We hear this a lot. Physics have been an accepted part of games since the late 90's. Karma and Havok both made physics engines widely available for game developers. PhysX is built into every NVidia card. Not exactly revolutionary technology. Yet few games go deep in their use of physics and gameplay. Underworld Ascendant does...
Let's take the simple door as an example. In most games doors are just things you open or close. Opening the door is usually just playing a simple animation and turning its physics collider off so that you can walk through it.
A door in the Underworld is physically modeled out as a heavy wood or metal object attached to pivoting hinges, optionally with a locking mechanism. Doors have parameters for physical strength, resistance to fire damage, resistance to magic, their acoustic blocking factor, strength and complexity of any lock. What does this mean for when a player encounters a door?
...
