Rampancy

Next Generation has picked up a post from Tadhg Kelly's blog, suggesting that as in-engine cutscenes become more detailed, the gap between those images and photorealism becomes actually more pronounced-- and that the only real resolution to this problem is a return to full motion video for cutscenes, using real actors. Halo is cited as support for this:

Games like the Metal Gear series, the Grand Theft Auto series, Max Payne, Resident Evil, Halo and many others now use exclusively animated actors to tell their stories, costing millions of dollars in animation and time.

The problem is that they don't really work.

Myself, I posted a comment that I think moving to obviously non photorealistic styles makes more sense. Can one imagine what the cutscenes of Halo and Halo 2 would have cost to film using real actors?

This week's Weekly What's Update points out that Bungie's "Fight the Flood" T-shirts have raised over $120,000 to help the American Red Cross' relief efforts following the devestation of Hurricane Katrina. There are also a few movie tidbits ("ages away") word on Bungie's new digs (ready, moving next week) and a visit from Claude "Louis Wu" Errera of Bungie.org, whom we've been promised is not going to find out anything about the "secret" new project.

A few items of note:

• You won't need a credit card for Xbox Live Gold on the Xbox 360, thanks to prepaid cards you can buy for cash.
• Major Nelson's "blogcast" gets a mention in the "New and Notable" section of the iTunes Podcasting section.
• Xbox Solution does a rundown on various Xbox Live statistics. Apparently 15% of XBL subscribers are women.
• TeamXbox thinks the Origen site is a countdown to a Halo 3 announcement, based on the translation of a message in Latin hidden in the site.