Gears of War 3 looks amazing, and it certainly represents some of the best graphical capabilities of Xbox 360, but Epic Design Director Cliff Bleszinski would still like to see visuals at an even higher level. How high? Well, he wants CG from the blockbuster 3D film Avatar to be playable in real-time.
"I'm sorry, do you think graphics are good enough? No they're not! The Xbox 360 is great, we've pushed it further than we ever have with Gears of War 3, but I want Avatar in real-time and beyond, I want fully realistic CG, and are we there? Absolutely not. I think there's absolutely room for improvement," he commented to OXM in the U.K.
He continued, "Do graphics make gameplay? No. But when I fire up my projector back at my house, put Avatar on - it still makes your jaw drop, it's like a giant portal to another planet. I think we still have a long way to go before we get there, and I want us to get there."
As great as Avatar visuals would be for next-gen consoles, Bleszinski argued that online is even more important. "My money for the future of everything is on those who understand the online space the best. Because this is the world we live in, we're always connected," he said.
As an example, Bleszinski said games should incorporate NPCs from your Twitter friends, and players might be able to see their updates from in-game characters with speech bubbles. This sort of deep online integration needs to be present on next-gen gaming consoles, to an even greater degree than what we see now with Xbox Live and PSN. "It's just a matter of those who own the platforms allowing the integration back and forth of the social networking experience. It's a really complicated problem to solve and moving forward I'm curious to see what our publishing partners do," he said.
