Sonic Next-Gen - First Look from IGN

[SegaSonic]

And is it true that the Wii will include both a regular controller pad and that TV remote type thing?.

[James McGeachie]

There's a regular controller "shell" being made for Wii that you stick the remote into, but there's not a separate regular controller no. The shell wont even ship with the system apparently, which isn't surprising really since the system is entirely about the remote.

About the Wii's power, the numbers would suggest it was around Xbox level but I think the architecture is a fair bit better, or something. I wont try to pretend I know what I'm talking about with specs but developers have said it's possible they'll be able to squeeze around twice the potential of Gamecube out of it. Of course it's still massively underpowered compared to the other 2 systems, but as long as most developers build exclusives for the Wii from the ground up and don't lazily port titles over from current gen (which is sadly happening right now) there should still be a lot of great looking titles.

I don't expect the Wii could handle Sonic the Hedgehog, at least not in its current form, but I still expect as long as they put a fair amount of work into it that Sonic Wii will still be graphically impressive, possibly at best it might not be too far below how this game will look running in standard def.

[Zeta]

Exactly. We're at the graphics horizon. Graphics are going to reach a point where they can only look so good. We're nearly at photorealism now. You can't have "better" graphics than that.

[Popcorn]

Exactly. We're at the graphics horizon. Graphics are going to reach a point where they can only look so good. We're nearly at photorealism now. You can't have "better" graphics than that.

Actually, I think we're still a long way from photorealism. Even MGS4, which looks incredible, is very easily distinguishable from, well, real-life. Graphics will continue to get much better for a few decades yet.

[Segaholic2]

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

[Zeta]

Actually, I think we're still a long way from photorealism. Even MGS4, which looks incredible, is very easily distinguishable from, well, real-life. Graphics will continue to get much better for a few decades yet.

Really? Looking at some screenshots for next gen, the only way I can tell it's not photographis is really the shading, which is ever so slightly off. But I think that has more to do with a failure on the artist's part than anything else.

[Baba O'Reily]

The more that the line is blurred between reality and animation, the more people will complain about 'fantasy violence'.

Nobody cares about a stick figure hitting another stick figure in the head, but when a fully realized, 3D figure draws blood from another man by breaking his jaw and knocking his teeth out, a moral crisis occurs because impressionable children could be watching.

[b_boult]

Actually, I think we're still a long way from photorealism. Even MGS4, which looks incredible, is very easily distinguishable from, well, real-life. Graphics will continue to get much better for a few decades yet.

Really? Looking at some screenshots for next gen, the only way I can tell it's not photographis is really the shading, which is ever so slightly off. But I think that has more to do with a failure on the artist's part than anything else.

Well it seems pretty obvious theyre not real but there's a bigger point here. You're never going to get true photo realism. Development time would be ridiculous and I can't forsee any system that could run a "real" real-time environment. You're talking unlimited operations per second over and indefinate period of time and no home console could ever do that, all hardware has limits. Next gen will be about as far as it can noticably improve I think.

[Segaholic2]

You people are all ridiculously short-sighted in terms of technology and its potential to improve.

[chriscaffee_not_logged_in]

MGS4 is noticeably fake. The face is pretty good, but the suit definitely is not there yet. Clothing seems to be the biggest thing in terms of not looking right in most games. It doesn't matter whether it is armor or a skirt, it just doesn't look right in motion.

[Kishi]

Exactly. We're at the graphics horizon. Graphics are going to reach a point where they can only look so good. We're nearly at photorealism now. You can't have "better" graphics than that.

Actually, I think we're still a long way from photorealism. Even MGS4, which looks incredible, is very easily distinguishable from, well, real-life. Graphics will continue to get much better for a few decades yet.

Have you seen the <a href="http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/694/6 ... ml">Crytek videos</a>? I'd say we're well on our way.

[Light Speed]

I've heard humans have an ability to distinguish between real humans and CGI. If someone made a really badass looking bear, we might not be able to tell, but supposedly if they made a human just as badass we would still be able to tell. I don't really know if that is true or not, a friend mentioned it to me when we were talking about stuff.

[chriscaffee]

Found this on 4chan, could be a shop or could be our mysterious new hedgehog character. No source was given.

[Light Speed]

That totally looks photoshopped to me. The logo alone should tell you that. I imagine if they were going to write blue over blue legs they would outline it in yellow or something.

[chriscaffee]

I meant the character. Obviously the box is fake.

[Popcorn]

I meant the character. Obviously the box is fake.

That image (without all the mocked-up boxart garbage) has been floating around for a day or two now. It's already been posted and heavily discussed on this very forum.

[Popcorn]

Have you seen the <a href="http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/694/6 ... ml">Crytek videos</a>? I'd say we're well on our way.

I'd agree with you, but I think there are other factors we're missing. There are some very simple and very, very subtle things that even the greatest technology and most talented animators will be unable to fully capture for a while yet... for example, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within looks pretty photo-realistic at first sight, but on the other hand, it's also very easy to tell that it's artificial. I think the answer is in all kinds of vague and intangible things-- lighting, animation and so on.

I think it's an interesting issue. I was wondering a while ago why it is that we are still able to emote with games and movies and stuff even when, as is often the case, the 'seams' are very obvious-- the illusion of the sustained reality is shattered, through some bad clipping or a drooping boom mic, and yet we are still able to take whatever it is we're watching completely seriously. In some cases, anyway... in others, as with some dated games and movies, our disbelief requires stronger elastic to sustain it. And yet we would once have accepted anything we were shown. I don't know.

An idea I keep coming back to is the idea of 'puppetry'. Why do we take puppets seriously? (Or did once, anyway.) Take Final Fantasy 7-- criticisms of the game aside (and I, infamously, have many), an awful lot of people are nonetheless able to strongly emote with its computer-generated cast even though they bear only a passing resemblance to a real human being. Despite the fact that we're very, very conscious of what we're watching not being real, or perhaps because of it, we're somehow able to look past its unreality and enjoy it anyway.

I've heard humans have an ability to distinguish between real humans and CGI. If someone made a really badass looking bear, we might not be able to tell, but supposedly if they made a human just as badass we would still be able to tell. I don't really know if that is true or not, a friend mentioned it to me when we were talking about stuff.

This is related to my point. I was exploring the issue and ended up reading up about what's called the Uncanny Valley phenomenon-- whereby, the more human-like something gets, the creepier it seems to be to our sensibilities, until it finally becomes 'acceptably' human and we suddenly don't have an issue with it anymore. I think it accounts for why I found Alyx, Half-Life 2's much-loved heroine, to be curiously unlikeable.

[Esrever]

I think the reason people can empathisize with the FF7 characters is the same reason people see a face in a wall socket, or feel sorry for the penguins in that March of the Pengiuns movie, or think of Kermit as a real person even though he has ping pong balls for eyes. Human beings are incredibly self-obsessed. We see ourselves in everything. That's why we're able to understand cartoons, even ones drawn with stick figures! (Scott Mccloud talks about this in a cool book called Understanding Comics.) We instinctively humanize everything.

But then you have the Uncanny Valley! if something starts to get TOO close to reality, you're relying less on interpretation and more on observation. That's when you start to see all the imperfections and it becomes really creepy to watch. Like the Polar Express! The characters aren't representations of people... they basically ARE people. Only... people who aren't quite right. People with totally souless faces. Brrrr!

That's why Pixar used more stylized humans for the Incredibles. It's not that they CAN'T make nearly photo-realistic humans... it's that nearly photo-realistic humans look awful. Starting in this gen of software, we are going to be seeing a lot of really freaky looking people in our videogames.

[chriscaffee]

I meant the character. Obviously the box is fake.

That image (without all the mocked-up boxart garbage) has been floating around for a day or two now. It's already been posted and heavily discussed on this very forum.

So it has. That's what I get for staying offline for two days. All I bothered doing was checking this topic, figuring, that any updates would be posted here, sort of like that really big Shadow the Hedgehog topic that was made. Now it looks like I have some reading to do.

[SegaSonic]

The people in advent children looked cool, but too cool to be true if you know what I mean.

[Zarathustra]

Rescuing a princess?

Having a nemesis?

Forests, castles and city landscapes?

Hmm, let me think it for a moment...

OH, YES! Could it be something like...



this?

Time to get to other franchises (fuck, I just gave a terrible idea to Konami...)
Aside from these things, I think the game can be so good with the customizable thang ala DMC (cause it's also an action game), multiple branching ways, people moving from one place to the other and blah blah blah... hey, why don't set the new adventure fields as "Shenmue fields"?

On a side note, the Wii is the most controversial shit I saw in almost my entire life, not even "The Fly" could make such noise... is a fucking strange and utterly uncomfortable -supposedly- revolutionary concept on gaming.

EDIT: 'twas a broken link or sumthing, replaced with another pic.
EDIT 2: These guys of Fortune City seemingly don't want their contents to be linked to. It's Sparkster

[SegaSonic]

The picture aint showing.

[Light Speed]

Unless it is supposed to be a FortuneCity webhosting image.

[DackAttac]

Or the Sparkster cover, as the URL would lead you to believe.

Yeah, the plot's lame. Let's not forget, that as minimalistic and perfectly as it was told in Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, that their stories all focused on the Death Egg, which was pretty much just a Star Wars parody that got used to the point of turning it serious. Let's hope they make lame-ass shit and make... lame-ass shit... margaritas. And let's hope they're mixed better than my metaphors.

[big_smile]

That's why we're able to understand cartoons, even ones drawn with stick figures! (Scott Mccloud talks about this in a cool book called Understanding Comics.) We instinctively humanize everything.

Janet Murray makes a similar argument in her equally fascinating book, Hamlet on the Holodeck. She suggests that when engaging with fiction, we don’t suspend disbelief, but instead ‘actively create belief’.

If we see something that interests us, we make the effort to bring it life by filling in the blanks that prevent it from being ‘real’. This process limits the cognitive facilities we have for being aware that what we see isn’t real.

In some cases, anyway... in others, as with some dated games and movies, our disbelief requires stronger elastic to sustain it. And yet we would once have accepted anything we were shown. I don't know.

Schema theory suggests we develop mental lists of rules (or schemas) to speed up our understanding of what we see. For example, our film schema tells us that it is okay to laugh when a person is hurt in a comedy.

It’s quite possible that we have schemas to speed up our 'creation of belief'. In the past, this schema would have been fairly large and allowed us to emotionally engage with virtually anything shown to us. As technology developed, and the amount of imagination required to bring things to life declined, this schema became less encompassing, making it harder to engage with older forms of media. Of course, if enough time is spent with a text, the lost schema can be re-acquired. This would explain why old games can still be as captivating today as they were in the past, even though their appearance is initially repulsive.

^_^