Het blad Computer & Videogames had een interview met Chuck Osieja, de Underground 2 producer....
In het interview kwam naar voren dat EA bezig is met een nieuw deel van de Need for Speed serie. Er wordt onder andere een hoop gesleuteld aan de graphics. Voor meerdere details, verwijs ik je naar het onderstaande interview:
quote:
"I think what we're working on is going to revolutionise the way people look at driving games."
In response to a question on what he believed the next-generation of console hardware would allow for in the racing genre, Osieja said:
"I'm not saying specifically because we're already working on it.
"If we pull it off, we'll do for driving games what Gran Turismo did for driving games on PS2 and PSone. It'll be that amazing in terms of visual quality and what the experience is for the player."
Osieja began to lift the lid on what gamers can expect from the next serious evolutionary step in the racing genre:
"Since we are getting a head start on that [creating a revolutionary next-gen product], I can't reveal too much but one of the things we think about is, it's not going to be photo-realism, right? The next-generation systems can throw 30,000 polygons into a car and guess what, it doesn't look any better than a 10,000 polygon car with the rendering techniques I can do."
"It's what I can do to gameplay, and what is the experience I can change for the player on a next-generation system to make those people a) want to invest in that system and b) buy that game. So we're spending a lot of time now trying to figure out what those next steps are... Needless to say, even in the lifetime of these systems, Xbox and PS2, there's a lot of things we couldn't get to because the technology couldn't do it."
Osieja gave insight into how his team is using development kits to change to face of the racing genre:
"We're seeing with the specs of the new hardware we can do some pretty amazing stuff; for us it's figuring out how to harness the laws of nature in basically a 2D gaming environment. Even though it's a full 3D environment on screen you're still limited by a TV screen, so how do you harness those things that you experience naturally in the world and translate them to a videogame experience?"
"Needless to say it's really, really exciting and I don't know if anyone else is going to do it, but I think EA, well, we're putting a lot of effort into it. I think it's going to be pretty cool." Hell, yeah.
Osieja also revealed how next-generation hardware is already facilitating the unavoidable convergence of games and movies, detailing how EA is working closely with Hollywood talent on its projects:
"That's been one of the coolest things about bringing in all the Hollywood talent. I know people probably roll their eyes when we say we're bringing in these guys from Hollywood, but what's cool is the technology of the next-gen systems is allowing them to realise some of the stuff they're doing in the movies right now, and we'll be able to do it real-time.
"We've benefited a lot from things like The Lord of the Rings, and obviously Underground and Bond all benefited from the knowledge of the Hollywood people who have come in and just helped us with tweaking lighting and making sure that things look right to the eye, whether it be [something like] the camera shake, which I think we finally did really well in Underground last year. Now they're being able to take that stuff and apply it to real-time, next-gen systems."
We [C&VG] asked Osieja outright: with Need For Speed next-gen, are we talking the same level of quality seen in the "Crash" demo, or beyond that?
"Easily that. We just looked at a video the other day of a Porsche GT flying up in the air, floating over and basically coming apart - and we'll be able to do that now, with our dev stations. But that's a part of it. At the end of the day the licensor is always very touchy about what you do to their product. I'd love to blow up their car, I'd love to set it on fire, I'd love to do all this stuff and they say you can't."
"Even though we can do a lot of stuff we're still going to be restricted by what the licensors allows us to do. But yeah we can do that stuff."
"If I was able to show you some of the demos we've seen, your jaw would literally drop on the floor. We're going to be able to do that stuff in real-time and it's going to be amazing."
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