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. You can easily max out any console by running bloated code, Proper Dev’s code as efficiently as they can to get the best visuals/physics out of the hardware. I believe guerilla games still have a lot of tricks up their sleeves to get better results.

  2. ‘They’ve worked on DLC for Killzone 3.’

    So the game just have been released, but DLC could be already finished. Man, I hate DLC.

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