Heavenly Sword Gameplay Looking Excellent
While attending the SPU training session on Thursday at GDC 2007, Playstation Universe was able to see an example of gameplay footage from Heavenly Sword. Due to the technical nature of the event, the video gaming press for the most part avoided the event. Boy, did they miss out.
While discussing the AI behind the game, Sony showed an example of the AI in action, which included a minute and a half clip of gameplay footage. The session had been prefaced by a warning that all photography or video recording was prohibited, and the clip was prefaced by the good old “this is just a tech demo” qualifier, but I found myself mesmerized by the visuals almost to the point of ignoring their demonstration of the AI.
The game, they said, used two separate AI programs. First the game calculated actions based on battalions, choosing how to orient and group themselves, then an individual soldier AI program took over.
The scene started out with an in-engine cutscene which looked like the opening of the game, and then segued into the first level in which you need to kill four hundred opponents within about a minute or so.
The game had dazzling visual effects, such as depth of field, motion blurring and amazing anti-aliasing, and it also had much improved textures over the last time I saw the game in action at TGS 2006. The lighting was incredible, and the camera angles and physics were nothing short of superb.
Being a technical demo of course, it is unlikely that the footage shown was from the actual development version of their engine. Often times a developer will gloss over some of their current jobs on a title in order to make a demo that seems nearly complete. The footage shown, however, was nothing short of impressive, demo or not. While the footage wasn’t final, the demo looked excellent, and seemed as if it had the potential to be one of the most visually impressive games to date.
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