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[HonkyPunch]

I had this game. To make it even run I had to spend an entire day with the INI files.
By the time I was done the shadows were 8-bit, (seriously it looked like an atari version of my character being projected. Awesome.) The textures were 128x128 (Aliens look hardcore awesome like this) etc. Damn. It looked cooler that way IMO.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

After the World Trade Center they'd never make a game that actually let you destroy buildings in first person in NYC.  I mean, people media in the US get more upset excited about that than they do about breasts.  Ok, actually I think think the real problem is that people actually do get upset about that stuff.  My dad still starts crying when he sees the WTC footage.

Of course if they aren't that worried about pissing off the alarmist aspects of te US public who'll all scream "Terrorist Training Sim!" at the top of their lungs then it really would be awesome if that actually worked.  But again it's a console game, so it can't.  At least not with any real detail.  They could easily have the buildings shatter and/or vanish in a horribly unrealistic fashion like they do in Earth Defense Force or RAD.

[Vattic]

It looks like CryEngine 3 is going to be sold as a commercial game making software. I've just watched a few videos demonstrating some fairly impressive things it can do.

A nice 1080p tech demo.

There are plenty on youtube but also some fakes searching for CryEngine 3 got me better results than Crysis 2.

Unfortunately it's hard to tell how these things will actually play and how often certain features will be used but it's interesting nonetheless. I'd be mostly happy if city buildings had destructible façades but still stayed standing, that way you'd be able to put a hole in the side of one with a tank at least. I don't know how they'd manage having the ability to level any building.

[Thexor]

Unfortunately it's hard to tell how these things will actually play and how often certain features will be used but it's interesting nonetheless. I'd be mostly happy if city buildings had destructible façades but still stayed standing, that way you'd be able to put a hole in the side of one with a tank at least. I don't know how they'd manage having the ability to level any building.

Having just played (and loved) BF:BC2, I can say that it's certainly possible to level buildings with today's game engine technology. 



But yeah, the question isn't "will this feature be possible?", it's "will this feature be fun?". I've had a blast with destructible buildings in BF:BC2, but I'm curious as to how the game would play out in a city like NY, where 99% of the terrain features would be (destructible) buildings. Not to mention that, given the original Crysis' love of killing you with random physics props, a destructible environment in a similar engine could lead to hundreds of "I stood on a plank and it killed me!" moments. 

[Vattic]

Having just played (and loved) BF:BC2, I can say that it's certainly possible to level buildings with today's game engine technology. 

Yeah, still not sure about skyscrapers though. I must admit I saw an ARMA 2 fan map that had tower blocks that were flatenable with bombers. Mostly though I meant in terms of gameplay. It all depends how open they want the missions to be but it will be interesting to see how they force you to engage with the enemy (including stealthily) if they choose to have almost everything destroyable.

Cities will be an interesting battlefield, at least potentially.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Again, console RAM can't handle that much destruction and make it look pretty.  It won't happen.

[Kagus]

At least not until the XBOX 720.

"We've come full circle...  Again."

[LeoLeonardoIII]

The current one is an XBOX 360. A circle.

I predict that the next XBOX will be spherical. There will be several red LEDs that describe in excellent detail the various errors and faults present at that moment. And there will be a large "marital aid" attached so Microsoft can physically screw you.

That's just the first model though. After two years of Beta testing on the early adopters, they'll have a working design and they'll release it again as a boring black tower case with ports in the back and a logo in the front that lights up when it's still working.

[Thexor]

and a logo in the front that lights up when it's still working.

Why don't they save themselves the $0.15 and not bother installing a light?

I kid, I kid. 



As to Ioric's comment: Doesn't BF:BC2 feature destructible buildings on the 360 as well? I think you're either underestimating the consoles or overestimating the average user's PC (although admittedly the original Crysis wasn't aimed at the average user's PC anyways!), but I would be very surprised if destruction wasn't possible. BC2 uses a simple system: once enough wall segments have been blasted away, the building plays a pre-scripted 'implosion' animation.

If the collapses happen fast enough, you'd probably never notice if every building played a generic collapse animation each time - especially since you'd rarely be focusing on a building while it collapses, and the scattered holes in the walls would make every collapse look at least somewhat unique. There's no need for physics objects to go flying through the air, or for the building to splinter into hundreds of physics props - having physics props spawned looked cool in the original Crysis, but it was fairly impractical and wouldn't make sense for a concrete skyscraper.


In short, the full-blown physic-based collapses of Crysis may or may not be beyond the capacity of a console, but there's absolutely no need for such a high-demand collapse to be possible. Proper and liberal use of semi-scripted collapses would make destructible buildings require minimal CPU/RAM power.

[HonkyPunch]

Also Red Faction: Guerilla is on consoles. It has some pretty sweet building destruction, it's just too bad everything else isnt very good.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Also Red Faction: Guerilla is on consoles. It has some pretty sweet building destruction, it's just too bad everything else isnt very good.

Except those buildings were not very detailed and there was nothing over three storied tall that wasn't a solid block, and the pieces vanished after you came back to them.

Obviously if tbhey dumbed down Crysis's super fancy graphical detail they could make building destruction work on the consoles.  RAD had buildings that litterally shattered into triangles when they took too much damage, presumably a game on the current generation could look slightly better.  But the only thing Crysis had going for it was how technically impressive it was.  That it was designed as a true PC game.