With Valve’s supercargo announcement of Teem Fortress 2 not only still existing but coming out fairly soon, and with the rebirth and release of Prey, it seems that all we need to bring on the End Times is the release of Duke Nukem Forever.
One other thing was mentioned along with the Valve announcement that confused me. As is usually, Valve bragged about graphic upgrades for Episode 2, something I’ve previously speculated about. One of those features was “cinematic physics.” So what is so “cinematic” about explosions? People always say such and such is a very cinematic game and I have yet to know what they are talking about except when they are talking about a cut scene or lens flare. Especially since Half-life never breaks from the First-Person I don’t know what “cinematic explosions” could mean unless they are just talking about, “over the top.”
I’ve discussed my confusion over “cinematic” before and I”m still not clear on what people mean when they say that. THe only thing I’ve seen is this very interesting article about some of the explicitly cinematic effects in the Source engine which use things such as motion blur, film grain, and color correction. But I don’t think that is what people are thinking about when they normally say something is “cinematic” is it? Just like the answer to that eternal question, “Just how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” the answer to “What does ‘Cinematic’ mean?” may very well be, “The world may never know.”