Rant 1: During the Genesis3D demo, there was an elder-statesman-pundit-type parked in the back of the room. During much of the demo, he chimed in with unhelpful commentary like "that's what it's all about". Finally at the end of the demo, he ranted about how everything was gonna be 3D in a few years, even file browsers, utilities, and operating systems. His comment garnered the expected amount of eye-rolling, but I'm wondering how pervasive this philosophy is.
Frankly, I don't even see 2D games going away. Last time I was in Las Vegas, I spent $3 to play an immersive VR-headset version of Pac Man. The game was awful! The rules of Pac Man lend themselves very poorly to a 3D Doom-like environment. While some games improve when translated into 3D (Berzerk to Wolfenstein), some get worse.
His comment rather reminded me of how, in the late 80's, picture-phones were gonna change everything. Rather than changing everything, they found their videoconferencing niche.
Rant 2: Why are 3D hero characters proportioned so weirdly? The rule seems to be as follows:
Female adventurers have gigantic breasts
Male adventurers have tiny heads
I think the best example of this is Lara Croft, who's built like Courtney Cox in a padded bra, and the main guy from Daikatana, who's got a head slightly larger than a tennis ball. They are basically comic-book proportions, but I don't think they translate all that well to computer animation. When comic-books are movie-ized, they usually tone down the heros' ridiculous "Mr. Universe with cantaloupe head" proportions. Why do they keep it in the games?
Well, I guess it'll keep Miles "The human Frazetta painting" O'Keefe in business as a computer-game model :)
