It's Good to be A God
God of War III is coming, and we got to see it. Got to see how it plays, got to see what's new and, yes, we finally got to see what it looks like. Want to know what we know? Step inside, let's chat, shall we?
Published: February 13, 2009
"We're not going to be announcing the release date..." SCEA PR honcho Ron Eagle delivered semi-bummer number one before the first frame of footage of God of War III was shown. We say "semi-bummer" only because, well, we were still going to see the game and finally get a peek at Kratos running around in the PlayStation 3's hardware.
Semi-bummer number two: God of War III looks... well, it looks like God of War II. A lot like God of War II. I know it probably amounts to sacrilege in light of recent comments from original God of War director David Jaffe after he saw the game, but if what he saw and what we saw were the same thing, then it may come down to the video being blown up on a massive theatre screen. Part of it comes down to the fact that Sony's Santa Monica studio pumped such seemingly impossible this-shouldn't-be-running-on-the-PS2-hardware visuals out of the first two games that the leap from the PS2 to the PS3 just wasn't nearly as pronounced as we thought it might be.
Now, before you (and the art team at the Santa Monica Studios) start running for the razors, understand that there are a few major differences that can at least partially account for the fact that, at least in our initial impressions, God of War III didn't absolutely melt our faces off with the visuals. The first is that there are no more tricks being pulled -- tricks that were, admittedly, rather hard to spot when the game was running on the PS2, but tricks nonetheless; the Kratos you see running around the environments slashing away at scores of enemies (of which there are a whole lot more this time around, but we'll get to that in a second) is the exact same model that you'll see when the camera pulls in close for cutscenes or for Ol' Pale Skin to deliver one of his rage-filled quips.
Sony is proud of this fact, as well they should be; this Kratos, which you can see in prototypical half-face close-up when the demo starts, has pores. His face is haggard and detailed and when the camera pulls back, all that detail doesn't go anywhere -- even if we couldn't actually see it. It doesn't even seem like that big a deal, but SCES Santa Monica wants to do it all for real this time. No camera pans away while a model is swapped out, no drop to pre-rendered video using in-game assets; what you see when you're playing the game is God of War III, running on the hardware 100% of the time.
It's even more impressive when you start to realize the scale of what they're trying to do with the game this time around. Sure, Kratos may look largely similar to how he did on the PS2 (though even just his model -- up from about 5,000 polygons to 20,000 polys this time around -- wouldn't even run on the PS2 hardware as it exists on the PS3), but when you slowly start to realize that significant portions of the world he's running around on are in fact just a smallish blob on the overall whole of a moving titan slowly clawing its way up Mt. Olympus as Kratos takes the fight to Zeus himself... Well, it starts to make just a little more sense that the environments this time around aren't teeming with the kind of normal-/bump-mapped, slime-coated filters that have become associated with the HD generation of hardware.
This small-on-a-huge-scale approach will be infinitely more obvious once you take a look at a version of the trailer we were shown before the actual gameplay started. Again, it's captured with entirely in-game footage, with no pre-rendered tricks or cutaways (only a few more dramatic camera angles that wouldn't really be possible if you were actually playing the game), and we've got the whole shebang in 1080p sitting under the video link at the top of the page there. Do yourself a favor and start the download (it's a big file), we'll wait for you here...
Semi-bummer number two: God of War III looks... well, it looks like God of War II. A lot like God of War II. I know it probably amounts to sacrilege in light of recent comments from original God of War director David Jaffe after he saw the game, but if what he saw and what we saw were the same thing, then it may come down to the video being blown up on a massive theatre screen. Part of it comes down to the fact that Sony's Santa Monica studio pumped such seemingly impossible this-shouldn't-be-running-on-the-PS2-hardware visuals out of the first two games that the leap from the PS2 to the PS3 just wasn't nearly as pronounced as we thought it might be.
Now, before you (and the art team at the Santa Monica Studios) start running for the razors, understand that there are a few major differences that can at least partially account for the fact that, at least in our initial impressions, God of War III didn't absolutely melt our faces off with the visuals. The first is that there are no more tricks being pulled -- tricks that were, admittedly, rather hard to spot when the game was running on the PS2, but tricks nonetheless; the Kratos you see running around the environments slashing away at scores of enemies (of which there are a whole lot more this time around, but we'll get to that in a second) is the exact same model that you'll see when the camera pulls in close for cutscenes or for Ol' Pale Skin to deliver one of his rage-filled quips.
Sony is proud of this fact, as well they should be; this Kratos, which you can see in prototypical half-face close-up when the demo starts, has pores. His face is haggard and detailed and when the camera pulls back, all that detail doesn't go anywhere -- even if we couldn't actually see it. It doesn't even seem like that big a deal, but SCES Santa Monica wants to do it all for real this time. No camera pans away while a model is swapped out, no drop to pre-rendered video using in-game assets; what you see when you're playing the game is God of War III, running on the hardware 100% of the time.
It's even more impressive when you start to realize the scale of what they're trying to do with the game this time around. Sure, Kratos may look largely similar to how he did on the PS2 (though even just his model -- up from about 5,000 polygons to 20,000 polys this time around -- wouldn't even run on the PS2 hardware as it exists on the PS3), but when you slowly start to realize that significant portions of the world he's running around on are in fact just a smallish blob on the overall whole of a moving titan slowly clawing its way up Mt. Olympus as Kratos takes the fight to Zeus himself... Well, it starts to make just a little more sense that the environments this time around aren't teeming with the kind of normal-/bump-mapped, slime-coated filters that have become associated with the HD generation of hardware.
This small-on-a-huge-scale approach will be infinitely more obvious once you take a look at a version of the trailer we were shown before the actual gameplay started. Again, it's captured with entirely in-game footage, with no pre-rendered tricks or cutaways (only a few more dramatic camera angles that wouldn't really be possible if you were actually playing the game), and we've got the whole shebang in 1080p sitting under the video link at the top of the page there. Do yourself a favor and start the download (it's a big file), we'll wait for you here...
