Credit where credit is due. If the game works as well as it looks, it may have been worth the wait.
How good does it really look? The hardware seems okay, but the animations in CM:SF always looked like the people were walking underwater and everything seemed to take way too long to accomplish. It was the same in CM:BO - there is video online of, for example, Universal Carriers spinning on their axes in a few seconds flat, whereas in the game it could take the better part of an entire game turn to excrutiatingly execute a simple pivot. I look at the awkward stances on some of those G.I.'s and have to wonder if things have improved.
The 3D models for the humans don't seem realistic, either - better than CMX1, obviously, but still kind of alien.
The worst are the German uniforms, which are supposed to be wool. They look like lumps of play-dough with a strange sheen to them, and despite the fact there were a number of shades of "field grey" in existence by 1944, I don't think they managed to capture a sense of a single one of them with whatever hue that is supposed to be in the screenshots, monitor settings notwithstanding. I thought AndrewTF had some really great uniform mods for CMX1 and is probably the benchmark as far as these things go; his uniform cloth was outstanding and gave a real sense of both colour and texture.
That nitpicking aside, the terrain is obviously evocative of Normandy, or at least more of Normandy than of Syria. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about it being evocative of CM:BO than of any other "reality".
