit better than flipper, I would hope that, at least, they improved both a lot (just to give a idea, like if hollywood has the X1900 version of the flipper/9700 and the Broadway has the Core Duo version of the P3).

Anyway if in gfx it can play at high qualitity (ie GOOD textures, 60FPS, AA-AF..) upgraded engines from what run on GC/XB (ie something like UE 2.7, RE1.5, GR2.5, D3 1.5...) I will be happy althought in the CPU one is never happy so we can have a lot of features in every game from good animation, AI, voice...)

If they give me that I would be a happy Rev gamer.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Still, its all about the gameplay, and a few stills aren't going to enlighten us on that subject.

Though intervies with the team will, and I was a bit disappointed with what I read. Sword combat is gesture beased, rather than actually being what you do with the sword. Well, that could be that an approximate motion of the sword executes a similar but far more refined game motion, which is okay. But having to acquire new sword motions from trainers, there may be a case where you have a baddy at a point where realistically you could doff 'em on the head, but the game engine won't let you because you haven't a sword attack like that yet. In essence, instead of pressing button combos to do fancy moves, XXO for a Double Frozen Yogurt Chop, you do a series of arm movements, to the right, around and down, which isn't quite the sort of interactivity I was hoping for. The gun afterall is point and shoot, so why not the sword, point and hit?

 

[sfried]

Though intervies with the team will, and I was a bit disappointed with what I read. Sword combat is gesture beased, rather than actually being what you do with the sword. Well, that could be that an approximate motion of the sword executes a similar but far more refined game motion, which is okay. But having to acquire new sword motions from trainers, there may be a case where you have a baddy at a point where realistically you could doff 'em on the head, but the game engine won't let you because you haven't a sword attack like that yet. In essence, instead of pressing button combos to do fancy moves, XXO for a Double Frozen Yogurt Chop, you do a series of arm movements, to the right, around and down, which isn't quite the sort of interactivity I was hoping for. The gun afterall is point and shoot, so why not the sword, point and hit?

I guess it's dependent on how you flail your arms in which direction, similar if you would actually try to "pistol-whip" with the controller. We still have yet to see if these gestures can be "modified" by changing the angle.

 

[pc999]

Though intervies with the team will, and I was a bit disappointed with what I read. Sword combat is gesture beased, rather than actually being what you do with the sword. Well, that could be that an approximate motion of the sword executes a similar but far more refined game motion, which is okay. But having to acquire new sword motions from trainers, there may be a case where you have a baddy at a point where realistically you could doff 'em on the head, but the game engine won't let you because you haven't a sword attack like that yet. In essence, instead of pressing button combos to do fancy moves, XXO for a Double Frozen Yogurt Chop, you do a series of arm movements, to the right, around and down, which isn't quite the sort of interactivity I was hoping for. The gun afterall is point and shoot, so why not the sword, point and hit?

Are you sure? This is defeating the purpose of the controler itself , I thought that the "combos" (like making a X and whatever more in the air) would activate movements that arent possible (even with remote, like a big jump and powerfull attack) or something more inhuman (15 strickes in 1/2 second or the like).

This can make someone serious think twice about the game and the console (dependent why this is this way, it is because it is a gameplay decision or is something else limiting it, if the second it is time frame, experience (with the controler), software or hadware???)

I need more info and more info in more games .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Are you sure? This is defeating the purpose of the controler itself , I thought that the "combos" (like making a X and whatever more in the air) would activate movements that arent possible (even with remote, like a big jump and powerfull attack) or something more inhuman (15 strickes in 1/2 second or the like).

Possibly. I may have read it wrong. Though they didn't say 'the sword follows your movements' or anything similar, and only mentioned the combos. If pushing forward on the controller moves objects, that's not going to work with a sword lunge.

This can make someone serious think twice about the game and the console (dependent why this is this way.

Way too premature to be making system wide judgements. It could be just the way this game does things. Though it'd be nice to see a game with 1:1 interactions, there's no reason yet to get worried that won't happen.

 

[pc999]

Way too premature to be making system wide judgements. It could be just the way this game does things. Though it'd be nice to see a game with 1:1 interactions, there's no reason yet to get worried that won't happen.

Yes I agree, I even try to show that with the rest of the quote.

 

[pc999]

BTW

http://www.redsteelgame.com/

 

[Ooh-videogames]

So what? 6 months magically adds normal mapping, bump mapping, boosts poly-counts and makes it look like the infamous Killzone E3 trailer? Unless, you want to have a substantial discussion, you should refrain from making one-liners. Link
Don't expect wonders from 6 months more development. We all are aware of the fact that this is work in progress. We're commentating on what we see at the moment, not what're going to see. Judging from the status-quo I guess we can safely agree that Red Steel will not look like Gears of War. I am hoping for a more HL2 like look, though.

I'm not expecting Gears of Wars either, but most post seem to reflect a mindset that what has been shown is final graphic wise.

I don't know about magic, but adding bump maps or normal maps isn't going to take six months.

 

[sfried]

I don't know about magic, but adding bump maps or normal maps isn't going to take six months.

I wouldn't mind if normal maps are used sparcely or cleaverly; I just don't want the graphic style to be dependent on it.

 

[sfried]

I wouldn't mind if normal maps are used sparcely or cleaverly; I just don't want the graphic style to be dependent on it.

I wouldn't mind if normal maps are used sparcely or cleaverly; I just don't want the graphic style to be dependent on it.

 

[fbomber]

So what? 6 months magically adds normal mapping, bump mapping, boosts poly-counts and makes it look like the infamous Killzone E3 trailer? Unless, you want to have a substantial discussion, you should refrain from making one-liners. Link
Don't expect wonders from 6 months more development. We all are aware of the fact that this is work in progress. We're commentating on what we see at the moment, not what're going to see. Judging from the status-quo I guess we can safely agree that Red Steel will not look like Gears of War. I am hoping for a more HL2 like look, though.

Since when Nintendo promised X360 graphics level? I remember they stating the opposite.

 

[pc999]

Since when Nintendo promised X360 graphics level? I remember they stating the opposite.

Actually they said that at 480p, one will have hard time seeing the diference or that would look almost the same, or something like.

As I have said it still can be the case that they only had, at the best one month, with the near final SDKs, before that it still GC SDKs and it may be the case that actual HW can do (for whatever reason) much more than GC, althought I wouldnt put my hopes high.

 

[OtakingGX]

In one of the pics, you can see some couch stuffing blowing out of the bulet impact place. Looks like this game will have more particle effects than current gen.

My only qualm is lighting. Is there any way they could implement the "skin shading" technique seen in Oblivion, or at least get rid of some of the hard looking shadows? That might put an edge to the graphics depeartment and place it well within "you're there" next-gen.

I think the hard looking shadows are the graphical style. Kind of like an Ang Lee film. I personally like the art style. Hyper-realistic games are great and all, but if I wanted to see something real I don't need to spend $50 on it.

 

[NANOTEC]

This game is a must buy launch title for me.

It's kind of a mixture of Shenmue and Stranglehold except with a REAL controller.

Has widescreen support been confirmed? Graphics are better than I thought if those screenshots are ingame. It can only get better from here.