The water in Destiny is a colossal disappointment. (Destiny)

by uberfoop , Seattle-ish, Monday, July 21, 2014, 23:30 (3559 days ago) @ Cody Miller
edited by uberfoop, Monday, July 21, 2014, 23:43

Probably my least favourite water in any Bungie FPS.

I find it quite a bit more pretty than the water in Marathon 2, which wasn't transparent or reflective at all.

M2's water sits naturally in its environment; the lower graphical baseline means that the simplicity isn't much of a problem. It doesn't need transparency or an anisotropic reflection model in order to look appropriate. Under a microscope it's not very striking, but it benefits the overall scene composition.

As a particular sticking point, Marathon's water is graphically stable. The reflection model (per-polygon ambient-only) isn't overstepping the graphical capabilities in ways which cause visual artifacts*.

It's obviously astronomically graphically simpler than Destiny's, but I actually do like it more. Lots of 90's games have delicious water IMO (though that becomes especially true when you're dealing with fourth-gen consoles).

*Outside of Destiny, Halo 2 is the other Bungie FPS that is arguably guilty of this. Some spots of water don't even bother to project a cubemap for environmental reflections, instead choosing to display an image that has a fixed location on-screen. The aesthetic effect is not all that dissimilar from the ghost image glitch in the 360 emulation.