OK, sorry for the late reply, but this thread somehow went under in the huge post-E3 thread flood here, so I totally forgot about it...
But that's exactly what they were doing; that was almost a year before the Cube was even released, and I'm pretty sure it was the first video of what the GCN could do. None of those scenes were used in a game. Nintendo did not announce they were working on a new Zelda until a year later. That video is irrelevant.
Well, I think we'll never be able to agree on that topic because there is a huge lack of sources - until Nintendo officialy confirms that they were working on the next Zelda back in 2000 we'll never know the truth. I personally do think that they were in development because 2 years isn't that much time. The fact that the GC wasn't released back then means nothing to me, because they were
definitely developing (I hope we can agree at least there) Zelda 64 back in 1995, that is
three years before the release of OoT and also one year before the release of the N64, as it can be seen in this video (which was also posted here at ZD a while ago):
.
Therefore, IMO the idea that "Zelda GC" was in actual development in 2000 can't be defied as odd.
But I can't exclude 100% that the video I posted earlier was a pure showoff of the GC's abilities, so let's settle it here.
[...] If you want insanely realistic graphics, buy a PS3. Play Elder Scrolls or Fallout, those are fantastic games with graphics as real as can be.
Some clarification: On the one hand I'm
not someone who is all about the graphics. Gameplay is the most important factor for me. But on the other hand, graphics are one of the key elements of a
video game. In numbers and for Zelda games specifically I'd say it's 50% gameplay, 20% gfx, 20% music and 10% story. Plus the graphics are technically the only thing we can discuss about after seeing E3, because music was quite absent, the story was not revealed and the gameplay can't really be judged until I have played the game myself. I actually think that the bit of gameplay that we saw was quite promising, actually and I hope it turns out well in the end (without interferences and with faster reaction
). But again, the graphics are what makes people buy the game because it's the only thing they can actually see well
before getting the game.
I know that PS3/Xbox games are usually only FPS's and other,
too "mature" (in the sense of bloody, violent etc) stuff in that direction, and that's not what I like. I still rely on the good old CS via LAN if it comes to that
We once played CoD and BF at a "LAN party" with 8 people back in 2003, and it was totally boring because you had to walk around like 15 minutes on a huge-a** map only to snipe someone/get sniped by someone or getting familiar with the 80 menus and sub-menus and steering tanks/helicopters... too complicated and too boring for me (and the rest of us) so we reverted to CS and I never laid a finger upon these games thereafter.
Plus I'm bored with the flood of war games out there, to me they're all the same, I rather enjoy a fantasy game like Zelda or pre-VII FF.
I would definitely have gotten a Wii by now... but despite the fact that Nintendo really makes the best and most affectionate games, here the hardware is just way too weak. 729 MHz main processor? 88 MB RAM? And the worst: 640x480 max resolution, or if you live in Europe, analogue 576i with ugly interlacing artefacts? Are you kidding me? a standard PC had such specs in the late 90s (graphics: early 90s for PCs and late 60s for TV), and such graphics look really bad on a 120cm Full HD screen which is almost average nowadays. I'm not willing to pay €150 + €60 for the game + €50(?) for the Wii MotionPlus for such blatantly outdated hardware, sorry. I don't expect hyper-realistic gfx as they are seen on PS3/Xbox360, especially not if the gameplay is ignored by the developers, but come on, Nintendo could at least make their games, let's say in 720p.
Another thing is that there are still many visible polygons, as can be seen from the various trailers, and this shouldn't be the case anymore in 2010. Again, I don't expect hyper-realism, but IMO the technical level of the gfx of [noparse]LoZ:SS[/noparse] are the same as we had back in 2000 with FFIX, and that's a bit poor.
But enough ranting for now, as I said in the beginning, if the gameplay makes up for it then I'm fine with it.
EDIT: I've got a theory about the reason of Nintendo's decision to use cel-shading here: The Wii MotionPlus implemention probably takes away a lot of the Wii's processing power, and therefore it was simply not possible to use TP graphics, so I'm assuming that this decision is a bad excuse for the low hardware specs...