Killzone 2 "developer" interview

[Vandenh]

The IGN hounds are still trying to find out about that Killzone 2 "demo" and have an interview (http://ps3.ign.com/articles/616/616591p1.html?fromint=1) with the Killzone 2 guys.
Is the Killzone sequence a fair example of what people can expect from realtime gameplay on PlayStation 3?

Jan-Bart: Yeah, it's basically a representation of the look and feel of the game we're trying to make.
So it is CGI and it took them half a year? I hope they did something else during that period.

[Meusli]

"it's basically a representation of the look and feel of the game we're trying to make."

This sounds like they haven't even started the game yet and don't even have a clue how it will turn out if you ask me. As for that CGI taking half a year to make =\.

[KarmaGhost]

Yeah, it's basically a representation of the look and feel of the game we're trying to make.So it's like really fancy concept art. When he says "look" he doesn't mean "that's what it looks like," he means "this is the concept."

[Paranoia]

Suddenly all that PS3 tech demos are not so hot after all.

[Varsity]

So it is CGI and it took them half a year? I hope they did something else during that period.
The game, maybe? :rolleyes:

[bjornbarspingvinen]

It´s not a surprise...fakey fakey, (EMOTION ENGINE bonanza all over again)

[Dirty Harry]

It´s not a surprise...fakey fakey, (EMOTION ENGINE bonanza all over again)
you guys are complete fucking morons, did they say that it was real time, NO THEY DIDNT. FUCK OFF!!!11111shiftoneone.

Anyways, if you could not tell that this was pre-rended and indeed not real time, then obviously you arent playing enough vadeo games.

[Worldcrafter]

Wow! The fanboys are out in droves this E3!

[Hizawky]

you guys are complete fucking morons, did they say that it was real time, NO THEY DIDNT. FUCK OFF!!!11111shiftoneone.

Anyways, if you could not tell that this was pre-rended and indeed not real time, then obviously you arent playing enough vadeo games.

Gears of War sure as hell fooled me.

[Furious Wang]

Drank sodas, played Halo2 and downloaded hentai I bet.

[Heretic Machine]

you guys are complete fucking morons, did they say that it was real time, NO THEY DIDNT.

Ya... they bascially did. Then a bunch of us said, "No, that's pre-rendered." And it's finally starting to get through the hype-machine.

[Lasakon]

To be fair to Sony, they never said it wasn't pre-rendered.

[MrWonderstuff]

Um whats the point of showing pre-rendered stuff at the unveiling of a games console?

Surely in-game is what its all about no?

Indeed why wasnt it mentioned this was a 'representation' of what the game may look like and not actually in-game footage? Misleading the public and press? Sounds like it.

[Reanimated]

Prerendered footage of the sequel to a very crappy game... :/

Game of the Show for sure.

[sebastard]

Even though very little information has come out so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the animation was made from game assets that were already in production. The actual Killzone developer may have farmed out that video production to a 3rd party and supplied them with models, textures and sound effects and said "make something awesome".

Since the hardware is still under development, the actual game code is probably the part that's the least advanced for most of the next-gen developers, but I'm sure they all have relatively accurate specs for polygon count, which means they are probably advanced enough in their art assets production (which is the time-intensive part of development anyways).

Oh and to whoever pointed out Gears of War, that's an XBox 360 game as far as I know, not a PS3 game.

From everything I've read, the PS3 Unreal 3 engine demo and the E3 Fight Night demo were the only real-time demos done (other than the tech demos).

And you know, I don't see why everyone is freaking out. The console is like a YEAR away from being released, so I think people had way too high expectations if they thought that Sony would be showing footage from 10+ games in real-time.

I'm sure the last thing they wanted was for the games to crash or be glitchy during their presentation (like Microsoft's infamous BSOD's during Windows keynotes).

The Unreal 3 demo was SUPER impressive, especially if it only took 2 months to port over to the PS3 hardware. But the Unreal codebase as a whole is very mature, and based on the fact that it's available as middleware for PC (Windows and Linux), XBox and PS2 already, it's probably very portable, so getting it up and running might have been easier than a from-scratch engine that other developers are working on.

[Liquidize105]

you guys are complete fucking morons, did they say that it was real time, NO THEY DIDNT. FUCK OFF!!!11111shiftoneone.

Anyways, if you could not tell that this was pre-rended and indeed not real time, then obviously you arent playing enough vadeo games.
Whenever you feel the impulse to lash out at somebody, do it with more tact wouldja?

The assumption is that the stuff would be realtime. After all, you can't play cgi.

[Meusli]

The one thing I do not get though is that if the unreal 3 and the fight night demos were the only real time ones, what were they running on. Were they running on a cell processor computer or were they running on a normal computer?. I would really like to know as the xbox360 demos, as most know, were running on a computer 1/3rd the power of the release system.

[Morrolan]

Also, if it's CGI, maybe you shouldn't do absolutely everything you can to make it seem like real-time. Putting it in first person, and showing 'gameplay' is a bit of a dirty trick.

[Morratut]

Very well said Liquidize105.

Sony, you can keep all your CG movies. You can also keep your stupid flying over landscapes,valleys and ducks in bath demos. I don't want to see Tekken 6 screens with 80000 polygons per sweat bead either.It doesn't mean anything.

We want games.

[Borys]

Sony = kings of hype.
They have SO MUCH to prove right now (in 2006). People are just people, stupid, like flashy stuff etc. I don't think Killzone will win the GOTS award it simply can't cause it wasn't a game technically.

[sebastard]

The assumption is that the stuff would be realtime. After all, you can't play cgi.

No.. that's YOUR assumption.. The console is a year away.. You can't expect it to be finalized and in a state where they can reliably demo a bunch of games from a bunch of developers.

They worked with the top dogs (EA and Epic) to get at least 2 working demos on what is probably alpha hardware, and then they had mocked-up videos for the rest, to at least give people an idea of what the games will look like. Mock-ups are a very real and effective way of showing prototypes and they are used in all industries to give people an idea of what to expect, when you aren't ready to show the final product. It's better to show a working mock-up than to show half-working final product.

Now if they had done this at the launch party, when the hardware hits stores a year from now, then ok I could understand why people would be mad and suspicious, but jesus christ this is the first time they unveil the product to the world and if any of you actually watched the interviews or read up on it, you'd know that dev kits have been in the hands of developers for, on average, 2-3 months.. Except for a place like EA where they can throw tosn of bodies at it, and a place like Epic which has arguably the best middleware engine on the market and some of the smartest people around, I doubt Sony would have had faith in the dev houses to put something up on the screen in real-time. If it had crashed, it would have looked bad for Sony, not for the developer.

I don't doubt that Sony would also have rather had real-time demos of the games.. I'm sure they asked or begged the developers to try to come up with something, and maybe EA and Epic were the only ones who delivered (and obviously some of the others just knew from the start they couldn't and commissioned those rendered versions).

Anyways, I would also have loved to see more real-time stuff, and I'm as anxious as anyone to see the thing in action, but I can be a little bit more realistic about it it seems. It's a YEAR away, relax people..

[RandomViolence]

Very well said Liquidize105.

Sony, you can keep all your CG movies. You can also keep your stupid flying over landscapes,valleys and ducks in bath demos. I don't want to see Tekken 6 screens with 80000 polygons per sweat bead either.It doesn't mean anything.

We want games.

Damn straight.

[A-Team]

Very well said Liquidize105.

Sony, you can keep all your CG movies. You can also keep your stupid flying over landscapes,valleys and ducks in bath demos. I don't want to see Tekken 6 screens with 80000 polygons per sweat bead either.It doesn't mean anything.

We want games.
Oh come on now. You know you liked the ducks if nothing else. Everyone just LOVES little yellow ducks bouncing around in a bathtub.

[MosBen]

If there's nothing at all suspect with showing pre-rendered videos at your console unveiling someone should just play The Increadibles. If they get questions about it they can say, "Well of course that's not really our game. It's what we're shooting for...eventually..., but of course you use pre-rendered stuff in your presentation! Everyone knows this!"

[Morratut]

/whisper........well ok :rolleyes: the ducks were pretty cool :D

[sebastard]

If there's nothing at all suspect with showing pre-rendered videos at your console unveiling someone should just play The Increadibles. If they get questions about it they can say, "Well of course that's not really our game. It's what we're shooting for...eventually..., but of course you use pre-rendered stuff in your presentation! Everyone knows this!"

I said it another thread but I'll say it again: Sony launched their console this week because it's E3, and because it's the best time to get the entire industry's attention, and because market pressure pretty much demanded a response to Microsoft's Xbox 360 unveiling.. If they had been able to show real-time demos for all those games, they would have, but they weren't.

Showing half-finished code and glitchy demos might seem "honest" to geeks who don't know spit about marketing and the industry, but it would have been SUICIDE from a business standpoint. They did what any other company would have in their situation. They showed mock-ups and gave people an idea of what to expect when they finally do release the product, 12+ months from now..

Do you think it would have been smarter for Sony to just not show or say anything about the PS3 until they had final hardware? Can you imagine what the backlash would have been from the press and the industry (which is really what E3 is about - everyone seems to forget that this isn't a show for us geeks, it's a show for the industry)?

[grammatoncleric]

Hideo Kojima was honest at E3 this year at least, even if Sony wasn't. Now that (MGS4) was a trailer.

Anyways, I didn't realize wishful thinking counted as good business these days. Maybe Sony should release PS4 video footage too. I'm sure they have a pretty good idea of what those games will probably look like as well.

[aversion2k]

Even though very little information has come out so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the animation was made from game assets that were already in production. The actual Killzone developer may have farmed out that video production to a 3rd party and supplied them with models, textures and sound effects and said "make something awesome".

Since the hardware is still under development, the actual game code is probably the part that's the least advanced for most of the next-gen developers, but I'm sure they all have relatively accurate specs for polygon count, which means they are probably advanced enough in their art assets production (which is the time-intensive part of development anyways).


The amount of animation was one of the main things that made me think it was fake. There was a crap load of animation in that which could probebly only be used in that scene. And I doubt those models are the in game models aswell. They could be heavly tweaked to be in game models.
I dont think the final will look as good as that video. None of the tech demos they had did.
As long as the developers can nail the look and feel of that video. And fix all of the first games problems. Then it should make a great fps.

[MentallyInept]

A Sony rep has just gone on the air and claimed that the KillZone 2 trailer was actual gameplay. Sony needs to get thier stories straight.

[B_Money]

Drank sodas, played Halo2 and downloaded hentai I bet.

What a coincidence, that's how I spent the last year and a half too.

[MosBen]

There's got to be a difference though between one company saying, here are some actual games that we've got coming in the next year or less and another company saying, "Hey! Look at this! This is what we'll do on our next system! <whispers under his breath> but this isn't actual in-game footage..." Sure, faced with a MS console dropping a year before theirs Sony had to show something, but even if it's "good business" that doesn't mean it's not petty and petulant, because it is. They're trying to take the wind out of MS' sails (sales?) but don't have anything real to actually do it with so they do with with some misleading presentations. Again, it may be good business, but it's still really petty.

[Hg-203]

What erks me the most is that Sony tried to pass this off as actual game play. Even if you take the argument that the models they are using for the CG is the same thing as what they will throw in the game its just a tech demo on what CELL can do at best. And to me graphics don’t sell the game to me. For me when I get two or three hours into a game if the graphics don’t affect game play, Splinter Cell and its shadows, then I don’t care. Even in Splinter Cell you just learn what to look out for more. While graphically the dynamic shadows/lighting doesn’t make the game play better. But game play wise we learn to stay in the shadows so it helps game play, but the most important fact is that it doesn’t define the game play it only sells the game for the first few hours at best. I mean look at StarCraft, or my favorite Total Annihilation, and how it still is so popular, even with its pathetic 2d, game play in the end has been and most likely will always be king in the gaming world.

/* edit, I have no clue where all the type-o's came from... I'm going to blame packet loss when I uploaded this post... yeah that's it packet loss... */

[RandomViolence]

or my favorite Total Annihilation, and how it still is so popular, even with its pathetic 2d sprites  , game play in the end has been and most likely will always be king in the gameing world.

Just wanted to point out that TA had 3D unit models, which was part of its appeal, the battles looked fuckin' fantastic with well animated 3D units. 3D gameplay was an integral part of TA and is what helped make it so fun. It's a personal favorite of mine, as well.