Yeah I guess so, it has a lot of complete pitch dark black backgrounds. Wii doesn't usually look as good as that?

Hmm. Consider me intrigued. We'll see if this goes anywhere...if it does, we might start seeing an end to the "two GameCubes duct taped together" statements.

Water reflections are pretty solid though.

I drooled.

I drooled a lot.

@Archaotic: lol i heard it from you first.

Wait, you mean that if people start developing proprietary technology for the Wii hardware rather than just half-assedly shoving PS2 assets onto it, it can actually produce some better visuals?

This is seriously blowing my minds, guys. I think I might need to sit down for a second.

All sarcasm aside, we can only hope that they start licensing this technology out to other developers so maybe third parties will get a clue and start making better Wii games.

not impressed at all.

Looks great, even though the level of the artists seem pretty varied. Most things could have been made better, some things looked good. The engine seems very promising.

I guess it seems that another company has the nerve to push the Wii to new limits in graphical power and potential other than Nintendo itself and not just a silly half ass port of a PS2 game everyone else seems to do.

lol at the use of all the crazy tech talk

You know this is really cool. A lot of devs these days are really pushing the hardware to the limit. I mean look at what some devs have done with the PS2 what 7 years later? Not that the Wii will close the gap for power behind the XBOX and the PS3 but things are looking up for the Nintendo console that could.

Wow, really great vid.

I wonder if it has its own physics system...not that its a big deal?

Also, the name "The Conduit" just makes me think of Mass Effect now. I may have played that game too much.

That's some nice PS2 graphics.. God of War 2 caliber! Wait a minute.. sorry about that.. lol I'm too much of a "graphics whore". Damn you 360 and ps3 for spoiling me... I can't for the love of me see whats so special about the graphics.. So long Wii I don't miss giving you away to my girlfriend!

(i love nintendo please don't kill me)

It's very impressive that the Wii can handle that, but the problem is that the Wii output is not HD.

It's ok having these wonderful graphics, but you loose some of the qlarity of those graphics.

@Darthearl: yeah, im kinda with you. solid effects at a slow framerate without too much else going on, perhaps im not as savvy but i thought id seen better in say, mario galaxy.

ps i hope the "2 gamecubes duct-taped together" never dies so that GCDTT becomes a standard measurement one day now that we're tired of saying how many bits a system is.

i guess it looks nice..
but i'm not really impressed.

What they really need to focus on is AA.

Damn theres a lot of jaggies in that demo.

@TheIrishNinja:
So what's the 360? Four Cubes?

While the engine will never obviously look as good as the 360/PS3, it's still rather impressive, because the Wii is exponentially more underpowered than the 360/PS3.

@Lyrai: ah, see, this is where the debate begins! if i say its 4, and insinuate that the PS3 is more like 4.5 cubes, which rounds up to 5, we both know im flame-baiting, heh.

AMAZING I felt like i was watching a dreamcast game the whole time I saw that tech demo!
I never realized the wii was capable of 1999 graphics!

There are some impressive graphical effects in there that we do not generally see on the Wii.

I was very impressed.

I think the people complaining here don't realize the technical feats these folks have accomplished and are just getting hung up on the Anti-aliasing issue.

The Wii just does not have the computational power to handle anti aliasing and will always look that way when displayed in high resolutions.

However, on an SDTV these anti aliasing issues are not nearly as noticeable and I imagine this engine would look even more impressive.

Like others have said the Wii is no doubt capable of PS2 graphics. However the normal process of things is games graphically improve over the life of the console. Look at early PS2 games compared to the later ones.

@brent_w: Exactly, it's impressive to those who know what's under the Wii's hood.

It also looks like the support is well done, companies should jump on this.

Oh, and seeing the Centurion armor, I just couldn't help but imagine an Eternal Darkness sequel for the Wii.

(Which will sadly never happen.)

If it gets pulled off.......the gameplay better stand up to it.

Great, too bad nobody who owns a wii cares about graphics at all...

@brent_w: Why do you say that? I keep hearing rumors that there's an Eternal Darkness sequel in the works. Nothing official, of course, but also no information from anyone saying why it wouldn't happen.

@brent_w: @DigiMish: oh, and again, youre prolly right that most of us arent as appreciative of what's going on there & its potential; i do of course hope the studio's engine gets use, and much like brent there, now hope its towards an Eternal Darkness like application.

I am pretty impressed, but just watch the framerate chug! Good luck getting an actual game with physics, AI, and everything else run even this well.

Needs some kind of exercise gimmick.

@Reiji: Well a real game probably wouldn't be attempting every single graphical and lighting effect in a small water-filled room.

@Reiji: Well, the developers don't have to use all that was demoed in that room at the same time, therefore increasing framerate.

They're not graphics that'll blow your socks off, not if you've played anything on 360 or PS3. But I'll be fucked if there's a better looking graphic engine on Wii right now.

sorry i don't think this looks good, yea it looked good 5 years ago.

Very nice. Hopefully they'll license out this engine.

@K-Squad! (Badass Edition):
While I don't think graphics are the most important part of a game (how fun it is to play is the most important thing), that doesn't mean developers should just half-ass everything on the Wii, either. They should be able to do what the GameCube's better games did, if not exceed them.

Even though Wii cannot pull off the polycount 360 and PS3 can, it can still do a lot more effects than GameCube could.

Hey, an FPS based on alien invasion of Washington D.C. sounds awesome to me. Maybe it could turn out as something similar to Turning Point...except the whole not sucking big balls part...hopefully.

Crap, I meant "the whole sucking balls part"...god that game sucked.

The engine itself looks rather nice - but is it me, or do the screenshots for the game built on this engine look like complete shit? Very rarely do I see those lovely promised "real-time shadow casting" (let alone soft shadows or self-shadowing) or any diffuse reflection maps. Go look for yourself [wiimedia.ign.com]

This reminds me of seeing the source engine for the first time...

Boy, that was quite a ways back wasn't it?

@Stormrider: Me too :).

This looks alot like one of the tech demos for OGRE:

[www.ogre3d.org]

I've worked with Ogre from tie to time, and that tech demo is almost the sme from one of the sample files included, down to the fish, water and light running across the ceiling and walls.

Preety impressive, both of them.

not.....impressed.....

@Grinman: That alien looks like a Seraphim from Supreme Commander.

I was expecting to see Crysis or something -- am I asking too much?

@Jcnet: People have such an idealized vision of Dreamcast graphics.

@Grinman: This company seems to have the right idea, but their artists are clearly inexperienced. Too bad :/

The tech demo didn't surprise me much. The water effects are top-notch, but we've already seen great water effects in Mario Galaxy. And the graphical models were "good", but not "great". This is actually what I'd expect from an average Wii game. Or are Wii games THAT bad in the graphical department?

@Ashurahori:

Yes.

---

For a Tech demo, this is a little lackluster, hell remember the PS2 techdemos? LOL, they pwn this techdemo, but of course actually games didnt come close.

FAIL.

imagine the minigames you could run with this!

@jcsunshine: i know, whats with that? i always thought they were like high res ps1 graphics myself

@Archaotic: Well, I wouldn't go that far. Dunno if the authentic looking roman armor had anything to do with it, but it looked on par with god of war 2. Then again, I haven't slept in 19 hours, so what do I know.

Some of you need to give up your graphics lust on the Wii and buy a second console. Surely a 360 is tempting ish?

@brent_w: Oh man...Eternal Darkness again...Yummmmmmmm

"and a damn sight better than anyone who isn't called Nintendo has managed thus far on the system."
Exactly. SMG looks better. Perhaps I would say Retro with Metroid was able to make the hardware sing... but in truth even Prime 3 doesn't look that much better than Prime 2 or even the first one. And hell, have you seen the Mario Kart Double Dash side by side with the Wii tracks. Identical, and in some places the Cube version looks slightly less muddled. I just wish I could by a HDD and a vid card for the thing. Then we would be cooking with gas.

@Darthearl:Of course not, your a graphics whore and thus imposable to please. Next?

@Stormrider:Hot damn, comment of the week.

It's about time a 3rd party publisher put a little effort into developing their Wii software. Let's hope this can set a trend of people actually using the processing power of the system, and not just waggle all the time.

Okay, I re-watched it with more attention. Each object is rendered with quite a detail, and the viking helmet, for example, seems like it came out of Oblivion. It looks pretty darn good, to tell the truth. Also, the lighting effects look awesome.

the water looks good, not great but good for this gen. the armor itself looks doable on last gen systems.I dont see this as a big deal at all.

@irnchriz:
because all of the PS3 and 360 games have superb anti-aliasing right?

Is this some ironic joke? That tech looks like 5 years old. the only good looking thing in it is water lol .

@Foxstar Sixtail: Hur hur, casual dismissal of opinions is fun! I'm sure we should all be pleased that 3rd party publishers are finally getting graphics circa 2003 for the wii, but to be honest, they'll still be outsold by Wiifit: Stand on Me and Look at the Pretty Candle. Their market just isn't for games that fit onto other consoles.