- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Poll: How do you like the idea of effects under the ghosts? [closed]
| They're great as they are:
65%
|
|
(34 Votes)
|
| The effects shown at E3 could be be better:
4%
|
|
(2 Votes)
|
| Found nothing wrong with having no effects at all:
12%
|
|
(6 Votes)
|
| Don't care about this topic, but I love puppies:
19%
|
|
(10 Votes)
|
Total Votes: 52
I'll be the first to admit that there was more about the Halo 2 demo at this year's E3 that I found disappointing rather than encouraging. Before this thread is replied to by fanatics who would like to stomp on this trivial post with self-contradictory cries of "the graphics are great" and "graphics don't affect gameplay" let me post some quotes that have been posted before on this board (recently, in fact).
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Don't tell me that ultimately, graphics don't matter. Graphics do matter, or people wouldn't buy Playstation 2's or Gamecubes. Those systems primarily improve upon their predecessors graphically, and that's it. The Xbox has no predecessor, yet touted online play from the beginning, a hard drive for easier data management, and in conjunction with that point, ease of development in general. That dease of development fosters better graphics, so why would developers taqke advantage of those graphical possibilites if graphics did not matter? Why doesn't Halo 2 use the same engine as the first Halo, why does it bother to redo graphcis at all? WHY THEN, DID THE LOOK OF THE PLSAMA SWORD CHANGE? Graphics do much to immerse a gamer, or distract him, or even disgust him. I know people would like to believe that they are hardcore and that if they were offered, say, Resident Evil in its original Playstation form or the new Gamecube form, that they'd just flip a coin since "graphics don't matter," but I think that the reality is that humans are human, and appreciate artistic quality, and would rather play the same game in its more beautiful or more fitting form. HOWEVER, that is not the point I am trying to make about the plasma sword's look, technically or even artistically. It's about the feeling the player gets wielding the sword, the experience--the adrenaline rush of picking that bad boy up. That is why I personally feel that I personally would be personally more pumped up by picking up a glowing rippling blade that lookds like it cuts through the very core of your livelihood than I personally would with a solid crystalline edge. Personally. Please, disagreement is fine and expected, but don't spin this into a graphics-whore-or-not argument. That's just petty and reflects a poor contrasting argumentative standpoint.
Tangent: gameplay and gameplay mechanics are two different things. The former is a combination of the latter, sound, graphics, and design. It is a definition of experience, and while I'm sure the people who would like to tell themselves that they are the manifestation of the misguided term "hardcore" would like to believe that that is not how the experience SHOULD be definied; that it should equal the latter and nothing more or less, I feel that the difference exists, and is analogous to say, the rules of a poker game and the actual experience of the game, which changes based on the setting in which the game takes place, the players involved, whether or not drinks are served, etc. To say nothing of how each player's individual input (yes, game experiences are defined by more than the developer's inputs, at least half the game is the player's way to receiving the game, which, for fanboys, is already predetermined half the time) affects the end-result experience as well.
And please don't talk to me about how this demo is not the final version. I know that--people who have to play that tune like a broken record clearly believe they know how Bungie is going to build the game when they do not. Rhetoric about Bungie's credentials are redundant--everyone's at least played Halo here, and we wouldn't care that the game has some criticism going for it if we didn't care about the game in the first place. And we wouldn't care about the game if we didn't already expect it to be good. Finally, we would not expect the game to be good if we did not respect the developer--exhalt it, even.
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Yeah, okay, those were my words from another topic--I reposted them not just as a disclaimer for this topic but also because it didn't seem lik emany people read my admittedly long shmill.
So other than the new plasma sword look, the recycled animations, and the removal of reflective visors, has anyone else found the addition of the little sparkling effects under the ghosts a little tacky? While I personally liked the way the ghosts hovered without effects in the first game (really gives off that kind of mysterious advanced technological edge the Covenant have over humanity feeling), I am not saying I cannot live with effects as well. I personally just find them kind of cheesy--like when a movie has been barreling through a list of events without that much plot, and all of a sudden some explanation has to be narrated to the audience to explain things that no one asked for an explanation for to begin with. Those effects remind me of the stuff I saw when I played Everquest, and I think that's the core of my awkward feelings towards them--those effects look like something out of a western magical fairy tale, not a science fiction novel.
For the fanatics, please try to avoid reading between lines that aren't there. Thanks.