Is it not a galgame?

……

In 2002, the E3 Electronics Show was still held in Los Angeles.

This year's E3 is quite special. It is difficult to describe an electronics exhibition in such an occasion as both sad and prosperous, both pessimistic and positive.

These words seem to contradict each other and feel like schizophrenia, but they were fully reflected in this year's E3 electronics show.

It seems that after the 1211 incident, with the world economy in recession, many large game companies have insufficient cash flow reserves and are having difficulty turning around. Basically, many of the games that come to the exhibition are those that have been developed before, or those that have not been affected in terms of funding.

The company that suffered the most at this year's E3 Electronics Show was Square Enix. Originally, they would release a sequel to Final Fantasy every year, but after the failure of the movie, Square Enix's capital chain collapsed and was even on the verge of bankruptcy. Naturally, the game could not be developed in time, so Square was absent from this year's E3 Electronics Show.

Many established game companies have also fallen into a vicious circle of living off their past successes:

TECMO, called Tecmo by many Chinese players, has not yet merged with Koei Tecmo to become [Koei Tecmo], so this time they brought their most profitable and well-known game IP to E3:

"Ninja Gaiden": It appears on the Dandelion game platform. It is a new work in the series after a ten-year absence. It is a 3D action-adventure game launched by Team Ninja led by Tomonobu Itagaki, the producer of "Death Fight".

The story is mainly about revenge.

The protagonist is still Ryu Hayabusa, but the world view has been combined with another work from the same development team, "Life and Death", and the setting has undergone some changes.

This game not only builds on its old reputation, but also makes bold innovations, because this is the first time that Tecmo has joined the Dandelion family. After adopting the new Pioneer engine, the graphics performance has instantly improved by several levels.

During the live demonstration, players exclaimed: "This should be the 3D action game with the highest picture quality at present, right?"

However, due to the existence of Pokeni as a ballast, I dare not say that it is the highest level of the contemporary era. It can only be said that it is the best 3D action game among the games currently on display. With smooth and gorgeous moves and changeable weapons, it can be said to be quite eye-catching.

The only thing that worries people is the difficulty of the game.

You should know that the game difficulty of Ninja Gaiden has always been the highest in the industry, even higher than several games developed by Paradox Company's Hidetaka Miyazaki.

Therefore, the players at the scene all expressed that they hope Tecmo can learn from Paradox and add more different difficulty levels to take care of the public.

The estimated release date of Ninja Gaiden is 2004, so players will have to wait a long time.

On the other hand, Rentiantang will continue to bring the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

As for Sony, it seems that there is nothing noteworthy or new to show off. In addition, as a large international company, it itself was hit by the 1211 incident and has not recovered yet.

As the president of SCE, Ken Kutaragi often has the will but not the ability. Although he attended the E3 Electronics Show this time, his expression was very ugly throughout.

……

It is conceivable how strong the atmosphere of pessimism is.

The biggest change actually came from hardware manufacturer Intel.

Intel Corp. has unveiled its latest computing technology for mainstream gamers and gamers: the legendary Pentium 4 processor.

At E3, Intel demonstrated some of the latest computer games running on the world's highest performance desktop processor, the Intel Pentium 4 processor at 2.53GHz.

Combined with the latest software, Pentium 4 processor-based computers can support complex physics engines and artificial intelligence, giving users a more exciting and realistic gaming experience.

For example:
Weird Creatures

Men in Black II: Crossfire,
Winston Racing 2002,
Neverwinter Nights

Rise of Kingdoms

Star Trek: Elite Force II

TRON 2.0

...These games all run extremely smoothly thanks to Intel's latest Pentium 4 processor.

Among them, Epic Games has optimized their Unreal 4D engine for the Pentium 3 processor and will use it in the upcoming game "Unreal Tournament 2003".

After the Unreal Tournament 2003 was shown, many people clearly sensed a strange trend:

It seems that outside of the Microsoft-pokeni system, there is another system expanding, which now looks like the Intel-EPIC route on the surface.

Seeing the name EPIC game, Qing Zhiyuan, who was sitting at the scene, was a little uneasy and felt mixed emotions.

What should I say?

Is this the end of the timeline?

I originally thought that Paradox's game engine was the only one that was dominant enough to monopolize the entire game engine market, but I didn't expect EPIC to come out and make a comeback.

This company was very famous in its previous life. The Unreal Engine series it created has become the first choice for almost all game developers around the world to develop games. It is also updated and iterated every few years to ensure that its game engine is the best in the world.

It seems that Pokeni's Pioneer Engine is still far ahead now, but it would not be good if it was overtaken by Unreal Engine in the future.

Qing Zhiyuan touched his chin, wondering whether he should make a protective acquisition of EPIC?

However, if Tesla rashly acquires another engine company while already having its own engine, it might turn out to be a counterattack.

So Qing Zhiyuan just wrote it down as a small problem and planned to discuss it with Iwata Satoru and the others after returning. …

When many large game manufacturers were silent, no one would have thought that Intel, a PC processor maker, would show its prowess.

However, this is nothing new in the gaming industry. Many times, the large-scale boom in games comes from the explosion of technology.

For example, when Pokeni's Trailblazer engine and Dandelion game platform came out, they immediately led to a large wave of new games. In particular, after Paradox Club figured out how to play 3D games, a 3D game storm instantly swept across the country.

Now the mainstream of the gaming industry is still 3D.

……

After Konami's previous work "Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty" achieved very good results of more than 600 million copies, it launched "Metal Gear Solid 2: Solid" this year.
"Metal Gear Solid 2: Solid" is an enhanced version of "Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty". The "SNAKE Story" added to this game can be said to be a supplement to the "Sons of Liberty" story. In addition, a large number of new elements such as VR missions and BOSS survival battles make the richness of this game reach an extremely high level.

However, this was only possible in 2002, and players would buy into an enhanced version. If you release an enhanced version 20 years later and you have to collect money again without making up the price difference for the original game, you will probably be scolded to death.

Players may even think that you are just fooling us with a DLC and selling the game again.

However, when Konami showed the actual game footage at the pre-exhibition press conference, it still received cheers from countless players.

Since Konami boarded the Pokeni ship, things have been going smoothly and it has been making great strides.

It doesn't matter whether you develop your own technology or not. The key is that if you develop your own game engine, it will cost a lot of money, and you may end up being crushed by Paradox. It's better to just use Pioneer Engine 2.

By the way, the internal version of Pokeni's Pioneer Engine has been upgraded to 2.5. Although it is called 2.5, performance support and various new game tools are actually packaged into it, which can make more exquisite, smooth and more comprehensive games.

Paradox's strategy has always been clear: maintain a generation gap of about one generation, and the rest is completely open to other game manufacturers.

In addition to Metal Gear, Konami also brought "Silent Hill 3" this time, which also supports both PC and Sega DC platforms.

In fact, it supports the Dandelion game platform.

After Silent Hill 3 adopted the new Trailblazer engine, the picture quality was qualitatively improved. It is a horror game in itself. Now it looks more realistic because of the increase in the number of faces and the smoother edges of various models.

The live demonstration immediately triggered a wave of screams.

Because it is really too impactful and too scary.

With the shopping mall as the theme, it is closer to people’s lives, coupled with realistic character models and dark horror atmosphere, it can be said to be quite thrilling.

The graphics of Silent Hill 3 are quite good. It uses a similar granular filtering technology as Silent Hill 2, making the game look like a faded horror movie.

Combined with the game's excellent sound effects, if you are alone in such a scene, you will soon feel a heavy sense of depression.

For quite a while, you will be traveling between multiple dark scenes, at which point you can see the lighting effects that the game is proud of:
Heather has a flashlight in her shirt pocket that you can use to explore dark scenes.

With the excellent dynamic lighting and shadow effects, the images of various characters and monsters in the game are very realistic, but the facial animations of some characters are not good enough and are a bit stiff.

All of this is only possible because of Pokeni's powerful Pioneer engine.

In other words, Konami not only proved itself with its two games, but also promoted Paradox's technology.

……

So when it was Pokeni's turn, Qing Zhiyuan's first words when he came on stage were:

“Thank you Konami, thank you Tecmo, thank you...thank you to all our friends, your games are really great.

But it is because you have created world-class game masterpieces that the whole world has seen us.

This engine development company is working silently behind the scenes. "

Hahahaha...

When Qing Zhiyuan finished his first sentence, the entire audience burst into laughter.

Damn it, you guys are obviously a game production company, but now you have to force yourself to move behind the scenes and hide your achievements and fame, right?
“You know what this year feels like to me?

Sony seems to have given up the battlefield and has not made much progress.

The fight is mainly about more advanced game engines.

One is Pokeni's pioneer engine, which has brought a lot of game companies into the spotlight.

On the other side is Intel and EPIC's Unreal Engine, and the companies participating in the competition are basically all from the United States.

I feel like there’s going to be some good shows to watch.”

“I think the current Unreal Engine is no match for Pioneer, okay?
Judging from the pictures alone, Paradox has not even made its debut yet, but Konami's Silent Hill 3 and Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden have already crushed them."

"Hmm...it seems so, but I am more looking forward to what kind of games P Society will bring this time."

……

...(End of chapter)