10 Video Games That Blew Your Mind (Without You Realising)

A revolutionary element of a game doesn't have to be its main gimmick, or even something that's around for a terribly long time. Now, this may seem counter-intuitive, seeing as how if you've done something extraordinary with your game, you would want to share it with people as much as possible. But Bungie had a different idea when they made Halo 3.

See, the water in the opening level of Halo 3 was, at the time, some of the most cutting-edge water graphics ever implemented in a video game. The rendering on the water was absolutely insane for its time. Most noticeable is the physics model of the water, how objects will float and then sink at different times depending on their mass and size. The rendering paints parts of the water to have varying flow rates.

When you really look into what it takes to properly render and portray water in a video game realistically, what Halo 3 does for one story mission and a few online maps is kinda incredible. And while Reach would prove to have a more advanced water engine, Halo 3 got the ball rolling.