SoF's Eye Candy

GHOUL rendering system

The game runs with Raven's GHOUL rendering system, which allows the enemy characters to have extremely detailed figures and faces. The Raven team noted that there will be dozens of different faces in the game, each customizable with facial hair, different haircuts, hats, etc. With so many combinations, they promise you won't be running into the same guy twice. The textures in fact, are very detailed even up close - it reminded me a lot of the visual quality of S3TC.

That can't feel good

Exquisitely detailed animation

Each enemy character has 250 motion captured animations. This proves important because of the locational damage (26 different areas) implemented in SoF. The myriad animations give so many possibilities. Shoot a guy in the leg, and he'll go down clutching his wounded leg and possibly limp away. Pop a round in an enemy's head and depending on your weapon power, he'll end up with a hole in his head or not much of a head left at all. Use the sniper rifle and put one in an enemy's throat - the character will clutch at his throat and collapse in a fountain of blood. You can even shoot the gun out of an enemy's hand - he'll drop the weapon, shake his hand in pain, and then try to run away. Use an Uzi and the guy will shake and buckle his body with each bullet. Shooting corpses on the ground with a high powered pistol will cause them to reflexively shake upward like in the movies.

Each weapon does a different kind of damage, so shooting someone in the leg with a pistol versus a shotgun will give very different results. With all this graphic violence, it's easy to understand why they only showed SoF in the back room; mainstream media were out on the floor hunting for bloody games to chastise.