Over the last couple of days, I’ve been spending a lot of time in games other than World of Warcraft. WoW is a trap, you see. The number crunching, min/max, grab that loot game play has a way of wrapping its arms around you and not letting go. So, yesterday’s respite into Fallen Earth stirred something in me. My nomad’s ears perked, and I found myself once again touring the wasteland this morning.
When I first heard about the changes to the scrub graphics, I was interested but not blown away. Hell, when I saw them first hand, I strolled around, said “hey, that’s pretty cool” and didn’t think much more of it. It’s scrub. By definition, it’s small stuff.
This is a before shot on max graphics (no AA). It's okay but not great. Click to enlarge.
This morning though, I had to stop and note just how immersed I felt. All of the sudden, this seemingly little change made the world feel so much more real. It’s like, all around you have the ravages of the world. You see the broken down buildings and people shattered, scrounging around just to live. But, underneath it all, you have life. There’s grass now and different shades of earth that breathe air into an otherwise harsh world.
This is an after shot, showing the new landscape textures, distance rendering, and clouds. I don't know if they messed with the sunset colors but I found it had more depth than I'd ever noticed before. Definitely one of the best MMO sunsets I've seen. Click to enlarge.
It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t play the game, but there’s a lot more reality in a game like Fallen Earth than Runes of Magic. When you see the world, it’s something that, hey, may just come to be someday. You can never have that feeling when you’re fighting a dragon. So, when you’re running across the desert and seeing sparse grass here and more on the crest of a hill, or a broke down forklift half covered in the undergrowth, it just deepens that feeling that this is something that could actually be.
I know a lot of you are probably skeptical. Something this small has nothing to do with game play or mechanics or the other stuff that we usually talk about. Still, it’s worth noticing the little things sometimes. We take them for granted but, as this change has shown me, they can really make a difference.
I can only wonder at how this effects the later sectors. Anyone know?
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