There are quite a few games already out which made claims of featuring destructible environments. There are some games in development but are they really going to have fully destructible buildings, trees, cars etc?

There's no reason to doubt such claims. Games like Mercenaries already have [mostly] destructible environments, so I doubt see why Current Gen power wouldn't expand on the foundations that have already been set down.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is supposed to have destructible environments.

http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=8471

Yeah looks promissing, but what do you think to the levels of environmental damage in 360 games. Is it enough or should there be more?
Too much debris and smoke is only going to hinder your progress, but what's the point in games developers saying in their game you can blow up anything when really all the rocket launcher is going to do is leave a little patch of soot behind on a brick and morter building!!?. I haven't played Black, only seen demos, but I thought there would be a game out by now with as much depth to the destruction.

Well Battlefield: Bad company will have completely destructible (sp?) envirorment.

If it was possible on the PS2 (red faction) im sure its possible on 360!

quote Teeb

If it was possible on the PS2 (red faction) im sure its possible on 360!

destructable? sure, yeah.
destructable in a realistic way (meaning using the physics engine to have buildings, trees, rocks, etc being damaged and destroyed as they would be in real life, according to the amount and direction of force being applied to them)? probably not.

probably only the PS3 would be capable of handling such immence calculations and graphics processing.

What about PC?

IMO, neither the 360, PS3 or even top of the range PC's are capable of full, realistic destructible environments yet. Crysis has a lot of destructible areas and it looks awesome, but it's still a far cry (no pun intended) from real life.

It's going to be a good few years until we even glimpse environments in games that come close to having fully realistic physics etc.

Stranglehold allows you to destroy everything in the enviroment down to the rebar that holds the building together. Full-sized battlefield destruction and ground destruction in particular are a long way off (I'd say the PS4 and the next Xbox should do the trick on that though), though steps like Digital Molecular Matter (Star Wars: Force Unleashed) and next-gen gore engines are close at hand.

yeah i cant wait until realistic destructable environments are the norm in games. like when its unusual for you to not be able to damage every single wall, ceiling and object in the game in a realistic fashion.

i want a Holodeck dammit!

Most Worms game had it. I don't see why it's not possible.