[Aegean]

I knew something like this would come up the day the polygon-based 3D was out. The nice graphical games we played suddenly had turned into cold, rigid polygonic characters (E.g. the difference between Diablo I and Diablo II, or AOE or Age of Kings anyone? (Can't forget the moment Griswald the Blacksmith was moving towards me as a polygon zombie in Diablo II, where he looked like a decent Scottish lad in Diablo I). While polygons do give that extra depth feeling, the individual objects look annoyingly geometric unless there are a swarm of very small polygons.

I think this will pick up if the right conditions get in place.

[fh]

You have no idea what you're even talking about. Both Diablo 1 and 2 used pre-rendered sprites. Yes, technically they're "polygonic", but in the same sense that a Pixar movie is polygon-based: the amount of detail is only limited by the time they were willing to give their render farms. This page has a nice animated comparison's between D1's and D2's sprites for Diablo himself, you'll see how small the difference actually is. http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Diablo If anything, the models they used for D2 were more detailed, better lighted, and encoded with more colors.

[arketyp]

I, for one, am impressed with the graphics seen here. Even if it turns out that the issues such as animation and lightning dynamics are really limiting, the degree of artistic freedom this kind of technology already offers is really exciting. There will at least be a niche for these kinds of games, I think.