SE5 screenshots ugly?

[Noble713]

For many people, myself included, the level of immersion in a game is directly related to how realistic the graphics look. If the characters on my screen feel fake I won't have as much fun playing the game. I'll take Oblivion (agreed it's not as fun as Morrowind and clearly dumbed-down for the Xbox 360 crowd, but it's BEAUTIFUL) and KOTOR 1&2 over Kings Quest 3 and Zork any day.

As for performance issues and upgrading systems: get with the times. If you want to purchase and play new games, expect to get new hardware to run them. Fortunately SE5 is easy to mod, but I can already see the outrage when mods start coming out with beautiful, high-poly ship models that cripple the performance of the P2-300MHz 64MB RAM systems running in software mode that seem to be all the rage amongst the turn-based game grognards.

And to snip any possible counter-arguments about the gameplay in such mods probably sucking b/c the modders spent too much time on graphics: there is a HUGE wealth of easily available 3d starship MESHES for the more established sci-fi universes. A good 3d program (like 3DS Max) and a DirectX .x exporter plugin, and having quality ship models takes virtually no time at all.

I love Space Empires, I've been playing since a friend loaned me Space Empires II waaaay back in 8th or 9th grade, but I'm glad the series is finally being dragged into the modern era of gaming.