You know, I used to work on Unreal, and a designer would say "hey, here's my level, and this train comes out here, and a guy jumps out here, and this big monster is here and there should be an explosion here..." He's pointing around the level, telling me all the cool things that are going to happen. "I've got this swinging hook over here, and you can jump on it and swing off it..." All these great things, and none of them are live! It's multiple days for him to go back and forth to the programmer, potentially weeks to get all that stuff up and running, to get that level finished. Now I walk into the designer's office, and he's got it all done. He's got it all up and running - oh, and he's added five other cool things. That can define the difference between a good game and a great game.

So, does it take longer to create the models? Sure, that's where this 50 per cent increase comes in. Instead of doing 8,000 polygon models, we're doing 8,000,000 polygon models. We have one model that's 14,000,000 polys! It's insane! But we have the ability to make the 14,000,000 polygons count, thanks to normal mapping and the sophisticated lighting that we have. So it won't really be 14 million polygons when it's used, but the appearance of all 14 million will be there - you will see all 14 million polygons, thanks to the power of graphics card like the NVIDIA 6800 and things like that. So it's worth it - now it's worth the investment.