is it just me or do the graphics look pretty dated in that video? it looks a lot like chronicles of riddick. 

Thought the same, necros. 

Thanks for the recommendations. Played 6 hours or so of Torchlight 2 on various train journeys this weekend, definitely helped to pass the time. The style of the game definitely suits the laptop (even though I had to turn graphics settings down and my craptop doesn't allow anti-aliasing on it JAGGY YUCK), lots of dicking around with inventories, simple left and right clicking (my tiny mouse is a bit annoying tho), and classicly addictive time-sink RPG bollox. As far as the game goes, it's nothing special, mostly standard stuff (although as an Engineer with a fucking big cannon and a pet bulldog, it does have some character), but good at what it does, and pretty much exactly the sort of thing I was after (albeit a bit cartoony). 

Yeah I thought the graphics looked a bit dated as well. Could be just the low quality trailer and the fact the whole thing is fast paced action scenes. Show some motherfucker scenery from the planet. It better not be all steel corridors.

Gearbox though, so must be good. 

it looks like i have five copies of dota 2 to give away, if anyone wants a copy post here, etc etc. 

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=138621

Says it all. 

Like typical xbox stuff. The graphics are a bit dated, but more than that the animation looks pretty crude..

The aliens in the films move like lightning fast mercury, here they look more like stop motion. The marines as well look pretty wooden.

The formula for the gameplay has been done quite a bit, (in the same series, and by others like Natural Selection)so should be pretty solid. 

a good trailer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRjNMQZ1qBk 

 

Was just about to post that Daz, damn right, it looks very cool, the whole style and theme is really intriguing. Even tho it looks scripted to fuckery....could just be the trailer tho. Either way....excited. 

the scriptedness is a major turn off for me also.
I have friends who love that kind of stuff, I just feel like a rat in some experiment. You know, like daily life... 

( then again, it certainly scores major points for breaking out of the typical FPS rut ) 

I quite liked the scripted sequence in the first one where that guy challenges to break your conditioning, but you don't.

Nicely illustrated a plot point, and without any quicktime in sight. 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-06-screenshots-of-next-gen-rpg-the-witcher-3

...kinda...

/me sets bloom from 250% to 10% 

those were nice... except the sheep look like they were from Hexen2 with some normal maps stuck onto them. 

That's not bloom, that's glare. 

I know it's passe to whine about bloom and lens flare but it's hard to resist in this case. Post processing has finally gone full retard, they've put anamorphic flares on a fantasy setting RPG. That town looks like a fucking Rihanna video.

I'd like to have an opinion on the engine / art assets but I literally can't see either. 

my OCD took over and I tried to approximate what those shots might look like if the grading was done by a rational human being...

boat
town
cool pub 

but the other two look better.

I quite liked Witcher 1 looks wise, havent seen 2 but this looks too candyesque. 

http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/440090/RTSs_arent_dying_Theyre_waiting

Two fallacies in this:

Firstly confuses graphical design with gameplay design and doesn't distinguish between the two for the main points.

Secondly fails to realise that beyond a certain point graphics are relatively irrelevant in RTSes because you can't play the game zoomed in enough to see them, nor slowly enough to see them. You need a broad viewpoint and quick playing speed to play the game. SC2's graphics are often excellent but there's no time to see their true quality when you're actually playing.

Future of RTS I dunno. Innovative gameplay ideas, strong themes, mixing with other genres. 

The article buys in completely with the technology arms race ideals - you splash out on brand new hardware and need games that push the new technology, to justify spending the money in the first place.

I like RTS games a lot, and the more macro format experimented with by Relic in DOW2 was pretty cool. I think they went overboard on the RPG stuff and storytelling - it was nice I suppose, but untenable as a long term venture.

Something like that but more stripped down (no FMV story, RPG mechanics made optional), with a campaign generator and, maybe, an editor, would be the mutts nuts. 

We have done everything we can within 2 GB of memory and 2 cores

That is literally the most ignorant thing I have ever read. 

In large-scale RTS, clarity is by far the most important aspect of graphics. Being able to identify a individual unit as realistic is hugely secondary to being able to identify which units are yours, what type they are, and what they're doing. Functionality is far more important to the art style than graphical realism.

For most cases, isometric (blah, axonometric) projection is better than having a vanishing point when most of the action takes place in a 2d plane. Sorry if that seems quaint, but it's true.

Planetary Annihilation is a great example of when a regular 3d perspective is the right choice. The combat is 3d, you can run all the way round a planet and launch bombs from the moon. 2d wouldn't work. Congrats to them on developing such a clear and attractive visual style also.

It really grinds my gears when MORE REALISTIC GRAFIXX and BIGGAR SCOPE AND MORE TANKS are accepted as non-retarded premises for making the best RTS. What interesting tactical depth do you uncover by making a player struggle to spin a thousand plates at once?

...and when will anyone learn that graphical realism should match the realism of the game behaviour and not just be increased because we can? No one complains when Minecraft isn't realistic, because it never oversells the complexity of the game world.

Of course that cube pig is going to act like a fucking idiot, and it's not jarring at all. They can mate (whilst being of undetermined gender) and babies appear, and you can hit them and they turn into pork chops, but if a guard doesn't recognise you in Skyrim and their dialog tree gets repetitive, it sucks because that guard looks 90% like an actual human. We used to hang out bro! Don't you remember when I teabagged that dragon? 

I do agree with MOAR TANKS!

Or preferably BIGGGER TANKS!

I'm a total gfx whore but RTS is one genre where you can't appreciate MOAR GFX per se....although you can appreciate certain aspects (worlds, themes, art direction)....and there will be aspects of graphic realism that can be appreciated at super-fast-blink-n-you-miss-it speeds...