New DOA4 Video

[Black Dragon37]

Nope - same team members.

 

[Hardknock]

I'm sorry, but the "it's an artistic desicion" is just a pathetic excuse by Itagaki. WATCH THE CG!! Does it look like the ingame models? NO. It's not artistic license. I'm honestly really sick of hearing that excuse, there is PLENTY of "anime-esque" or "Cartoonish" games coming out that are far better than DOA4. It's an excuse, plain and simple.

1) Team Ninja is being outright lazy.
2) Team Ninja doesn't have the resources to make the game better (be that talent, money, time, or experience... like lighting per say).
3) The XBox360 is much weaker than we think.

I can honestly only imagine it's one of those choices, and I'm pretty darn sure it isn't 1 or 3. Team Ninja has been known for nice looking games on only 2 occasions. Dreamcast and XBox. Why? Because they were by far the cleanest, easiest, and best supported architetchure in the industry (for Team Ninja's existence). I know, I'm not the first you'd point to as a fan of Team Ninja, but I'm being utterly honest and serious here. They are not the powerhouse of talent everyone thinks they are, and I'm not saying they suck, they just aren't the "we squeeze every drop of power from the hardware" kinda team. That's all just talk, and I've at times thought Itagaki talks the way he does is because he too knows this. He does his best to give his team's games as MUCH publicity as possible, and journalist and people LOVE talking about the jerk who said the crazy things and all everything surrounding him (we're doing it now). I'm betting the DOA4 engine is a patchworks job of the old DOAU engine with what revamps the time and ability the team had allowed (thus no lighting, since they really don't have much experience), but they can only do so much. Bah, you know I'm probably just ranting, so I'll just leave it at. I don't want to piss off anyone else, and I'm sure I have pissed off enough as it is. Sorry.

Umm they are the "squeeze every drop of power from the hardware" kinda team. DOA:U and Ninja Gaiden are the two best looking games last gen. Not only are they filled with technically advanced effects, environments and lighting. They both ran at 60 FRAMES PER SECOND. That is no small feat. Just because DOA4 is underwhelming is no reason to downplay this teams many accomplishments. DOA4 IMO is being rushed. Nothing more, nothing less, I'm sure they would have been able to do much more with the engine if they had more time. Hell DOA4 was running at 60fps at E3 this year!! The only game that could claim that(and at E3 they were only using X800s I think.) So to get the game out at launch and to add as much content as they wanted to, some sacrifices had to be made(namely the graphics). Not that they look bad, but one can't help to think that they could have done so much more. The main problems I have with the engine are:

1. Hair needs to be more realistic with less clipping.

2. Lighting needs to be better and self-shadowing would add much needed depth.

3. Have the characters age or change their hairstyles so that they don't look like the same characters we've been playing with for the past 5 years.

4. Environmental effects should be better. There needs to be more birds, butterflies and/or smoke flying around in some of those levels. Water needs to move more realistically. These little touches would add so much to the atmosphere.


Like I've stated earlier Team Ninja has been pressed for time. I'm quite sure these things will be upgraded in the engine for future games. Itagaki has said himself that the engine would be upgrade for "better skin textures" for DOA Xtreme Vollyball II. So don't think DOA4 is the epitome of what Team Ninja or Xbox 360 can do.

 

[AlNom]

Yeah, I agree about the hair/cloth physics. With such a closed environment and all that CPU power, I would hope they could manage to get it look natural for subsequent games.

With the shadowing, I would have thought it would be relatively trivial to add self shadowing using either stencil or shadow buffers. Plus, there is probably enough RAM to use high resolution shadow maps for the characters, so the self shadows don't look so aliased.

3. Have the characters age or change their hairstyles so that they don't look like the same characters we've been playing with for the past 5 years.

But it's their art design choice that they don't age. In the story, is the DOA tournament annual or is it more frequent? If it is the latter, that could explain the age thing easily.

 

[AlNom]

Nope - same team members.

That's not true

1UP: I know you've got separate teams for DOA and Ninja Gaiden. So is development full speed ahead on NG2 already?

TI: The bulk of our forces are obviously being directed to Dead or Alive 4 right now. I think this is the best result for Team NINJA fans.

1UP: So it's not the Dead or Alive, or Ninja Gaiden team working on it.

TI: It's the Third Fleet.

1UP: Since they're young, will you become more involved, since it carries the Team NINJA brand I'm sure you're going to want everything to come out right.

TI: I'm always going to be present on one of those three fleets. So if I'm not there, they'll continue sailing on with what they need to do. It's best to let the young guys, to a certain extent, do what they want to do. As I mentioned before, just like when the original Ninja Gaiden wrapped up, at any time I can step in and wipe their asses for them. So it's important that they're able to do things by themselves.