Dude, your face...

Bold Pilot Log, Entry #9

Actually your whole body. Yes, in EVE. You can see people in EVE now... Ah well, not really. It's just some bloke in a makeshift apartment staring at his billion-ISK fleet. The more interesting part, however, is the story of all this.

It's been talked about a lot, it's been worked on a lot, and now finally, after much rage and red, the first piece is finally out. On Tranquility and of the way. Because what the characters walking inside their capitain's quarters' really are can be called as a tech demo. Now they know how to do a few things.

First, they sort of know how to control character avatars in an interior environment. The movement is smooth, though it definitely can use some work. The way the character reacts is a bit awkward in that it sometimes follows the camera angle, sometimes not. On top of that, I'm not entirely sure the WASD controls were the best choice. I find that a lot of times you start typing 'wwwwwwwwww' in some text window instead of walking forward. I personally would welcome a point n click approach included, so that the damn space barbie can walk up to that couch and sit without having to play a platformer game towards it. Oh wait...

Second, they now know how to do the station interiors themselves, lot of work ahead, huh?

Third, we can see a glimpse of the new interface in there. Yes, I'm talking about the active ship menu. This being CCP we're talking about, it is quite likely, that they aren't going to design something entirely new when they have a few bit lying about. So yeah, get ready for floating transparent buttons and windows overlay.

I can't stop myself but continue my verdict with the statement that the biggest plus I cna see is they have a lot of potential there. God knows, I might even get out of the CQ and mess around with other people in station. I also want to meet Scotty, the docking manager. The graphics are damn good too, but I'm not sure about the optimization. Got some flickers here and there on high settings, but I only have a dx10 card so that I cna contend with.
After carefully evaluating the situation with this expansion (read: raise eyebrow, nod head, sip beer, relax eyebrow) the current standpoint is: 'So what...' Yeah, I'm left a bit indifferent. After much excitement, it wasn't that big of an impression. Maybe it's just me, but the content presented here seems to be irrelevant to my interests. So, is Incarna a fail or a win? In some sense, both. It failed to leave the amount of immersion I was expecting. It's like two worlds in the same game. I suspect this has to do with the difference in graphic detail and lighting. In space, you have fairly low-res textures on most ships. In the station, everything is smooth, shiny, clear. It breaks the game into two. This, I feared from the start. What we can see here is technically amazing and I must applaud the people that put the effort and imagination behind it.
Because it is apparent on every surface and every little movement, that it was a whole lot of work, trial and failure to make Slideshow Online available parallel with Spreadsheets online.
But when I look at the screen something gets lost. It really is apprent when you look at people's new and old portraits. Something that was very EVE, got lost in the process. I am not a very good writer and thus I can only convey this in one way: MOAR RUST.

There is another huge feature though that made me smile. As you may know, I'm a gunnery pilot. And, ladies, gentlemen and capsuleers, let me present you the new turrets! The purity of awesome just got a new definition. I really like the new turrets. The only minor Issue I could find is that while the old ones were generally light-colored, their icons could be seen in space next to the targets. However, the new turret graphics came with new icons, meaning that now there are dark, green, brown, even black dominant colors, making it difficult to see which targets have one on them at one glance.

So. One room. One guy. 67 new turret models. Good work, CCP. Now please finish it.

Sessym out.