Teh Yay!!! \(^o^)/

[Silas]

That actually isn't true, it's just that for the vast majority of PS2 games, developers simply don't work as hard to exploit the graphics capability of the console. I cite Silent Hills 2 and 3, and Ico as games which absolutely could not have appeared undiminished on the DC.

The reason Shenmue II appeared on the XBox was that porting from DC to XBox was a hell of a lot easier to accomplish than porting to PS2, and Microsoft were taking a calculated gamble that Shenmue II would encourage XBox sales, particularly in Japan. This may have turned out to be a bad business decision at the time Shenmue II came out (if it came out now, I think it would do a hell of a lot better, because the XBox is generally riding a lot higher than PS2 these days) but there were sound reasons for doing it if they were going to get Shenmue IIx out on sale in a reasonable time.

[sex machiene]

That actually isn't true, it's just that for the vast majority of PS2 games, developers simply don't work as hard to exploit the graphics capability of the console. I cite Silent Hills 2 and 3, and Ico as games which absolutely could not have appeared undiminished on the DC.

The reason Shenmue II appeared on the XBox was that porting from DC to XBox was a hell of a lot easier to accomplish than porting to PS2, and Microsoft were taking a calculated gamble that Shenmue II would encourage XBox sales, particularly in Japan. This may have turned out to be a bad business decision at the time Shenmue II came out (if it came out now, I think it would do a hell of a lot better, because the XBox is generally riding a lot higher than PS2 these days) but there were sound reasons for doing it if they were going to get Shenmue IIx out on sale in a reasonable time.

good point

[choinkees]

Yeah, PS2 is more powerful than DC.

I don't reckon that game graphics are much more complex in most games of this generation though.

It seems that developers are using the same polygon budgets that they had on the PS1, N64, DC generation. Characters aren't really any more complex at all. Seems that this generation was more about screen effects - blurs, some lighting stuff and longer draw distance for the backgrounds. The characters themselves still seem to be kinda chunky.
...or maybe I'm just playing the wrong games.

[Silas]

Thank you! I thought I was the only one who had noticed this!

Have you ever played Silent Hill 3? Amazing never-before-seen in-game special effects (mainly involving blood on walls) and the best, polygon-richest, most realistic looking human characters I've ever seen in a game - and that's the PS2 version I'm talking about. Being a horror game the environments can be close and claustrophobic, leaving all the power to draw the character. That there is a trade-off is clearest in the part when Heather is walking around the wide-open streets of Silent Hill in exactly the same places that James did in Silent Hill 2. All the building models are precisely the same, but in SH3, there is the occasional burst of framerate-drop which is not seen in SH2 - and the difference has to be in the detail on Heather and the enemy dogs.

Most other games seem to specialise in creating large environments at the expense of character detail - vis Halo (or of course the most extreme example, GTA III and VC).

[choinkees]

Haven't played SH3. Played a bit of number 2 and I loved the shadow effects

Shenmue was quite clever in that they had a massive amount of textures that could make even plain models look extremely detailed.

I haven't played Max Payne but it looks like it uses textures pretty well, as well as upgrading the character models a bit as well.

I haven't seen many games with a good combo of model detail and texturing though. Many of the nice rounded character models I see in games have really boring texturing, and then in other games I see great textures.. but on such low-poly models that you see corners everywhere.

It's kinda funny how some of the PS2's best character modelling was in the launch title Tekken Tag Tournament. That had very smooth figures, great textures and really good animation. You're right though.. the focus is a lot more on the environments now though.

That's why I still kinda get excited at games like Onimusha 2, where the backgrounds are pre-rendered. It lets the artists put so much detail into the characters.

[BCFCShenmue]

Theres an article about Shenmue 3 being confirmed from the year 2001