Now this is an UPGRADE. Judging by those little screens though.
Those were posted by solidsnakex on neogaf:
http://www.famitsu.com/game/coming/2006/09/08/104,1157683258,59730,0,0.html
Fine. From the color to the motion blur to the mud splatter to the sheer mayhem presented in those screenshots, for many (regular) people these shots would be considered near-render level. I just say that they look very nice; way beyond my expectation for this game and way closer to the render from last years e3 than I ever expected. I was one of the first people to hype the quality of the render way back when (and I'm a "xboy") and for now this looks good enough. Really. It does. Could they do more or do better? sure. And I expect it. The more and better they do, the closer we get to the render... if thats just my logic then...