To be clear from the outset, I've not previously been to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Yes, dear reader, I know what you're thinking: how could someone as "with it" as Phil not have been to E3? How could someone so "plugged in", so much cooler than liquid nitrogen, so tragically hip as to be unable to see past his own pelvis (thank you, Douglas Adams) possibly not go to E3?!?! There are two reasons. First, I'm your typical, pasty faced, obviously-hasn't-exercised-in-way-too-long gaming geek. Let's just say I've got about as much cool working for me as the lower depths of the Venusian atmosphere, as my choice of example illustrates rather nicely. And second, I'm too cheap to pony up the $400+ that it takes to get a ticket. Yeah, that's right: chicks really "dig" me.
At any rate, one might wonder: how did I manage to get into E3 this year? To be honest, plan A (i.e., cross dressing and sneaking in as "booth babe") failed. Not one interviewer could get past my size-ginormous feet in this year's de rigueur strappy sandals. On the plus side, though, I've developed a new appreciation for women who have their legs waxed. Seriously, any gal who can tolerate thousands of tiny hairs being ripped out by their roots is not to be trifled with. No, it was plan B that got me into the show; i.e., when I found out a friend of mine could get some complimentary tickets, I whined like a toddler until he agreed to give me one. Pride, you ask? What's that? On a more serious note, thanks again for the ticket, Dave!
It warrants repeating from the outset that E3, like any other trade show, is an exercise in hyperbole. Vendors, no matter how ridiculously lame their wares really are, want you to walk away believing that their latest product is not merely A Good Thing™, but, rather, that if you don't rabidly desire it enough to sell your teenage daughter to the nearest brothel then you're clearly nuts. Incidentally, this also explains why marketing directors are so seedy; i.e., they own the brothels. This sad state of affairs can be seen in the false enthusiasm of those poor souls hawking no-chance products like "Digital Watch Tycoon" and "Sim U.N." (tag line: "Improved uselessness and snootier Frogs!"), who have as serious a commitment to the truth as, say, Bill Clinton or Baghdad Bob. In short, sifting through the hype is not optional.
Having said that, however, there was at least one worthwhile attraction at this year's E3, namely, the presentation for the much awaited Half Life 2 (HL2). To set the stage, Valve was giving a twenty-five minute formal presentation at the ATI booth, which was surely a major marketing triumph for ATI over NVIDIA. When the show's doors opened at 9:00 a.m., attendees literally ran like giddy schoolchildren to the ATI booth to form a line, which soon stretched all the way to New York. Seriously, I think they were line-passing sandwiches all the way from the New York Deli on E. Bridge St. At least, that's how it looked to me.
Fortunately, I and some of the fellows with whom I was attending could do basic math. Realizing that a total of five guys could nicely minimize the waiting duties, we managed to make the whole thing a relatively painless process. To be sure, though, we were pretty close to the front of that line from the outset—nobody does the giddy-schoolchild thing quite like I do—and we didn't get in to see the presentation until roughly noon. Quite a few others didn't get in until quite late in the afternoon, however, so that tells you something about the expectations for HL2.
To cut right to the most important question: is HL2 going to "change the face of gaming as we know it", like some marketing hack might say? The answer is a qualified "no, I don't think so". At its core, HL2 is still a first-person shooter (FPS) game, and that's a fundamentally limited genre. I do think it safe to say that HL2 is going to redefine the state of the art in several respects, however, and I suspect shipping prior to DOOM III (D3) is going to steal a lot of thunder from Id Software. Heck, the gaming company from Texas didn't even bother to show off D3 this year, save for a pre-recorded movie, and after seeing the HL2 presentation, I don't think it's all that hard to understand why.
The presentation itself was divided into two halves. The first was a demonstration of the technology itself, while the second was a demonstration of what are presumably some largely-finished sections of the game. The technology demo began with a close up of the face of the "G-man" character from the original Half Life (HL), which was then replaced (quite dramatically) with a close up of the same character from HL2. The former was blocky, heavily pixellated, and almost painful to the eyes. The latter, as one might expect after five years of development, was positively stunning in contrast. As several gaming magazines have mentioned, the attention to facial detail is really quite impressive.
To be more specific, the G-man's face showed none of the hard edges of the previous model. Though the presenter didn't specifically mention it, I'm betting that the developers took full advantage of subdivision surface technology or perhaps ATI's TRUFORM™. Otherwise, I don't think the game engine would have a prayer of rendering more than a character or two on screen with anything short of a bleeding edge system. Seriously, the facial model looked like it had hundreds or possibly thousands of polygons devoted to it alone. The eyes track realistically, complete with dilating pupils and a specular highlight, and the lip-synching system, which must surely be phoneme-based, was pretty good. It's still not entirely convincing, mind you, for despite all the developers' efforts, the lips still look a bit off. More glaring was the obvious line where G-man's head connected to his neck. It looked like the poor guy had been to the Thief III booth and got garroted. Perhaps they'll fix that before HL2 ships.
More impressive than the facial technology, to me at least, was the conceptual shift in approach in handling objects in the world, and I think this is arguably going to be HL2's most important contribution to gaming. For the most part, game worlds treat objects as if they're made of polygons, which admittedly they are. HL2, in contrast, treats objects like they are real objects. That is, most things in the world are treated as substances that exemplify properties, to be philosophical about it, and those properties determine the way that the substances are affected by the laws that govern the world. To sum it up briefly, stuff acts like it should. Wood breaks and splinters when shot, whereas metal seems to deform at the point of impact (probably through the use of "decals") and emits a satisfying sound. This conceptual shift seems to include other properties such as inertia, density, and so forth.
The net result is a world in which wood floats in water while metal sinks; dodging fire forever behind a lowly crate is a thing of the past; and a wealth of new gameplay options are opened to the player. But I get ahead of myself. The rest of the technology demo focused largely upon the engine's physics and shaders. For those who don't know what shaders are all about, suffice it to say that the same kind of rendering techniques used by studios like Pixar is coming to a PC near you. I doubt the shader technology in Source (Valve's term for the HL2 engine) is "truly arbitrary" as the presenter claimed, for neither the latest version of DirectX nor OpenGL support truly arbitrary shaders, but they're pretty darned flexible nevertheless. I particularly liked the fully-animated character composed entirely of water, through which all of the surrounding environment could be seen with very convincing degrees of refraction.
That's enough geek stuff. The main thing the technology demo conveyed was that Source is plausibly the most powerful game engine in existence. The graphics looked almost as good as D3 (though D3 may have better lighting) and even better in some respects—most notably the far-more-convincing facial details. The physics system was clearly superior to anything else made to date. The shaders and other special effects were phenomenal. And the audio, played back on a 5.1 channel system unless my ears deceived me, was pretty fantastic, though I couldn't help noticing a great deal of "stuttering" at the end of each sequence—which was actually gratifying, insofar as I'm glad I'm not the only one who has to fight that kind of crap from hardware.
If Source exposes some solid programming interfaces and tools, the mod community is going to go nuts over HL2, to say nothing of all the developers who will surely choose Source for their games. In the final analysis, folks, I think Valve got the engine right, and I expect that it will become dominant in terms of third-party licensing once HL2 is released. Seriously, I think Source tops the engine from D3, from what I've seen thus far, and it sure looks to me like John Carmack has finally been dethroned as the coder who sets the standards. But then I could be biased on that point; i.e., it's seemed to me like Id Software has been coasting for a while, and the HL2 presentation only helps bolster that impression when compared to the D3 movie.
The demonstration of the game itself was less impressive to me, though there were still a number of really interesting moments. HL2 clearly remains true to the vision of HL, and that's obvious throughout. From the use of in-game cut scenes to tell the story, to the much-improved AI—in one sequence a number of AI-controlled allies assisting Gordon actually made intelligent use of cover in moving forward against an enemy position—HL2 looks like it's primed to set the bar for FPS games in the near future. The one truly glaring negative observation from the demonstrated sequences was that the enemy can't shoot for beans. Perhaps that was a deliberate choice on the part of the presenter, but it was like watching a G.I. Joe cartoon or an episode of the A Team; i.e., thousands of rounds were fired without the player ever getting hit. Presumably that won't be the case when the game ships. We'll see.
Probably the second best booth at the show was that of Ubi Soft. Those wacky French Canadians were out in force, showing off a number of really interesting looking new titles (e.g., Far Cry), several expansion packs (e.g., Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield: Athena Sword, which really needs a shorter title), and some ports in the works (e.g., Raven Shield for the Xbox). True, they all remained very tight-lipped about the prospects for a sequel to Splinter Cell, but the looks in their eyes said enough for me. I even managed to get some quality time with the associate producer of the Xbox port of Raven Shield, who has promised to talk to me personally about the framerate issues I (and lots of others) have been experiencing. Believe me, I'm going to do my best to see to it that those problems get nailed, and the guys from Ubi Soft really seemed interested in doing The Right Thing™. We'll see if they follow through.
The Blizzard booth was also quite notable, for they were showing Starcraft: Ghost (a.k.a. Operation "Screw PC Users"), Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, and World of Warcraft (WoW). Speaking with a couple of the development staff didn't help us glean any new information about the titles at hand, but they did seem to be some good people, and the hands-on playable demos looked very promising. I was particularly impressed with the detail level and overall "feel" to the environments in WoW, and that comment applies to pretty much all of the other MMORPG games seen at the show. If there's a glut of MMORPG games now, just wait until 2004; it's only going to get worse, and much worse at that.
Another personal favorite was the Thief III demonstration. I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed the original Thief and Thief II, and Thief III looks utterly phenomenal. The sheer beauty of the environments is truly surprising. I think that's something I've always liked about the series as a whole. The architecture, attention to detail, and texture artwork all had such thematic consistency and beauty that the previous games really held the player's interest from start to finish. The third game in the series looks like its going to be even better in that regard. I'm less sanguine about some of the gameplay enhancements (e.g., do players really want to have to work harder to pick locks?), but we'll have to wait and see. For now, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.
A somewhat surprising standout was The Hulk, whose producer told us has just gone gold. It's not exactly a thinking man's game, but watching Big Green lay the smack down on a bunch of hapless troopers was something not to be missed. The cel-shaded rendering is a beautiful blend of standard computer game graphics and a comic book look. Honestly, I'm thinking I might have to pick up a copy of the game and a console-style controller to go with it. It really looks like that much fun, rampaging across the landscape.
Some into role playing games may rejoice that a sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is looking pretty solid as well, though I personally don't get the whole vampire thing. Yes, I find the protagonist of BloodRayne to be about as physically beautiful as any woman can be. But I'm just not into the whole fangs-for-canines thing, it would be a real drag to miss the beauty of nature during daylight, and most goth gals in the real world are just nasty. Period.
In fact, I wasn't interested in getting too near the relevant display because of the "booth babes" they had manning it, most of whom were attempting to prove that a tight latex corset can somehow make even unattractive women desirable. I don't really see how the riding crops or the bullwhips fit into the whole vampire scheme either, so maybe those brothel-owning marketers like to visit a dominatrix on the side? I don't know. I avoided the whole mess. Still, the original game was acclaimed as a cult hit, and the sequel, or what I could see of it past the latex-restrained cellulite, looks like it might be another hit.
Battlefield 1942 (BF1942) fans will probably have reason to rejoice with the second expansion pack, which was looking pretty solid. The booth was not all that impressive, insofar as it was just a bunch of stations playing the game, but it did provide for some hands-on play testing. From what I could see of it, the expansion will feature a fair amount of new stuff. It did have a certain been-there-done-that feeling to it, but maybe that's because it's the second expansion pack? Personally, I'd rather see the developers working on BF1943, or something like that, but maybe I'm too jaded where expansion packs are concerned.
The award for most gratuitous use of female flesh has to go to Microsoft for their presentation of the recently announced Mythica. The game itself looks fairly far along, already showing a wealth of detail, a number of interesting quests, and a host of different special abilities, combat moves, spells, and so forth. What was far more interesting than the game, however, was the trio of ladies in the booth. To be blunt, I think they're the most anatomically perfect women I've ever seen; i.e., tall but not too tall, slim but still voluptuous in a very feminine way, and possessed of faces that might give Helen's some competition in the ol' ship-launching department.
More than anything, though, I felt sorry for them for the ridiculous costumes they were wearing. I don't think Microsoft understands the whole concept of armor, for it revealed a lot more than it covered. The only thing it was protecting, I think, was the barest fraction of modesty those gals must have retained after securing such humiliating work. It was sad. Beautiful and sexy, yes, but morally sad nonetheless.
Overall, I was grateful that the show seemed a lot tamer than what I'd read of the previous year (i.e., no pole-dancing strippers). It was big enough that there was a ton of stuff to see, yet small enough that you could really hit all the best stuff in a day. The HL2 event alone made it worth attending, and it sure made me a believer in the Source engine. Whether HL2 will be a good game is still entirely up in the air, however, from what I saw of it. It will definitely feature some interesting situations, but I'm starting to think that the FPS genre in general is just about mined out. What I saw from Valve was evolution not revolution, and it really makes me wonder: what's left to do in an FPS game that hasn't been done before? I guess time will answer that question.
My only serious disappointment with the show was the degree to which it reminded me that too darned many companies suffer from a rotten preoccupation with consoles. The Lord of the Rings games I saw were absolutely wonderful. I was really geeked about The Two Towers video game, but it's not available for the PC, and from what I saw at the show it's not going to be. But even as cool as that game is, the game based on The Return of the King is even more amazing. What I saw at the show makes me seriously consider buying a Playstation 2 for that game alone. I think it's unfortunate that there is a handful of really great games for the Playstation 2 and Xbox that aren't available for the PC and likely won't be. But I'm simply not going to run out and buy a console (or consoles), because there are just too few worthwhile titles. Frankly, I didn't see anything for any of the other consoles that didn't look lame compared to PC games of three years ago. Consoles really suck compared to PCs, and there is no getting around it.
Though it made for a pretty tiring (and very long day), E3 2003 was definitely worthwhile. I got to see where gaming is headed in the near future. I got to experience what will surely be the better games of 2004. I got to make some contacts in the industry. And I was reminded again how fortunate I am to be a man with a solid moral compass; i.e., the vacuous nature of flesh-driven marketing was painfully sad. Still, it was a lot of fun with a good bunch of guys, followed by an utterly hilarious LAN-powered Raven Shield fest until the wee hours of the morning. I hope David, Daniel, Joel, and Jeff had as much fun as I did, and I'll hope that maybe we can do it all again next year!
05/16/2003