"Pretty soon you wont be able to tell the differeance between games and real life.."

We've all heard that statement before, from someone standing in front of a kiosk at E3, at EBgames, at Target.. Wherever the case may be, people look upon a new game and think, "that’s amaza'zing, how did they do that". But the catch here is 9 times out of 10 they are watching the trailer, weather or not its game play footage or a CG video, its a trailer. What’s wrong with that? Ill tell you...

pre·de·ter·mine (prē'dĭ-tûr'mĭn) Pronunciation Key v.

1. To determine, decide, or establish in advance: "These factors predetermine to a large extent the outcome" (Jessica Mitford).

The initial problem with a trailer is that its predetermined, basically meaning the way that plane flew under the motorcycle just at the right time, or the way that he used the special move when 6 guys were perfectly placed around him. Which is all placed in the trailer at the right time and place, but they left out the other 100 some odd try’s it took to get that shot. But it doesn’t stop at game play footage, a predetermined CG video using the games characters moving in life like motions misleads you to the experiences you are actually going to get when you coin up the 20-60 bucks for that game.

Lets date my blog and use some examples, ill start with an easy one that everyone’s talking about... Killzone 2, ah yes the beloved Killzone 2 trailer that BLEW our minds at E3 2005. We thought "ZOMG the ps3 is going to be like playing real life!" now from a rendering stand point of mapping and just the visual aspect, yes that’s possible. On the ps3? I donno, but its still possible. But the life like motions of the characters and the so forth should have been a big red flag.

Another good example is the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance opening video. This looks like the love child of Marvel, Pixar, and a comic geeks wet dream. Look closely in this video at the way their bodies move, the way their hands and fingers move, they way they use all of there human muscles like a normal human (or mutant is this case) would. Where am I going with this? well...

in order to actually have movements like that in "real time game play" you would need a controller with somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1000 buttons. And even then you wouldn’t be able to operate all the movements and muscles the way they are done in a predetermined video. I mean if you had a controller that had 10 analog sticks for just the fingers an so forth, do you really think you could... in real time, animate that character and make it even do anything let alone pulling of the amazing stunts you saw in the opening video?

The truth is you cant, its physical impossible to make a game have real-time game play that looks like "that", with a hand held controller. Think about it, you typically have 1 analog stick to move the character in platformer games such as, say god of war. So basicly your moving kratos with the same thing they used on the Atari? you push up he runs up with the "runs up" animation. If you spin it a circle he rotates in a circle. Now try to run down the wall, jump off over a cyclops head, while stabbing a dead guard on your way back to the ground and then kick him while throwing your blade behind you... in real time.

You cant unless the game developers set it up that way and it would be the same animation every time you did it, because executing that move brings up that animation. So will games ever look like the trailer or like real life? Well, yes and no, it depends on how you look at it and the type of games your talking about, let me explain.

A car essentially has 2 major controls of movement, "steering" and " go/stop". You can’t throw your weight and change the way the car turns; the only other thing that you have major control over is the gearbox. So with something like this the only thing that’s stopping game developers from making it seem like your really driving a car is honestly graphics. Sure an analog stick isn’t the same as driving but, what about steering wheel contorllers and pedals? The actual controls of a car are covered its only the graphics that are left, for the most part.

The problem is games that involve some kind of living character. The only way to get the same realistic movements in the game "in real time" would be for you to ware a full motion capture suit, like the ones they use to make most of thoughts predetermined videos you see. Only then could you get the same arm and body movements that would seem life like, but then the problem is you pretty much steeping into Virtual Reality (VR).

Virtual Reality has its drawbacks and I think Nintendo is going to find this out with their "Wiimote". The easiest problem to point out would be "collision detection". So lets say your waring this motion capture suit, or even more realistically your holding a Wiimote and for the sake of argument your playing a samurai game. What happens when you swing your sword?

Well I guess it depends on what you’re swinging at, if you swing at the air it will just follow your movements, but if you swing at say, A stone? the sword in the game would stop when it strikes the stone, but your arm, being as though it didn’t hit anything, would continue to swing. So now your sword is up here while your arm is pointing at the ground and as soon as you move your arm away from the stone it would "skip" or "jump" to the new position that your arm is at, thus breaking the realistic experience.

All this aside no matter how you make the game or how you play the game it still goes back to my original point, "predetermined". Even if you could figure out the VR problems, the game still will never be as cool as the trailer because the trailer is a show case of the coolest things that "could" happen in this game. But who’s to say you'll actually pull that off, you my find your self running into the wall all night, then throwing your controller down and end up going outside to play some basketball?

Bottom line is, trailers are miss leading and gameplay will never look like real life.

~ Ryan Waltz