Hi.
I know your question was for Chris, but I'll chime in for a bit.
Personally, I happened to like WE8LE a lot, because it was a much more balanced game than PES4, even though you could still do some fantastic attacks.
WE7I was also great. I don't think I played WE6FE that much, so I'm not able to comment. I wasn't able to play imports at the time yet. Maybe I'm missing a lot in my PES education by not having played it
About Konami being developing a true next-gen engine... If that is truly happening, it might not be happening for 2010... Seabass will only release such an overhaul when he's fully confortable with it. He has dabbled with full 360º controls at a time, but he scrapped them when he noticed that the game was not ready for them yet.
Still, I do have a legitimate question for all - and let's try to keep this as civil and as educated as possible, since my question will be genuine, and not intended to be judgemental nor provoking.
The question has 3 parts:
1 - What is it that, in this current PES, keeps you saying that it is a last-gen
engine.
2 - If you do, then name a couple of things in FIFA - acclaimed by all to have a next-gen engine - that can only be done because of the next-gen
engine.
3 - What is it, in those features, that prevent them from being implemented in PES's current
engine? What proof do you have of such claim? For instance: animations can be motion-captured, foot-planting is all about animations and physics, AI is all about algorithms... As far as I know, this just requires implementation effort, not a brand new engine.
My thoughts on this subject are the following.
From a technical standpoint, PES's engine is as next-gen as it comes. I mean, it produces code for next-gen platforms. What else does it need to do? It is simply based on the PS2 mechanics - but where does that mean that it is a limitation of the engine whatsoever?
FIFA is a different case. They were going to have a team that was going to develop the next-gen game, and they decided not to build upon their - in my opinion - terrible PS2 mechanics and gameplay, and start from scratch. They had already done this before in several times, in the same console's lifecycle. They decided to create a next-gen engine that was completely different from their PS2 one.
They happened to get it right, and improve so much that people attribute this magnificence of improvement to this new engine.
I think there's a wrong cause-and-effect here. It's the people who make the engine who also make the great features. The great features do not come from the engine. The great features are in, and they run on this engine.
Reinforcing my point:
Take Halo. Hale 3 is a similar game to Halo 1 and Halo 2. It has more flashy graphics, different physics, and I don't know what else, but the game mechanics are similar. It has similar gameplay, on an Xbox260 engine.
PES was a successful franchise. PES5 was a game that was built on ISS Pro Evo 2, adopted its mechanics and used them in a PS2
engine.
PES2008 is a not so great game that was build on PES4/5, adopted some of the PES6 mechanics, and uses them in a XBox360/PS3
engine.
What is it that makes it NOT a true next-gen
engine?
You can debate all you want about the gameplay being similar to the older games. I'll take that - that is a thing that I like, but I admit that some may not like it.
Still, the fact that PES2008 was a not so good game has no bearing to the engine.
PES4 was also a not so good game, and the engine gave us great games.
Thanks for anyone who takes the time to try and clear this up for me.
Best regards,
Paulo Tavares