Crowd

Click this link, then watch "Gameplay Video 1" from the selection. Look at that crowd. It is the first really believeable crowd scene I've ever seen in a video game. That is not GTA, where a 'bustling' city street plays host to six pedestrians. That is Mardi Gras. That is Shinjuku on a Friday night. That is something that games have always been missing, a sense of dense population. That Hitman gameplay movie is what Patrice Desilets touched on in his GDC presentation, the physical sensation of moving through a crowd; it's what EA's Neil Young referenced when he talked about pushing the balance between functional gameplay processing versus graphics processing to 50-50 instead of 80-20. I imagine that when I pick up the game I will spend a lot of time just being in that crowd, strolling through it or standing still as it washes past 47. I'm giddily looking forward to seeing what happens when that crowd goes into pandemonium. The possibilities.

What games are capable of is advancing every day!