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I was watching through some trailers on GameSpot today, and a thought struck me: trailers (and thus games, maybe) are really very boring. Some of them look very compelling at first; they have some nice arty shots, and you're not really sure what the game is going to be like, raising hopes for some originality. Then it cuts to a FPS view and shows you shooting some zombies. The next video is a cut-and-paste RPG with dragons and goblins and the same old shit.
Is this the best we can hope for? Is this the cutting edge of modern PC gaming? A version of UT with shinier graphics but identical gameplay and scant apparent innovation? In this month's Edge, there's talk of a graphics plateau, where it's getting harder and harder to improve graphical believability with each step, so instead developers have to improve other things, like immersion, storytelling, characterisation, and so on. Looking at these videos, I wouldn't believe it, or if it were believable, then I'm going to have to buy a Wii instead of upgrading my rig this Christmas.
Maybe I'm being cynical. Maybe these aren't representative of the games of tomorrow, or even the games themselves. Maybe behind the FPS there is something worthy, maybe there's some innovation and freshness behind the standing around a giant and hitting it until it falls over.
Or maybe it's just the original Unreal Tournament with bump mapping again and again.