S_Hole on 20/12/2003 at 01:57

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they look bad because it's reaching the boundary
there's a boundary between non-realistic and photorealistic images
if you happen to hit just into that boundary, it looks annoying as it's neither
games so far have been very clearly non-photorealistic
hands made of three triangles do not look very convincing
but games like this and doom3 look much more like real
at a brief glance
when you look at it slightly longer, you see how obviously it is not.. and it bugs your brain
same with movies
if a film is very bad quality or black and white or whatever, you would think it's meant that way
but if it's good quality with slight distortions it's annoying
or music with background hiss

that's the "it's all in your mind explanation"
then there's the technical one :-)
-all lights are linear falloff.. looks silly
-all brush corners are sharp as knife
probably hard to fix with unreal engine and it's portals, but still would be nice
-all shadows are SHARP
this is especially annoying in thief, as all torches should cast very SOFT shadows (sharpness of shadows in reality come from size of light source and it's contrast to the surface ambient light)
they should have hired spliter cell's coders
splinter cell renderer was truly amazing
-character default pose animation look awful
they look exactly what they are; 3d models - which they absolutely should try not to look
-ambient level in most dx2 levels is also set far too high, leaving no actual shadows but only 'slightly darker areas'
i will cry if they do this for pc thief
-bumpmaps do way too much specular lighting
-there's probably more, but i'm getting bored already
besides, it can still bring an amazing thief experience, so i won't complain if it does

Jason Moyer on 21/12/2003 at 01:12

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If X-BOX is the reason, then why does Splinter Cell do all of the things he listed so much better?

Granted, I think DX:IW is a superior game on a number of levels, but from a purely graphical standpoint, Splinter Cell on the XBOX blows it away.

Jason

heywood on 21/12/2003 at 15:52

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S_Hole commented about the ambient level being high. This is one case where I agree the decision might have been driven by the X-Box. Most televisions have less dynamic range than the average computer monitor, and many tend to be placed in well-lit rooms. If DX:IW was lit like DX1, they would have needed different maps for the PC and X-Box versions otherwise a lot of X-Box players wouldn't be able to see anything in the dark areas.

I also agree with S_Hole that the character poses and animations aren't the greatest. The character models themselves look good to me, but their acting is lifeless & wooden (until they die - then it just becomes comical). Their animators need to take lessons from NOLF and NOLF2.

Absynthe on 30/12/2003 at 03:37

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Uhm, is there an interview to back this up??

Warren has always said that post Deus-Ex games would be developed for both PC and console. The economics of the situation demanded it if his team was to get the time and money to make the kind of games they wanted.

As for the changes in the screenshots, its obvious the design team favored their dynamic lighting and bump mapping over textures. However, the higher fill rate needed to handle these kind of things comes at a cost that forced a reducation in the number of polygons. So far, I've only seen Doom3 handle this kind of stuff and still push high polygon scenes but then it has the benefits of having been written by John Carmack.

The Huntsman on 2/1/2004 at 23:34

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That is exactly what they did. However, in order to make this work, the game has to run on the lowest common denominator -- the Xbox.

So in effect, the game was developed for Xbox.