We Haven’t Maxed Out the PS3 – Guerrilla Games

It’s the obligatory quip from proud developers who’ve just performed the impossible. “We’ve maxed out [insert hardware name here]. That’s it. That baby is maxed.” Ironically, the humble guys over at Killzone 3 developer Guerrilla Games have a different song to sing. Sure, they’ve extracted wonders out of Sony’s renowned powerhorse but, according to co-founder, Hermen Hulst, they won’t be making the same mistake of declaring PS3 mastery like they did before. He said:

At the end of every project, we say, ‘we’ve maxed it out.’ I made that mistake at the end of Killzone 2. We felt that we’d pushed it absolutely to the max. We now know from experience there’s always more mileage in the tech. You can always find new techniques.

For example, in Killzone 2, we introduced anti-aliasing to get rid of the jagged edges. We’re using that, but an improved version that is much more efficient, so we actually leave space for more detail, bigger environments and more polygons. Compared to Killzone 2, Killzone 3’s polygon count is three times as high, so we’ve been able to find new space, probably averaging out to 40 percent.

The studio head also touched upon the omission of online co-op in Killzone 3, stating:

We considered online co-op, but there comes a point where you say, ‘Will it be diluted if we push forward, or is it going to require the same resource that’s needed for the competitive online multiplayer?’ We chose what the core team found to be the most pleasant online experience, and that’s sitting with a pal on the couch.

Finally, Hulst also talks about the upcoming Killzone game on Sony’s new handheld, the NGP. Though Guerrilla Games are not developing the title, Hulst is confident the franchise is in capable hands with LittleBigPlanet (PSP) developer, SCE Cambridge. He mentions:

We would never ask another team to do Killzone if we weren’t comfortable. SCE Cambridge is a team that has a lot of Killzone experience. We’ve had probably 25 of their staff help at the end phases of Killzone 2 and DLC. They’ve worked on DLC for Killzone 3. They’re well versed in the Killzone universe. I think they’ve shown with the development of LittleBigPlanet for PSP that they can take someone else’s property and make a great handheld experience.

Source: IndustryGamers

29 Comments

  1. Didn’t realise it was SCE Cambridge. HYPE+.

    • Yep it is. Those guys are very good. Came up with prototype PS Eye games and EyePet. They also developed PlayTV

      • Blimey.

      • Yer done lot for PS Eye games and EyePet latter on. Sadly the are only human and did really bad job with PlayTV.

    • and…. Primal

    • And TV Superstars: a wonderful family game for the Move that was somewhat overlooked.

  2. Corr, Guerilla really do show well what a single platform developer can do for a system.

  3. Guerilla Are pure awesome.

  4. Oh. How have I got this wrong? I thought you were going to be able to play through the whole kz3 campaign in online coop. Where did I get that from? That was a huge selling point for me.

  5. one of the main reasons i am getting this game is for the offline co-op campaign,i love going through campaigns with one of my friends,unfortunately its hard to find offline co-op these days,they made a great decision incorporating this.

    • Really? I didn’t even know about that feature. That makes not being able to afford it even more painful.

  6. Could they not have incorporated both online and offline co-op ?

    I really enjoyed the RE5 co-op online campaign.

    Also if it was online you could then use the move and sharpshooter if you had one rather than just the DS3

    DR-DAVROS

    • Online co-op in RE5 was incredible. Disappointed that the Killzone series is still so stubborn about not including it, online co-op makes every game better.

  7. Is it just me who’s not overly impressed about the graphics in the KZ series? Everyone was creaming over how good 2 was and I personally don’t think it was a patch on Uncharted 2. I’ve only played the demos of KZ3, but there’s nothing within them that made me think ‘Wow’.

    • I thought KZ2’s graphics were (and still are) very impressive, although all the scenes I’ve seen in KZ3 haven’t impressed me graphically for some reason.

      • I’m with Raider, I thought the Killzone 2 graphics were great, though I can’t comment on KZ 3 as I haven’t played it yet.

        My tv is a 47″ LED, it could be the colour settings on your tv is maybe making it look too drab

      • I’m not saying the graphics were bad, just that I wasn’t as impressed as some, and that in my opinion they weren’t comparable to Uncharted 2.

      • well that’s because they aren’t really comparable UC2 is 3rd person and KZ2 is FPS, they aren’t the same type of games.

        though UC2 has got amazing graphics and definitely wins the battle, KZ2 is a superb looking FPS, dust particles and so on, and from the demo, KZ3 has a lot more going on with snow and other stuff.

        but as I said you can’t really compare 2 different styles of games on their graphics as they are both doing completely different things.

  8. i loved the offline co-op and now finally my copy has arrived in the post today cant wait to sit down with my brother and kill some helghast but does anyone know if the servers are up i cant connect to multiplayer ?

  9. Great of them to discuss the game and the hardware right after it’s ready. Also… massive surprise to the polygon count. Bloody hell, that’s giving it some!

    • Yeah, that’s shocked me as well. KZ2 was beautiful enough, but with 3 times the polys AND improvements elsewhere… it’s quite stunning news.

      I know some people say poly counts don’t matter any more, and it’s all down to shaders, lighting, blah blah blah… but more detailed models can’t be anything but good news.

      • Agreed. When I was modelling in 3D during my degree, I remember seeing the massive shift that we see everywhere these days. A high polygon count simply wasn’t cutting it and multi-layered textures, shaders, great lighting, etc, was definitely the way forward. However, we still see “boxes” in games and it’s nice to know that the higher polygon count has literally taken the edge off of things. :-)

  10. Been hoping for my copy to arrive today but it hasn’t. Roll on tomorrow.

    • My postman has got later and later – just got it at 3pm!

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