Goosebumps? Fuck me thats callous m8, I went and phoned my mum and told her that I really dont tell her I love her as often as I ought to after marcus's eyes widened!
There we go, typicaly scots sarcasm layered with snide one-up-man-ship, wouldn't do to give people the wrong impression about me would it.
Well said Ror, and I think you might have touched on why games on the a whole have a tendency to turn off or fail to draw-in "the masses" and don't make them feel plugged into the game and feel emotion toward the characters and their surroundings, because the industry is immature in its story telling ability. I don't think the industry has failed so far, but more focused a little too heavy on one thing improving realism over interaction, game play and story telling. With a leap this big in realism and with tech that is this user friendly and widely used it will have a deep impact on many games you're right Ror. I think this leap will satisfy the need to push realism over the things mentioned above. With the tech side satisfied I think we can get down to rounding out the other half of games. If this is what is coming then we have a very very exciting future ahead of us all, developers and gamers alike and I can't wait to see where it goes.
I have tried to keep myself in the dark about this game and that isn't easy. Some things I hope GoW is:
- I hope I am put into a squad and end up caring and hating some or most of the members.
- I hope I get to explore the world around me during some slow points and I get rewarded not with "tokens, achievements, health or ammo" but with a better understanding of the grand story driving the game. Even if its small stuff like posters or trash in alley ways that help give clues to what life was like before the bugs came. Or something bigger like a hermits hovel that explains something. I guess that comes from the big part of me that always wanted to be a historian or archaeologist. Or maybe its that I'm working on mystery games, who knows. I know I want more than jumping, shooting and collecting 1000 gold coins.
- I hope that I come to understand the bugs and why they do what they are doing more than, its an ugly bug I must kill ugly bug things.
- I hope that at some point I am racing to get to a safe check point or base (some place I have already been to) where I know I can stock up, maybe pull some more troops and drive off whatever is chasing me. Only to find the base ransacked with only a few supplies, with this I have to hold the base till help comes. I hope that it isn't just me fighting the onslaught but I have to relay on teammates be it NPC or Human. I always loved those kinds of missions and I hope I get to play one with this game. Even if I don't its OK, because I'll just make it myself And that is why I am excited.
Sarcastic scotsman? Bollocks. You are more likely to find a chimpanzee in the presidency.
Personally, I thought going with that music was a great move, it was a good contrast to the big lads in chunky gear waving big guns aboot. Helped show there is more to it than knocking back a crate of red bull and screaming "BOOM HEADSHOT!" every few seconds.
Sadly a 360 is out of my financial reach for quite some time (hopefully I'll get a job in the near future and shorten that time). In the mean time, I'll continue sacrificing chavs to whatever omniscient being may be paying attention.
Uhm - in my opinion it was pretty much bread & butter except for the song choice.
Yes, it gives off an interesting vibe but I don't feel it'll make monumental waves in the industry and change how designers design or how trailers are made from here on out.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it and have watched it a few times, but c'mon.. it's JUST a song.
the trailer did a good job of getting everyone talking didnt it?
I enjoyed it, the games art direction premise was destroyed beauty right.. so I think it works just fine! The music is very recognizable by several generations of people.. the donnie darkos fans and Tears for fears gen. The track was also number 1 in the uk a few christmas ago right? Perhaps so in other countries? I think it will certainly make people sit up and watch when it appears on tv!
WIN ! I'm spoilt for choice of work mates to play this in co-op mode with
adam: When Sam Raimi did Spiderman, Peter Jackson did Lord of the rings they demonstrated how differently these genres could be approached and it brought forth more from others.
When Warren Ellis turned his hard to Iron Man, Grant Morrison to Xmen, Neil Gaiman to the Marvel character (1602 graphic) they demonstrated what could be done if things were approached from a different angle.
It's not just a song, I'm not saying its the song, or that the trailer as a whole will instantly change the world.
Look at it again though, watch the Team fortress 2 trailer also, both approach from different angles and comment on the experience instead of documenting gameplay in a series of clips with banging tunes.
Change is easier to push when there are examples, noone understands explanations on their own, they need to be demonstrated and once they are, they become ammunition for others seeking to push in other directions.
Bravo, Ror. Happy are we that you deigned to descend, however briefly, from Sarcastic Scot Mountain down among us mortals for a 'wee chat'.
Seriously though, I was surprised and more than a little impressed by the trailer. Soundless scene scored by contrasting piano-type music may not be a new thing at all for movie trailers, but a simple transplant to the world of videogames makes all the difference. Like you say, taking the same old thing and making it new again, if only by significant degrees.
Many decry Epic still working on the same basic formula (scifi marines take on), but I think it's clear that if Epic did decide to take off into completely foreign territory would likely court disaster.
Does anyone criticize Martin Scorsese for making "yet another crime movie" when the results are the likes of Goodfellas and now The Departed?
Not that I'm directly comparing Epic to the Scorsese of the games industry--and if it is, it's at the "Boxcar Bertha" stage of his filmography... here's hoping either GoW or the next one after is the equivalent of "Taxi Driver"
I think you have good reason to be proud of your involvement, Ror, since Epic (individually and collectively) has clearly stepped things up, refining and honing. Hawkprey's (and others') concepts are extremely consistent in execution and form language, the production artists are clearly on the top of their game; everything from the storytelling to the UI to the camera control etc. is several steps beyond what Epic's done in the past.
There may well be the same old genre tropes that we've all come to expect from the industry, but there's real potential in investing those same tropes in something approaching meaning, symbolism, possibly even (gasp) emotion. I'm very keen on seeing just to what degree GoW is able to advance on those grounds... oh, and I'd still like to shoot monsters, too.
In the words of Jean-Luc Godard, "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun." Games are just a little more complicated than that, but I think there's just as much room for expression and meaning in a game about space marines and bugs as there is in movies with girls and guns.
Here's to growing up.
(Oh yeah, and DAVID FINCHER is keen on UE3?? Coming from a man with such a sharp eye for visual direction, that's quite a compliment.)
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...here's hoping either GoW or the next one after is the equivalent of "Taxi Driver"
...I think there's just as much room for expression and meaning in a game about space marines and bugs as there is in movies with girls and guns.
Here's to growing up.
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Taxi Driver is one of my favorite movies, so I cringe a bit when you draw a comparison between it and Gears of War. I know you mean gaming equivalent, but I feel the gaming equivalent could be closer in terms of thematic content to the actual Taxi Driver (although I heard an actual Taxi Driver game is in the works, which disappoints me because it may only cheapen a classic film).
It's hard to feel that this music choice is any sort of indication that games are going to "grow up" when GoW looks like the paintings of Simon Bisley come to life. That is by no means a bad thing, but when you have power armor marines with bodybuilder physiques blazing machineguns with chainsaw attachments, you tend to turn your brain off in order to maximize enjoyment. "Meaning" doesn't really extend beyond questions like "Why are those monsters so ugly?", and "What does this gun do?". I'm not arguing that there isn't any room for meaningful expression, it's just that one would expect the game's story to be an adolescent power fantasy to match the visual style.
I think Epic was smart to sidestep the by-the-numbers heavy metal track for the trailer. The editing and camera angles were handled well. The aerial shot as the "gear" jogs down an alleyway with water gushing from a rain gutter is especially good, but I still think the audio/visual matchup was off. The juxtaposition created by video of a burly, scarred marine firing at a gigantic mutant arachnid and a soft piano track about a depressed, rejected teenager is more comical than emotionally stirring. That version of Mad World was recorded for the Donnie Darko OST, so I suspect they intended for the emotion of that movie to rub off here.
When I heard Mad World in the final sequence of Donnie Darko, I got chills. When I heard Mad World in the trailer for Gears of War, I laughed. I don't want to piss off the devs by saying that, but I might.
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Taxi Driver is one of my favorite movies, so I cringe a bit when you draw a comparison between it and Gears of War.
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Haha... sorry, my comparison was poorly drawn, that's not what I meant.
The analogy was intended to liken Scorsese' personal growth as a director between his early films and Taxi Driver, to the strides Epic has made as a developer from their earliest until the present. That on their own terms, GoW may represent a similar breakthrough as Taxi Driver did for Scorsese as a director; not to say that GoW is the Taxi Driver of gaming.
It's a rather facile analogy even so, and here are two reasons why it fails:
1.) Arguably, Epic has made far greater progress, compared to its very humble beginnings. If we're keeping with the director analogy, it's like a director starting with home movies (Jazz Jackrabbit) working his way up to manning a 200 million dollar Hollywood film (GoW).
2.) Given the industry's relative infancy, if we're comparing to film, it should also be compared to a film/director from film's infancy, like the 20s or 30s. A modern film director has nearly a hundred years of accumulated technique/experience/history to build from, even just starting out... standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.
But there again, games are in a funny position: in some ways, we're having to come up with all the vocabulary and techniques from scratch, because interactive storytelling just hasn't existed before. But in other ways, (ideally) we're building on everything we've learned about telling a story with film and other pre-existing media. But it's like making a movie where you can't control the lead actor, maybe just give him an array of lines, and you also have to build everything for every film, including people... Just some of the reasons why comparing games and film can be helpful in some ways and but ultimately unfruitful in others. They're highly related, but ultimately different beasts.
So yeah. I very much doubt GoW or any other game made soon will be the gaming equivalent of Taxi Driver... personally I think a widely hailed gaming "masterpiece" is coming, but it's still a few years off at least. There have been some great and moving games, but there are always qualifiers.
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but when you have power armor marines with bodybuilder physiques blazing machineguns with chainsaw attachments, you tend to turn your brain off in order to maximize enjoyment.
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But is that necessarily true--does it have to be, or is that just how it is so far? Think of the development between early pulp science fiction, and then nuanced, literate science fiction that came later, but often still dealt with the same subjects. Like the difference between Flash Gordon and Solaris.
Here comes another haphazard comparison to film. Just because you've got gangsters with guns on screen, do you automatically assume you're going to get a brainless shoot-out of a film? Granted, there have been countless of them made, and countless more to come... but the formula itself does not preclude greatness, it merely requires someone to configure it in such a way as to make something really new and exciting. For gangsters-with-guns, that someone was Quentin Tarantino, the film was Reservoir Dogs. Wouldn't you say that Reservoir Dogs is a film that inhabits much the same conceptual space with the same token elements of a brainless gangster film, but is altogether more than that?
If I may presume a little, I think that's the kind of thing that Ror is hinting at. Yes, someday we'll have mature and very nuanced sorts of games that won't have a single space marine or monster in them... but in the meantime, we're building on what we've got. We can take the same subjects that games have always been obsessed with, the same gameplay principles even, and begin to invest them with the kind of power and yes, meaning that have hitherto now been denied them--but are not intrinsically incapable of!
Not that GoW necessarily does any of that; you'll have to find someone else to play fanboy prophet But I think it's a safe bet that, barring major cockups, it's good deal closer to that goal than Epic's previous games, like Unreal.
I mean we've got to be making some progress, right? For as flawed and uneven as it was, it was pretty amazing that John "stories in games are like stories in a porno" Carmack and company actually made a game like Doom 3, that has dialogue, some semblance of pacing, an introduction, and so forth. The game may not have sustained it anywhere near as well as say HL2, but they're moving forward. THERE IS HOPE! At least that's what I tell myself before I go to sleep.
...Well I hope you're happy with what you made me do. I start out with a simple clarification, and write another threadkiller of a monologue.
I'm not really looking to the trailer to revolutionize the way games are made. And I'm not looking to the story or game play to do that either, I hope it happens but I won't hold my breath I just don't know enough about the game yet to say it will, thankfully Ror can. What I do see happening is a large burden removed from the dev cycle, which frees up resources for other things. If the story happens to help push the industry in a new direction then thats just gravy. BUT those resources can just as quickly dry up if the engine costs too much. Its a fine line between being the new widely used industry standard and being a neat game that had some novel features.
I don't know much about how the game plays out if it happens to be all the things I hope it will be then yes it will have a lasting effect on the industry. At the very least I hope the engine is adopted widely and allows games to grow in new directions.
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but when you have power armor marines with bodybuilder physiques blazing machineguns with chainsaw attachments, you tend to turn your brain off in order to maximize enjoyment.
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Its up to the person telling the story if the marine is ONLY a guy in power armor. I would like to see some character development, I can't wait for the day 3D FPS characters get to be more than 1D
Just to clarify my first post. I meant the game is a bit cliche. Big guys with guns on a chopper flown into battle, blasting monster in bulky armor that no one would actually be able to lift. It's a scene in many other games. Also I feel the song was just a mask and not actually the intent. It's very difficult to get emotionally attached to a character that has an 80 IQ and only speaks with 'yes sir' and shooting. Why not spin it around, and make the player character a kid or teenager survivor who has to use the environment/stealth and such to survive. Maybe have that kid picked up by the marine bad asses in a few levels and show he then became that big hulking marine. He could be sifting through the playground he was found at, or where his family died. THAT is attachment, and then the song fits.
The first trailers gave it more of a survival horror feeling in a sci-fi environment, and an interesting story. The newer trailers look more generic shoot-em-up with alien monsters to me. I'll save my judgment until I actually see it. I'm sure there are several versions of the trailers released to gather interest from multiple parties.
I found this particular trailer very effective effective in conveying emotion and hero vulnerability.
Previous trailers reeked of cliche lines and uninspired dialogue/narraration, i could almost predict what the next line will be.
I think at a certain point we need to realize that the audience might not be so naive and subtleties can do more about developing atmosphere and characters.
I think often times people design with an unsophisticated and dumbed down mindset thinking that the younger audience might not understand the subtleties that make an effective presentation for an older crowd. I dont think that is always the case, a young consumer might not have the language and understanding of the elements but it doesnt mean that he cant be impacted in a meaningful way.
It might not be the most sophisticated cinematic full of metaphors and whatnot, but it was a nice fresh departure of what we saw previously ..
A guy is fighting to save his homeworld from the Locust Horde after losing his family during emergence day. He wears big bulky armor, and carries big bulky guns to get his job done, and his compatriots are either "Yes sir" meatheads, gung-ho troopers, or nerdy army men.
Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers"
A guy is fighting to save his homeworld from the Bug Horde after losing his family. He wears big bulky armor, and carries big bulky guns to get his job done, and his compatriots are either "Yes sir" meatheads, gung-ho troopers, or nerdy army men.
Lets see if it lives up to the book that defined the genre. Otherwise, it looks beautiful, and Mad World in my opinion was perfect for the trailer. If you've been following the game, the trailer is pretty straightfoward as to what is happening, if you haven't then its the perfect "what is going on here?" hook. If it comes out on PC I'll definately be getting it. I might even just go and get the 360 Collectors Edition (even though I don't own, nor will be buying a 360) just for the collectible art book.
I think it's already been discussed in another thread before in relation to UT2k7 that companies like Epic need to be very careful from diverging from their true and tested genre, because they have such a recognizable artstyle and such a big fanbase.
Not to mention that aside from Halo, GOW is going to be Microsoft's baby that will account for a significant about of xbox sales, directly and indirectly. So when dealing with a console franchise game, there are limit within which you can experiment. Take an example from The legend of zelda, scrape off the 3d presentation and zelda plays pretty much just like any previous zelda game. Ocarine of time, arguiably the best console game of our time, or at least one of the best console adventure games, doesnt stray far from the true and tested formula.
I have made my peace with the fact that Gears of War is practically Unreal 3 with another name, peel off the name you'd be hardpressed to tell if it is in fact a whole new IP . It certainly isnt a horrible thing, but I kind of looked past all the other cinematic trailers because they really reeked of "seen that, done that".
Surprisingly this trailer was breathed new life into a game that sunk into the gray zone on my radar, not terribly exciting, but surely a great technological achievement. I know that this means nothing to what the game is actually going deliver, but as a promotional piece it was very strong.
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Surprisingly this trailer was breathed new life into a game that sunk into the gray zone on my radar, not terribly exciting, but surely a great technological achievement. I know that this means nothing to what the game is actually going deliver, but as a promotional piece it was very strong.
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Excellent point, Fusey. I expected GOW to be a good game, but not something that would command my attention beyond the usual next-gen FPS. Nothing I'd have bought an Xbox360 for. Now, I'm thinking different - just seeing a trailer that gets this far outside the box makes me believe that Epic really have created a game I need to play.
thanks guys, see you on Live (moosebot).... suckers!!
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No...Thank You and everybody over there at Epic. I'm gonna go nuts on this game. Those videos of multiplayer on Game Trailers were awesome. I will see you on the battlefield Moose. Ror you better play too.
I havent seen a game push the capabilities of the x360 like GOW besides fight night round 3...and FN3 doesnt have the gameplay restraints that GOW has.
It's a feat...congrats to Mike Buck, ror and all the other polycounters who worked hard on this game.
Something i noticed after watching the multi player vids at work, the layout of the multi player levels were overly simplistic. Both levels shown were just your standard three choke point maps. I'm hoping that those are the smallest and the most simplistic maps.
Good idea baking all the lighting info into the maps. The player will never know the difference, and it lets you put more detail into the player shadows. I also liked the use of the blood to cover up the replacement of players to gibs. Thats a very nice trick.
A guy is fighting to save his homeworld from the Bug Horde after losing his family. He wears big bulky armor, and carries big bulky guns to get his job done, and his compatriots are either "Yes sir" meatheads, gung-ho troopers, or nerdy army men.
Lets see if it lives up to the book that defined the genre.
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That has to be the least insightful description of Starship Troopers I've ever seen. You missed *everything* that elevates that book above the basic idea of "guys with guns fight bugs" to become a classic.
My guess is, so will Gears Of War. But I don't see that mattering much - video games have rarely so much as touched on the issues that Heinlein wrote about, but they're still worth playing.
omg, just got to see some of the MP vids and have to say it makes the wait even more painful. Gametrailers pulled them but said they would be back up today. I hope so since I've only seen 3 of them but damn they were sexy. Great job guys!!
Out today! If anybody wants to play some co-op, send me a message on live (gamertag: docrobby). I'll be online Wed night for sure as the wife is out of town
I'll be picking it up tomorrow. I get to play it at home while all of you have to work :P. Anyone who wants to be killed or play some co-op: let me know.
Gonna play the shit out of it until the movers pack all my stuff up.
oh and did you call in sick today doc rob?
(he saves all his sick days for when games he likes comes out! and now that he is not my boss he can't fire me for saying this! )
and now for the real question, when is the nda up an when can we see some asset pimps??!!!
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oh and did you call in sick today doc rob?
(he saves all his sick days for when games he likes comes out! and now that he is not my boss he can't fire me for saying this! )
and now for the real question, when is the nda up an when can we see some asset pimps??!!!
The physics are terrible, especially the ragdoll stuff. I guess you can thank PhysX for that. I think Epic would be better off writing their own physics engine.
I can't stand the blood. Such great art in the game and then you have extremely 'cartoony' blood effects.
Epic pulls off the illusion that you're destroying things really good, but in reality, almost nothing is destructable.
Other than that, I think the game is pretty cool. I'm going to enjoy it at least.
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Seems like you guys seriously cut down the texture resolution on everything.
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It's bound to happen. Especially on first gen games for any console. It's so hard to plan for certain specs when they keep changing on you and you don't have final hardware until only a couple months before system release. They seem to have taken out all the SSS stuff too.
True. But it's another one of those situations where you're led to believe one thing, and the final result isn't it.
I've been expecting visuals like this:
and in the end we got this:
Not that it's bad! It's the best looking 360 game I've seen. It's an amazing looking game. I'm just saying, it's not close to what we've been shown in screen shots and videos. Would have been nice to have been eased into it a little more
That would more than likely be due to the fact that they have been showing us the game running on a PC at full res, with settings cranked. Something the 360 might not be fully able to do. I pick up my copy tomorrow.
Replies
There we go, typicaly scots sarcasm layered with snide one-up-man-ship, wouldn't do to give people the wrong impression about me would it.
r.
I have tried to keep myself in the dark about this game and that isn't easy. Some things I hope GoW is:
- I hope I am put into a squad and end up caring and hating some or most of the members.
- I hope I get to explore the world around me during some slow points and I get rewarded not with "tokens, achievements, health or ammo" but with a better understanding of the grand story driving the game. Even if its small stuff like posters or trash in alley ways that help give clues to what life was like before the bugs came. Or something bigger like a hermits hovel that explains something. I guess that comes from the big part of me that always wanted to be a historian or archaeologist. Or maybe its that I'm working on mystery games, who knows. I know I want more than jumping, shooting and collecting 1000 gold coins.
- I hope that I come to understand the bugs and why they do what they are doing more than, its an ugly bug I must kill ugly bug things.
- I hope that at some point I am racing to get to a safe check point or base (some place I have already been to) where I know I can stock up, maybe pull some more troops and drive off whatever is chasing me. Only to find the base ransacked with only a few supplies, with this I have to hold the base till help comes. I hope that it isn't just me fighting the onslaught but I have to relay on teammates be it NPC or Human. I always loved those kinds of missions and I hope I get to play one with this game. Even if I don't its OK, because I'll just make it myself
Personally, I thought going with that music was a great move, it was a good contrast to the big lads in chunky gear waving big guns aboot. Helped show there is more to it than knocking back a crate of red bull and screaming "BOOM HEADSHOT!" every few seconds.
Sadly a 360 is out of my financial reach for quite some time (hopefully I'll get a job in the near future and shorten that time). In the mean time, I'll continue sacrificing chavs to whatever omniscient being may be paying attention.
Yes, it gives off an interesting vibe but I don't feel it'll make monumental waves in the industry and change how designers design or how trailers are made from here on out.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it and have watched it a few times, but c'mon.. it's JUST a song.
Good move on Epic's part.
I enjoyed it, the games art direction premise was destroyed beauty right.. so I think it works just fine! The music is very recognizable by several generations of people.. the donnie darkos fans and Tears for fears gen. The track was also number 1 in the uk a few christmas ago right? Perhaps so in other countries? I think it will certainly make people sit up and watch when it appears on tv!
WIN ! I'm spoilt for choice of work mates to play this in co-op mode with
When Warren Ellis turned his hard to Iron Man, Grant Morrison to Xmen, Neil Gaiman to the Marvel character (1602 graphic) they demonstrated what could be done if things were approached from a different angle.
It's not just a song, I'm not saying its the song, or that the trailer as a whole will instantly change the world.
Look at it again though, watch the Team fortress 2 trailer also, both approach from different angles and comment on the experience instead of documenting gameplay in a series of clips with banging tunes.
Change is easier to push when there are examples, noone understands explanations on their own, they need to be demonstrated and once they are, they become ammunition for others seeking to push in other directions.
r.
Seriously though, I was surprised and more than a little impressed by the trailer. Soundless scene scored by contrasting piano-type music may not be a new thing at all for movie trailers, but a simple transplant to the world of videogames makes all the difference. Like you say, taking the same old thing and making it new again, if only by significant degrees.
Many decry Epic still working on the same basic formula (scifi marines take on), but I think it's clear that if Epic did decide to take off into completely foreign territory would likely court disaster.
Does anyone criticize Martin Scorsese for making "yet another crime movie" when the results are the likes of Goodfellas and now The Departed?
Not that I'm directly comparing Epic to the Scorsese of the games industry--and if it is, it's at the "Boxcar Bertha" stage of his filmography... here's hoping either GoW or the next one after is the equivalent of "Taxi Driver"
I think you have good reason to be proud of your involvement, Ror, since Epic (individually and collectively) has clearly stepped things up, refining and honing. Hawkprey's (and others') concepts are extremely consistent in execution and form language, the production artists are clearly on the top of their game; everything from the storytelling to the UI to the camera control etc. is several steps beyond what Epic's done in the past.
There may well be the same old genre tropes that we've all come to expect from the industry, but there's real potential in investing those same tropes in something approaching meaning, symbolism, possibly even (gasp) emotion. I'm very keen on seeing just to what degree GoW is able to advance on those grounds... oh, and I'd still like to shoot monsters, too.
In the words of Jean-Luc Godard, "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun." Games are just a little more complicated than that, but I think there's just as much room for expression and meaning in a game about space marines and bugs as there is in movies with girls and guns.
Here's to growing up.
(Oh yeah, and DAVID FINCHER is keen on UE3?? Coming from a man with such a sharp eye for visual direction, that's quite a compliment.)
...here's hoping either GoW or the next one after is the equivalent of "Taxi Driver"
...I think there's just as much room for expression and meaning in a game about space marines and bugs as there is in movies with girls and guns.
Here's to growing up.
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Taxi Driver is one of my favorite movies, so I cringe a bit when you draw a comparison between it and Gears of War. I know you mean gaming equivalent, but I feel the gaming equivalent could be closer in terms of thematic content to the actual Taxi Driver (although I heard an actual Taxi Driver game is in the works, which disappoints me because it may only cheapen a classic film).
It's hard to feel that this music choice is any sort of indication that games are going to "grow up" when GoW looks like the paintings of Simon Bisley come to life. That is by no means a bad thing, but when you have power armor marines with bodybuilder physiques blazing machineguns with chainsaw attachments, you tend to turn your brain off in order to maximize enjoyment. "Meaning" doesn't really extend beyond questions like "Why are those monsters so ugly?", and "What does this gun do?". I'm not arguing that there isn't any room for meaningful expression, it's just that one would expect the game's story to be an adolescent power fantasy to match the visual style.
I think Epic was smart to sidestep the by-the-numbers heavy metal track for the trailer. The editing and camera angles were handled well. The aerial shot as the "gear" jogs down an alleyway with water gushing from a rain gutter is especially good, but I still think the audio/visual matchup was off. The juxtaposition created by video of a burly, scarred marine firing at a gigantic mutant arachnid and a soft piano track about a depressed, rejected teenager is more comical than emotionally stirring. That version of Mad World was recorded for the Donnie Darko OST, so I suspect they intended for the emotion of that movie to rub off here.
When I heard Mad World in the final sequence of Donnie Darko, I got chills. When I heard Mad World in the trailer for Gears of War, I laughed. I don't want to piss off the devs by saying that, but I might.
Anyway, I still want to play the game.
Taxi Driver is one of my favorite movies, so I cringe a bit when you draw a comparison between it and Gears of War.
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Haha... sorry, my comparison was poorly drawn, that's not what I meant.
The analogy was intended to liken Scorsese' personal growth as a director between his early films and Taxi Driver, to the strides Epic has made as a developer from their earliest until the present. That on their own terms, GoW may represent a similar breakthrough as Taxi Driver did for Scorsese as a director; not to say that GoW is the Taxi Driver of gaming.
It's a rather facile analogy even so, and here are two reasons why it fails:
1.) Arguably, Epic has made far greater progress, compared to its very humble beginnings. If we're keeping with the director analogy, it's like a director starting with home movies (Jazz Jackrabbit) working his way up to manning a 200 million dollar Hollywood film (GoW).
2.) Given the industry's relative infancy, if we're comparing to film, it should also be compared to a film/director from film's infancy, like the 20s or 30s. A modern film director has nearly a hundred years of accumulated technique/experience/history to build from, even just starting out... standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.
But there again, games are in a funny position: in some ways, we're having to come up with all the vocabulary and techniques from scratch, because interactive storytelling just hasn't existed before. But in other ways, (ideally) we're building on everything we've learned about telling a story with film and other pre-existing media. But it's like making a movie where you can't control the lead actor, maybe just give him an array of lines, and you also have to build everything for every film, including people... Just some of the reasons why comparing games and film can be helpful in some ways and but ultimately unfruitful in others. They're highly related, but ultimately different beasts.
So yeah. I very much doubt GoW or any other game made soon will be the gaming equivalent of Taxi Driver... personally I think a widely hailed gaming "masterpiece" is coming, but it's still a few years off at least. There have been some great and moving games, but there are always qualifiers.
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but when you have power armor marines with bodybuilder physiques blazing machineguns with chainsaw attachments, you tend to turn your brain off in order to maximize enjoyment.
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But is that necessarily true--does it have to be, or is that just how it is so far? Think of the development between early pulp science fiction, and then nuanced, literate science fiction that came later, but often still dealt with the same subjects. Like the difference between Flash Gordon and Solaris.
Here comes another haphazard comparison to film. Just because you've got gangsters with guns on screen, do you automatically assume you're going to get a brainless shoot-out of a film? Granted, there have been countless of them made, and countless more to come... but the formula itself does not preclude greatness, it merely requires someone to configure it in such a way as to make something really new and exciting. For gangsters-with-guns, that someone was Quentin Tarantino, the film was Reservoir Dogs. Wouldn't you say that Reservoir Dogs is a film that inhabits much the same conceptual space with the same token elements of a brainless gangster film, but is altogether more than that?
If I may presume a little, I think that's the kind of thing that Ror is hinting at. Yes, someday we'll have mature and very nuanced sorts of games that won't have a single space marine or monster in them... but in the meantime, we're building on what we've got. We can take the same subjects that games have always been obsessed with, the same gameplay principles even, and begin to invest them with the kind of power and yes, meaning that have hitherto now been denied them--but are not intrinsically incapable of!
Not that GoW necessarily does any of that; you'll have to find someone else to play fanboy prophet
I mean we've got to be making some progress, right? For as flawed and uneven as it was, it was pretty amazing that John "stories in games are like stories in a porno" Carmack and company actually made a game like Doom 3, that has dialogue, some semblance of pacing, an introduction, and so forth. The game may not have sustained it anywhere near as well as say HL2, but they're moving forward. THERE IS HOPE! At least that's what I tell myself before I go to sleep.
...Well I hope you're happy with what you made me do. I start out with a simple clarification, and write another threadkiller of a monologue.
I don't know much about how the game plays out if it happens to be all the things I hope it will be then yes it will have a lasting effect on the industry. At the very least I hope the engine is adopted widely and allows games to grow in new directions.
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but when you have power armor marines with bodybuilder physiques blazing machineguns with chainsaw attachments, you tend to turn your brain off in order to maximize enjoyment.
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Its up to the person telling the story if the marine is ONLY a guy in power armor. I would like to see some character development, I can't wait for the day 3D FPS characters get to be more than 1D
The first trailers gave it more of a survival horror feeling in a sci-fi environment, and an interesting story. The newer trailers look more generic shoot-em-up with alien monsters to me. I'll save my judgment until I actually see it. I'm sure there are several versions of the trailers released to gather interest from multiple parties.
Previous trailers reeked of cliche lines and uninspired dialogue/narraration, i could almost predict what the next line will be.
I think at a certain point we need to realize that the audience might not be so naive and subtleties can do more about developing atmosphere and characters.
I think often times people design with an unsophisticated and dumbed down mindset thinking that the younger audience might not understand the subtleties that make an effective presentation for an older crowd. I dont think that is always the case, a young consumer might not have the language and understanding of the elements but it doesnt mean that he cant be impacted in a meaningful way.
It might not be the most sophisticated cinematic full of metaphors and whatnot, but it was a nice fresh departure of what we saw previously ..
Good job Ror
IT's really thanks to Cliff , Jerry , Rod , MS and of course David Fincher's want to push outside of our comfort zone a little more.
r.
A guy is fighting to save his homeworld from the Locust Horde after losing his family during emergence day. He wears big bulky armor, and carries big bulky guns to get his job done, and his compatriots are either "Yes sir" meatheads, gung-ho troopers, or nerdy army men.
Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers"
A guy is fighting to save his homeworld from the Bug Horde after losing his family. He wears big bulky armor, and carries big bulky guns to get his job done, and his compatriots are either "Yes sir" meatheads, gung-ho troopers, or nerdy army men.
Lets see if it lives up to the book that defined the genre. Otherwise, it looks beautiful, and Mad World in my opinion was perfect for the trailer. If you've been following the game, the trailer is pretty straightfoward as to what is happening, if you haven't then its the perfect "what is going on here?" hook. If it comes out on PC I'll definately be getting it. I might even just go and get the 360 Collectors Edition (even though I don't own, nor will be buying a 360) just for the collectible art book.
Not to mention that aside from Halo, GOW is going to be Microsoft's baby that will account for a significant about of xbox sales, directly and indirectly. So when dealing with a console franchise game, there are limit within which you can experiment. Take an example from The legend of zelda, scrape off the 3d presentation and zelda plays pretty much just like any previous zelda game. Ocarine of time, arguiably the best console game of our time, or at least one of the best console adventure games, doesnt stray far from the true and tested formula.
I have made my peace with the fact that Gears of War is practically Unreal 3 with another name, peel off the name you'd be hardpressed to tell if it is in fact a whole new IP
Surprisingly this trailer was breathed new life into a game that sunk into the gray zone on my radar, not terribly exciting, but surely a great technological achievement. I know that this means nothing to what the game is actually going deliver, but as a promotional piece it was very strong.
Surprisingly this trailer was breathed new life into a game that sunk into the gray zone on my radar, not terribly exciting, but surely a great technological achievement. I know that this means nothing to what the game is actually going deliver, but as a promotional piece it was very strong.
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Excellent point, Fusey. I expected GOW to be a good game, but not something that would command my attention beyond the usual next-gen FPS. Nothing I'd have bought an Xbox360 for. Now, I'm thinking different - just seeing a trailer that gets this far outside the box makes me believe that Epic really have created a game I need to play.
thanks guys, see you on Live (moosebot).... suckers!!
thanks guys, see you on Live (moosebot).... suckers!!
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No...Thank You and everybody over there at Epic.
r.
It's a feat...congrats to Mike Buck, ror and all the other polycounters who worked hard on this game.
-R
Good idea baking all the lighting info into the maps. The player will never know the difference, and it lets you put more detail into the player shadows. I also liked the use of the blood to cover up the replacement of players to gibs. Thats a very nice trick.
Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers"
A guy is fighting to save his homeworld from the Bug Horde after losing his family. He wears big bulky armor, and carries big bulky guns to get his job done, and his compatriots are either "Yes sir" meatheads, gung-ho troopers, or nerdy army men.
Lets see if it lives up to the book that defined the genre.
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That has to be the least insightful description of Starship Troopers I've ever seen. You missed *everything* that elevates that book above the basic idea of "guys with guns fight bugs" to become a classic.
My guess is, so will Gears Of War. But I don't see that mattering much - video games have rarely so much as touched on the issues that Heinlein wrote about, but they're still worth playing.
Oh i will be, afterall I've only played the first couple of levels so I'm as excited as your average newb.
r.
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hahha they keep your butt in the dark ?
Spark
Gonna play the shit out of it until the movers pack all my stuff up.
Congratulations again to everyone who worked on it.
(he saves all his sick days for when games he likes comes out! and now that he is not my boss he can't fire me for saying this!
and now for the real question, when is the nda up an when can we see some asset pimps??!!!
oh and did you call in sick today doc rob?
(he saves all his sick days for when games he likes comes out! and now that he is not my boss he can't fire me for saying this!
and now for the real question, when is the nda up an when can we see some asset pimps??!!!
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i second that ..
ASSET PIMPS !! ASSET PIMPS !!
ah well, guess I'll have to wait a while. Hopefully they tune it up well enough so it doesnt feel like a port.
if only I could buy a pc version now...
ah well, guess I'll have to wait a while. Hopefully they tune it up well enough so it doesnt feel like a port.
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I wouldn't count on it though, not until a few years
Pretty cool. The collector's edition strategy guide comes with a really cool art book.
I can't stand the blood. Such great art in the game and then you have extremely 'cartoony' blood effects.
Epic pulls off the illusion that you're destroying things really good, but in reality, almost nothing is destructable.
Other than that, I think the game is pretty cool. I'm going to enjoy it at least.
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Seems like you guys seriously cut down the texture resolution on everything.
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It's bound to happen. Especially on first gen games for any console. It's so hard to plan for certain specs when they keep changing on you and you don't have final hardware until only a couple months before system release. They seem to have taken out all the SSS stuff too.
I've been expecting visuals like this:
and in the end we got this:
Not that it's bad! It's the best looking 360 game I've seen. It's an amazing looking game. I'm just saying, it's not close to what we've been shown in screen shots and videos. Would have been nice to have been eased into it a little more