1. A variety of landscapes. Julian Eggebrecht has stated several times that there will be a huge-differencity in levels: they have levels which primarily take place over ocean, creepy areas, artic areas, deserts, canyons, swamps, lush farmlands, and alot more. Also they have 2 massive cities (1 of which you'll be firebombing, and 1 you will be defending). This is a really good thing....because I don't want to have to look at the same run-down-area everytime I play a level [cough, cough, gears].
2. Massive boss fights. If you've seen any of the lair pics....or seen any of the video interviews...you know there are going to be alot of massive boss fights with a variety of creatures. They have massive whale beasts, which act as troop transports/bombing transports, they have massive elephant-type creatures, which act as troop transports, they have a giant-sea serpent at ocean.....which suddenly comes to life as you get close to it, and tons more. The boss fights will be on a shadow-of-the-colossus level.
3. Killer story. Ok...I doubt this story will be "dreamfall" level(dreamfall is the game which has the best story ever), but it will be very good all it's own. In the 1st level, it's a 9/11 feeling...your city is under attack and you must mount your dragon and defend it. The continent you are own is succumbing to global-warming (caused by volcanic activity)..and your area is 1 of the few places with water, lush farmland, and food. The "enemy" invades yout city for supplies, they were cast out due to religous reasons. They twist around your perception, and make you think "is this war right? Should we be doing this", and to say the least, the enemy changes dramatically in the story. They thought
4. Beatiful Graphics. Ok...we have tons of despute about the graphics of this game. I hope you all realize the comments are basically made by nervous lemmings. The graphics right now....look amazing in it's own right, and could pass as a next-gen game...but it's only an alpha 
and the graphics will only get better.
5. Massive lord-of-the-ring battles. Have you seen how many people/dragons there are on screen???? I thought kameo, resistance, and heavenly sword had alot.....Lair just takes the cake. You have alot of dragons fighting in the air, and mass amount of foot-solders attacking each other/enemy dragons. From the alpha videos they appear to be pretty smart. When they fought your dragon, they stood away/pulled out bows/fired away (instead of just using their sword..).
6. Transitions of combat. Aerial-ground-dragon ground. All these combat types are very different. In the air, you must be graceful and accurate. On the ground, with Rohn, you have to be dodgy/agile (rohn doesn't have many weapons as a pilot), and on the ground with the dragon, you can just be a tank.
7. Gameplay. OK...we have tons of fanboys saying "it looks repetative", etc. Not only will it probably be awesome using the sixaxis to control the dragon, but it won't be boring at all. You won't be doing to the same thing over and over again (see gears...), and will have surprises thrown at you from everywhere. You'll have the choice to go around combat in 3 different ways (ground-aerial-dragon ground), you can swoop under bridges/through caves to go a different route, there will be massive boss fights where you have to think differently, massive lord of the ring battles in which you just tank everything,1-1 aerial dragon fights, and tons of different ways in which you have to play the game. This game will not get repetative......I bet my 360/future PS3 on it.
8. Longeivity/replay. Ok....we don't have a good projection about how long the game is, so I won't go there. But Julian Eggebrecht has stated several times there is a hell of alot of replay, inspired by the rouge squadren medal systems.
- 9. Detail/technologies. There is tons of detail in the game. The fire/smoke/fog are all volumetric.
- The fire, lava, rain, wind, and fur are all rendered in real time.
- There are parallax shaders on almost every object, including fire and clouds.
- Water effects, like waves, are in real time.
- Every second of gameplay, lair renders many physics effects, from your dragon, down to the clock of an enemy.
- All enemies and allies have their own physics-driven animations, and have individually programmed ragdolls.
- Progressive mesh allows a large amount of detail to be placed on objects upclose, and far away.
- All of the lights, shadows, reflections, and highlights in Lair are in HDR, and are rendered in real-time by the Cell and RSX, thus allowing the lighting scheme to completely change, just like the time of day does in-game, however, due to the advanced programming of the lighting system, it will be ever-changing, and rarely, if ever the same twice.
10. Audio. The score/composition for lair is composed by john debenny (spelling?). The man who did the score for passion of the christ/sin city. All compatible with 7.1 audio, and HDMI.
11. It's being done by the people who did Rouge Squadren. The 1 for the N64 was amazing, the 1st one for the gamecube was amazing, the 3rd was ok....but paled in comparison to the other 2.
SO....I've given my reasons why it will be AAA. It has a few problems right now with the sixaxis, but they can fix those out in the time frame. The game has no frame rate problems right now (they will add more so this could become troublesome...but they won't make this game anything under 30fps). They are always learning new tricks on how to do things...so at least 30fps will be nice.
Log in to comment