Reactive environments (aka deformable terrain) are fairly difficult to achieve. Recent games have begun to attempt this (Red Faction, I believe), but it's going to take a fair amount of reinventing the technology. This has to do with how BSP's (the 3D map of the environment) work, and that the whole thing would have to be rebuilt any time something was changed (imagine having to wait for the map to reload every time you launched a rocket). Most 3D engines rely on being able to pre-compute where everything in the map is, to cut down on rendering time once the action starts (allowing for higher FPS). Maybe someone who played Red Faction can relate how successful they were with addressing these problems.
Further adding to the complexity is that now you have to account for building physics. When you blow away that wall, does the roof come down? How much wall needs to be present before the whole thing collapses? How much building has to be added to each map (that you normally wouldn't see) to accomodate possible destruction? All of this greatly increases processing overhead.
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Reactive environments (aka deformable terrain) are fairly difficult to achieve. Recent games have begun to attempt this (Red Faction, I believe), but it's going to take a fair amount of reinventing the technology. This has to do with how BSP's (the 3D map of the environment) work, and that the whole thing would have to be rebuilt any time something was changed (imagine having to wait for the map to reload every time you launched a rocket). Most 3D engines rely on being able to pre-compute where everything in the map is, to cut down on rendering time once the action starts (allowing for higher FPS). Maybe someone who played Red Faction can relate how successful they were with addressing these problems. Further adding to the complexity is that now you have to account for building physics. When you blow away that wall, does the roof come down? How much wall needs to be present before the whole thing collapses? How much building has to be added to each map (that you normally wouldn't see) to accomodate possible destruction? All of this greatly increases processing overhead.