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[Kikorin]

I was wondering why sometimes developers implement something amazing in their games, just to remove it in the later episode. One of the biggest disappointment in my gamer carrer was Gears of War 3. I remember when, before the second chapter, devs shown this awesome tech demo of UE 3, with all the interactivity stuffs, fluid physics and environmental destruction:




and when GoW 2 finally released, it delivered. Single and multiplayer level could been blown up piece by piece, making firefights lots more visceral and responsive and the boss fight in the lake or the level inside the monster with all the fluid blood were so memorable.






Another great example is Euphoria physics used in GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3 (this one have not a sequel btw), masterclass in procedural animations and responsive behaviour for characters and materials and then scrapped in later games.




Same thing for fluid physics in Halo 3, never used in later entries for my great disappointment:




And what about one of the most impressive gore system ever developed with Soldier of Fortune 2 (yeah, the later game has not been developed by the same devs, but still suck the huge downgrade):




So, what are some impressive technologies you remember being used by studios for a game, and then never being integrated anymore?

 

[Fredrik]

L.A Noire face animation


I know people think it’s creepy but since so many modern games has crap facial animations we need to go back and give this tech another try.

 

[ZywyPL]

Nvidia's HFTS - used pnly in The Division:

Granted, we can get the same if not better result now with RT shadows, but those are almost completely absent as well, only MW 2019 is what comes to my mind and that's pretty much it.

Also Nvidia's VXAO, only used it Rise of Tomb Raider - again, we can now have RT AO, but again - it's almost non-existent in games.

Kind of a bummer there are those raster-based technologies, as demanding as they are, but ended up as a curious experiment rather than being more widely adopted.

 

[solidus12]

Soft Engine’s boobs deformation on DOA Xtrems Volley 3

 

[RAIDEN1]

 

[kraspkibble]

Soft Engine’s boobs deformation on DOA Xtrems Volley 3

you're really not going to post a video?

 

[Dane]

Some of these were scrapped because it didn't go well I guess, Euphoria is still used but it had a heavy weight that made some gameplay features such as driving in GTA IV to be boat like, and even movement in GTA V is kinda hassle, Max Payne 3 was also clunky at times.

Soldier of Fortune gore to this day is unparelleled, I guess it was too controversial in many main markets so developers decided to go for basic limb gore?

 

[radewagon]

A lot has been said about the lengths that Farcry 2 went to create an incredibly immersive world. That was never really carried over to the same degree ever again in the series. I can't say it's all that bad, though. Farcry 2 is a very oppressive and hard to enjoy game. It's brilliant, but boy is it a slog. The later games, while less steeped in realism, have been more fun to play.

 

[Ezquimacore]

ubersampling on the witcher 2 PC. Not good, but impressive. The stupidity of cdpr was impressive.

 

[Stuart360]

Whatever kind of motion capture tech they used in LA Noire. Honestly it still hasnt been matched imo, even by current games like Horizon Forbidden West, which has great facial capture.

All i can guess it was reaally expensive, or really time consuming or something.

 

[Stuart360]

ubersampling on the witcher 2 PC. Not good, but impressive. The stupidity of cdpr was impressive.

Want that like native 4k or somehting if you had it on?. I remember the very first time i played the game and i was getting like 20fps on a pretty decent PC at that time, and was like 'Damn this game is demanding wtf?'. Then saw the option and turned it off and was getting 60fps.

 

[Ezquimacore]

Want that like native 4k or somehting if you had it on?. I remember the very first time i played the game and i was getting like 20fps on a pretty decent PC at that time, and was like 'Damn this game is demanding wtf?'. Then saw the option and turned it off and was getting 60fps.

It multiples your resolution to give the impression of better Antialiasing. Basically super sampling but a worse version for your GPU. Obviously at the time the norm was 512mb-1gb-2gb of vram so the settings made no sense.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

Arcade 3D sprite scaling.

 

[adamosmaki]

Red faction destruction . I dont know what kind of magic they pulled all those years ago to have an engine able to have this kind of physics and terrain /building destruction that has yet to be matched

 

[winjer]

ubersampling on the witcher 2 PC. Not good, but impressive. The stupidity of cdpr was impressive.

That was just SSAA.
There is something similar with DSR.

 

[FukuDaruma]

 

[Thief1987]

L.A Noire face animation


I know people think it’s creepy but since so many modern games has crap facial animations we need to go back and give this tech another try.

It's basically fmv with textured actor's face, hard to call this "animation". These captures were very heavy and technology by itself had too many drawbacks to be used again somewhere else.

 

[Ezquimacore]

That was just SSAA.
There is something similar with DSR.

It's a proprietary unoptimized version of SSAA, DSR let's you upscale at any resolution not just 4x your resolution.

 

[Davevil]

Does it count?

 

[Fart Knight]

I need to replay the original Gears trilogy, shit was awesome.

 

[lovetalkgames]

The chao garden technology in Sonic Adventure 2 was never fully realized.

 

[Drew1440]

PhysX processors, only one card was released by Ageia and had support in a couple of games, ended up getting bought by nVidia and hasn't been mentioned since.



Edit: Also the Konami Kobra arcade system which was supposed to content with the Sega Model 3 board, only used for one game - Fighting Bujutsu : Wu-Shu

 

[Oberstein]

DOA Xtrems Volley 3

So far ahead of its time.

This gameplay mechanic is the pinnacle of our generation.

 

[Johnny Concrete]

Force Unleashed had some cool destruction tech that I’ve never seen since.

 

[FukuDaruma]

Not released but worthy of checking out:

 

[GymWolf]

Edit: wrong example.

 

[M1chl]

PhysX processors, only one card was released by Ageia and had support in a couple of games, ended up getting bought by nVidia and hasn't been mentioned since.



Edit: Also the Konami Kobra arcade system which was supposed to content with the Sega Model 3 board, only used for one game - Fighting Bujutsu : Wu-Shu

Not true, PhysX as a library is used regularly today and for example Arkham games had extra effect with PhysX.

 

[Captain Toad]

It wasn't a game, but a console. The Wii U pad was not ideal for most games, but for certain ones, it was perfection. Windwaker, for example, let you swap items, see the map, the ocean chart, play songs, etc without having to pause the game and swap screens.

It's clear Breath of the Wild was originally designed around the Wii U tablet, aka the Sheikah Slate, and the game would have been significantly smoother had it stayed in.

I would love for the next Switch to go back to this mode, at least for TV mode, although that wouldn't exactly be "docked".

 

[Pejo]

 

[Valonquar]

I miss this controller for Wipeout

 

[Black_Stride]

PhysX processors, only one card was released by Ageia and had support in a couple of games, ended up getting bought by nVidia and hasn't been mentioned since.

Graphics cards just got so powerful a dedicated chip wasnt necessary.
PhysX technology is still in use today.....in fact im pretty sure its actually the number one physics engine in videogames right now having overtaken Havok.
It does help that its free.

What features of the engine developers use is up to them.

 

[Magic Carpet]

What ever happend to Voxel 'esplosions!

 

[01011001]

L.A Noire face animation


I know people think it’s creepy but since so many modern games has crap facial animations we need to go back and give this tech another try.

the issue with this is that you have to capture face and body separately, which resulted in really weird looking animations as soon as any given character talked and moved at the same time.
it only worked really well when people sit still and barely move their head and body.

 

[Black_Stride]

What ever happend to Voxel 'esplosions!

The tech was used in Nex Machina and its evolution was used for multiple effects in Returnal.

 

[rofif]

Force Unleashed had some cool destruction tech that I’ve never seen since.

This, gta 4... nothing else?
Euphoria was fantastic

 

[CamHostage]

It wasn't a game, but a console. The Wii U pad was not ideal for most games, but for certain ones, it wasn't perfection. Windwaker, for example, let you swap items, see the map, the ocean chart, play songs, etc without having to pause the game and swap screens.

It's clear Breath of the Wild was originally designed around the Wii U tablet, aka the Sheikah Slate, and the game would have been significantly smoother had it stayed in.

I would love for the next Switch to go back to this mode, at least for TV mode, although that wouldn't exactly be "docked".

To replicate Wii U, Nintendo could have offered a feature for a double-Switch connectivity (or release a Switch companion TV box, maybe an enhanced self-contained Dock, which had just enough hardware components so that the game ran mostly on the Switch but the companion was a reverse-Remote Play device that translated the second-screen experience onto the TV; basically Wii U but the other way around.) It's still possible, but it's pretty clear Nintendo isn't on that wavelength.

Makes me sad that the "leaked" PS5 DualSense with a video screen instead of touchpad was obviously fake, as a good-holding controller with a video screen would be real nice IMO.



It's a shame, because I agree, Second Screen Experience has been underutilized on consoles and Wii U was one of the great experiments which probably won't be replicated for a long time if ever. It's fairly easy to have a second device pair with a console (depending on how you do it, either with two apps synched or with one app feeding separate video streams,) but because there's not a device out there like Wii U anymore, no developer would ever commit to Second Screen as a core part of the gameplay. Even when 3DS and Vita were strong companions for their console brothers, you rarely saw games collaborate between the two platforms (and now, everybody has a cellphone, but still Second Screen is just absent.

(Reminds me of when Sony was going to have PSP act as a Wing Mirror for F1, which never happened... and also, if you look carefully, I think wasn't actually working on-stage.)

 

[Pagusas]

Level deformation/destruction from Red Fraction. it was so fun, yet never again to be seen.

 

[CamHostage]

Although Nintendo hasn't tried to replicate the Wii U functionality with two Switches, it has done unique experiments by tying Switches together in the Super Mario Party Rec Room. They've not revisited that concept elsewhere, sadly (IMO, at least... not sure how far the idea could be pushed, but we'll probably never know.



And, for anybody who actually played Zelda: Four Swords (you needed a GameCube and four GBAs and link cables for them all, which was a tall order even though everybody in the world owned a GBA seemingly...), you know it was one of the great party games of all times. The technology to pull this off today would almost much easier (with the power of consoles today and wifi and ubiquity of portable devices) but you won't find an experience like this out there.

 

[CamHostage]

I miss this controller for Wipeout

Unique controllers in general are just a dead market, for no good reason. These days you could make 1 novelty controller and sell it to work for every platform (...except the platform makers won't let you use core features or be natively supported even with a license, so technically, you can't,) and you'd think that there'd be a lot of experimentation and innovation in that market, but instead, everybody just tries to make a "Elite" version of the PS/XB controllers already on the market.

Dance Pads, Fishing Rods, Fight Sticks, Flight Yokes, Light Guns... not to mention Resident Evil Chainsaw Controller. Where did all the hardware go?

 

[jufonuk]

Goldeneye where you could shoot people in different parts of the body and they would react accordingly

 

[MadPanda]

Whatever kind of motion capture tech they used in LA Noire. Honestly it still hasnt been matched imo, even by current games like Horizon Forbidden West, which has great facial capture.

All i can guess it was reaally expensive, or really time consuming or something.

Sorry but Horizon Forbidden West is far foleom having great facial animations. They look like those robots with human faces.

 

[01011001]

the nvidia PhysX driven cloth/plastic deformation and destruction in Mirror's Edge on PC

 

[AJUMP23]

Mass effect gave you great choices in the first game then threw them away in the third game.

You made a choice in ME1. Here is an email.

 

[nkarafo]

This gel stuff was great in Portal 2

 

[RoadHazard]

Goldeneye where you could shoot people in different parts of the body and they would react accordingly

A lot of games do that.

 

[winjer]

It's a proprietary unoptimized version of SSAA, DSR let's you upscale at any resolution not just 4x your resolution.

It's exactly the same thing. Render at a higher resolution, as to sample more pixels.

 

[Fafalada]

Another great example is Euphoria physics used in GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3 (this one have not a sequel btw), masterclass in procedural animations and responsive behaviour for characters and materials and then scrapped in later games.

Euphoria approach was a bit of a dead-end. I once had an engineer/researcher that worked there explain the technical details of how it worked to me and it pretty much ruined the illusion completely (it's one of those things that 'once you see you can't unsee it'). But more importantly it just didn't really leave much room for evolution in that direction.

I'd argue a lot of tech in the category described falls into that latter bucket. Some solutions are just wholly impractical in long term or trying to apply at scale etc.
Eg. MGS4 and Halo 2 were both demoed with volume-shadows that looked substantially better than what they eventually shipped with.
Actually those apply on broader scale. PS2 gen was full of games using volume-shadows at scene-scale, and that vanished almost overnight with 360/PS3 (in part because new GPU architecture made those less practical, but more so because the tech was just more work to use, period).
Sometimes these can also be cyclical - PS1/N64 had a pretty common use of local-light sources, which then mostly disappeared for majority of PS2/GC/XBox era, and then made a return in PS3/360 gen again.

What features of the engine developers use is up to them.

It's not really that simple - that stuff was never actually 'PhysX', it was separate GPU accelerated path of so called Apex effects. More problematic is that it's NVidia GPU exclusive which always severely limited any practical value of using it (implementing all your visual simulation stuff twice basically, noone wants to deal with that kind of overhead unless paid for it by NVidia - which is the few handful of games that we got that supported it).
Also that entire tech branch has since been deprecated, along with several other things, like nvCloth.
PhysX for rigid-body solvers is still around, and thankfully that's been open-sourced as NVidia has moved on from it themselves with another proprietary GPU solution.

 

[Imtjnotu]

Building destruction in rage and bad company 2.

 

[acm2000]

Sega Rally on 360 and it's amazing track deformation

 

[SpiceRacz]