2006-03-05 05:12:58

My eyes are so good I could tell that one of those guys shot a gun at one point or another before that screenshot was taken.

2006-03-05 08:50:44

REAL TIME DEMO Description
Randy Pitchford started things off with a tech demo.
We see an untextured 88, and the camera rolls around it.
We also see an untextured German tank. There are some nice details.
Then we see the #13 on a green background. The camera zooms out, and we see that it’s a helmet, and in the helmet is our old buddy, Baker. The character models are outstanding. I should say that again for emphasis. The character models are the best seen anywhere to this date. Remember that Alfred Molina as Doc Ock demo from Sony during E3? It’s that quality, at least. It’s a very realistic face, and we see things like glassy eyes with tear ducts, and light through the ears and skin, etc.

Real quote:
Quote:
“BIA 3 is the best looking video game ever, period. Yes, Gears of War, Killzone, and Metal Gear Solid 4 all look good, but BIA 3 looks better. There’s a realism here that you really have to see to believe, and the characters seem so real it’s almost scary.”


Here’s where the fun starts. The video ! By the way, this was all done real time, with the in game engine.

It starts and the camera is behind Baker, and it sort of zooms into his FPS POV.
We see him running down an alley in a war torn European City. As he looks down a street, we see the city burning and destroyed in the distance, and it is very, very impressive with a cool sunset.
He runs, and we see he has a BAR. The weapon models are really nice. The running animations are good.
He turns from the alley to a cobblestone street. And there is an upturned car and something like a crate. He sees a German in a store window. He fires on him, but some more Germans are there, and Baker has to run for his life, and he runs to take cover behind the box. He does this cool little animation to take cover and he starts firing on the Germans.
He turns and yells “Get over there.” And we see his team for the first time. The team looks good. He turns back to fire again, but he starts taking heavy fire.
We see that the box that Baker is behind is taking fire, and it’s not holding up. We see lighting coming through individual bullet holes, and it’s wearing away pretty quickly, wood splinters everywhere (nice particle effects). Baker knows he has to move. He does a little combat step-and-turn manuver to the nearby car, and looks back to see his box pretty much reduced to rubble by the enemy fire. That was really cool to see, and the destructible cover looks to change the gameplay (Shoot through walls, fences, doors, etc).
We see him yell “Put some fire on ‘em” and we look over to see Hartsock and the fire team shuffle to get behind a car.
They all begin firing, and man, it is INTENSE. The glass in the shop windows doesn’t just “explode shatter” like we are used to. You see each bullet make contact with the window, and it shatters realistically. This looked really nice. I can’t explain it. Think of a next gen BLACK, perhaps).
Almost immediately, the Germans are firing back from within the store, Baker iron-sites aims and we can see them trying to maneuver position inside the store. There was something different here about the aiming, but I can’t put my finger on it. More realistic maybe?
The firefight is so intense, I can’t really describe it. I’ve never been in a war, but I have to imagine it was something like this. Baker knows something must be done…



Trailer Description ( human behavior )


- During this intensity, the sound sort of drops out a bit, and we see in everything sort of being destroyed around Baker and Hartsock. Baker looks into Hartsock’s eyes, and says something to the effect of “Well, they have to be flanked.” In this moment, you see Hartsock look back at Baker, and I swear, it’s almost photo realistic. We see Hartsock’s grimace sort of turn into a “I know what I have to do.” And just by the looks they exchange, you can tell they are friends that have fought together, and would die for one another. I’m telling you there was real emotion in their faces. Hartsock sort of gives a knowing nod and a grin before the grimace returns.
The sound pops back in, and in a dramatic moment (think maybe the “Freedom” moment from Braveheart) Baker swings his weapon over the car and he sort of rises to provide covering fire for his friend. It was movie-like.
We see Hartsock running really fast. The animations look great. And the transition from the run into a “back against the wall” was good. He shimmies around the corner (cool move), and he’s beside the store with the Germans now. We see him ready his Thompson, and he sort of leans out (with one arm) without sticking his body in the line of fire (cool) and fires a clip into the two Germans that were at the window. Death animations (if they’re even animations, it may be all physics related) look really good.
We then see him sling his used tommy over his shoulder (nice animation), and it was awesome to see that when he put his weapon away, it stayed on his body. It didn’t disappear like we’re used to. He grabbed a grenade from his vest, and we actually see him flick the pin.
He tosses the grenade at a glass window (there were many on the building). The grenade actually breaks through the glass, and this changes the trajectory of the grenade. It’s almost like he used it to his advantage like a backboard in basketball.
- This was cool. The soldier was actually “smart” enough not to just stand there and take the explosion, or try to pick the grenade up and throw it back. He hauls butt out of there. We see the last German trying to run away, and he almost makes it to the back window, but the explosion goes off. Wow. (Think of the Killzone trailer explosions). The glass is blown away realistically, and the German flies through the window about 10-12 feet, hits the sidewalk, and rolls out onto the street, dead (nice physics). It looked SO great.
That’s pretty much the end of the trailer. In all it was about 2 minutes, but it felt like 30 seconds because it was happening SO fast. Again, in every review for this game, you are going to see the word intense about 30 times.

General observations:

- Lighting looked great. There was real time specular lighting and self-shadowing. It helped portray that realism. Also, there was other things that added to this that were really subtle, like some “bleaching” in brighter areas, and if you looked directly at the sun and looked away, everything seemed a little darker. You can think of Half-Life 2 High Dynamic Range lighting that hasn’t been released yet (it’s coming in the expansion pack).

- Sound was phenomenal. It was one of the keys to the immersion. BIA series is known for good sound, and that looks to continue. Quote (“The guns sound ‘big.’ There’s a certain rumble that’s intimidating.”). You can hear bullets whizzing by, and each strike made a different sound. Different surfaces reacted differently.

- Death animations was AMAZING. When you kill someone, they don’t just die. They react to EACH bullet strike. When you see it for yourself, you will be impressed. The physics really helped make this real.

- AI in BIA has been strong, and that looks to continue as well.

- I’ve already mentioned how great the character models look, but I’ll say it again. These are the best that have ever been shown. The game looks great. Each brick looks individually modeled, and each cobblestone. It looks great.

- I don’t think there was a film grain effect, but there was something cinematic going on. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s got a certain darkness to it. Remember that scene in Saving Private Ryan where the wall separating the Americans and Germans falls down and everyone is going crazy firing and it is total chaos? That’s the only thing I can think of that compares to this. AWESOME.

2006-03-05 08:57:41

360 reigns supreme!

2006-03-05 09:14:21

Is that demo description from the oxm magazine or something?

2006-03-05 10:04:45

That description does not mention the 360. I only mention this because BiA3 is officially announced also for the PS3. I would assume they would be the same of course, maybe Has can add some clarification of the source.

---
I am too poor to own a 360... therefor I play with paper statistics. The results of my indepth scientific anaylisis determined the most important benchmark is Pi. As in The Ring of Light.

2006-03-05 10:05:28

wow, that sounds very promising indeed!

2006-03-05 10:13:02

its from Teamxbox but cesar (mod of txb) removed the link where he got it from because it contained scans. ill try and get the link

2006-03-05 10:16:59

It does sound awesome. I only briefly played the BiA games, but I really liked them and am tired of the CoD/MoH style games. Seeing as BF2 is more arcade on the consoles (the PC is more teamwork... arcady still, but not as bad as the console versions) the BiA series is getting to be very appealing. If it is anything like described then count me in.

---
I am too poor to own a 360... therefor I play with paper statistics. The results of my indepth scientific anaylisis determined the most important benchmark is Pi. As in The Ring of Light.

2006-03-05 10:23:08

*link deleted*
heres the link

2006-03-05 10:42:52

Reasons for why it must've been running on a 360? Sony is really tight butt with the ps3 currently so I doubt something would go down without them having something to do with it so I'm guessing it was the 360, but since the game is coming to both then I guess its no big deal, but my money is on the 360 version to look better :)

If they are doing this with the unreal 3 engine imagine what sakaguchi could do with lost odyssey.

2006-03-05 10:48:32 In reply to dec0y (2006-03-05 03:57:32)

---
Dirty South UK

2006-03-05 11:10:59

Well.... I'd be careful about dissing frame city killer the graphics will be getting a MAJOR update said so by the developers themselves :)

Doubt it'll be comparable to Brothers in Arms though.

Now you guys see how much graphics play into the types of games we are interested in? If brothers in arms didn't look really good nobody would probably give it a chance sure fans of the previous series probably would, but would not be on the level of excitement as gears of war or something like that.

2006-03-05 14:00:03 In reply to Optimusv2 (2006-03-05 10:42:52)

Frame City Killer is never going to be a good looking game..unless they like..start over.

I'm suprised you haven't pointed out how much better this will look on a real Xbox 360, over a really bad scan, Optimismv2 ;)

From what we can see this does look awsome..those "The Darkness" pics released the other day (while also horrible scans) also looked quite nice. Never did get into this series, but I'll certainly give this a shot..

2006-03-05 18:27:59

2006-03-05 18:58:08 In reply to Jollipop (2006-03-05 18:27:59)

[quote=Jollipop]

2006-03-05 19:17:28 In reply to Optimusv2 (2006-03-05 10:42:52)

When do people grow up, and stop the cr*ap about what version looks better

2006-03-05 19:23:43

I'm really looking forward to see this on the E3, I hope they show alot of gameplay footage...instead of a trailer

2006-03-05 22:11:44 In reply to Freniger (2006-03-05 18:58:08)

2006-03-05 22:17:44 In reply to easynow (2006-03-05 22:11:44)

Well said....
Every one here is a fanboy really. (Man I hate that word)
If some one spends over £200 on an xbox 360 then they are gonna defend it and persaude them self and others that it was the right choice.

---
Dirty South UK

2006-03-05 22:51:51

If it weren't for the fanboys Nintendo would be dead, and with no fans there wouldent be competition between the consoles. what would lead to crappy games because the devolopers wont need to push thereselve to the limit to win the fans.

2006-03-05 23:24:39

Well, there two kinds of fanboys in my book.

See it as the football fans;

-The first kind support they're team all the way, but are not to shallow to admit when the other team played an better match...
-The second kind are the hooligans, they actually don't really care about the match, but care more about the hassle surrounding it...

2006-03-05 23:30:10 In reply to Martijn_ (2006-03-05 22:51:51)

---
I am too poor to own a 360... therefor I play with paper statistics. The results of my indepth scientific anaylisis determined the most important benchmark is Pi. As in The Ring of Light.

2006-03-05 23:42:54 In reply to easynow (2006-03-05 22:11:44)

2006-03-06 01:58:09

Stop being little girls over a simple statement I say which will look better based on my opinion you don't like it you can go bitch and moan about it to somebody else. "OMG HE'S a fanboy..."

I don't boldy support the 360 while ignoring anything good coming from the ps3 and say it looks bad even when it doesn't like most people do.

For example you have people that are die hard ps3 fans say there isn't a single thing impressive about ghost recon, gears of war, blue dragon, elder scrolls is only good because it was made for the pc and pc games are good, but console games suck so the only way to get a good game is by riding off of the pc. Strangly that console sucks pc games good rule doesn't apply to the ps3.

Hell the people here accusing of this or that person being a fanboy have said far more fanboyish statements than I have so don't attempt to play innocent now ;)

Also in response to the how good it will look on 360 to scan comment hell this is like one of the FIRST times i've seen some good magazine scans that didn't make the game look like complete and utter crap.

2006-03-06 02:57:23 In reply to Optimusv2 (2006-03-06 01:58:09)