Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain & Ground Zeroes
- Thread starter Alucardx23
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L. Scofield
Veteran
Although the final game was splendid, I was disappointed by how much was changed to the final quality.
The original MGS4 trailer had the brilliant vibe of the MGS2 E3 trailer reveal back in the days.
The quality of the lighting and shadows were out of this world, Subtle details such us snake's tongue and teeth, the accumulated dust on his face and the lines of sweat leaving their trail on it, proper use of DOF, heat haze, subtle wind on his hair, the lighting from the burning wood, etc. We were all expecting to see Kojima achieve this amount of detail at 60fps just as he did with MGS2.
The trailer also had lots of natural looking speculars that were removed almost completely or were dialed down too much.
At 8:02 of the trailer we see an area that has beautiful speculars and lighting effects. All of which were removed and produced a flat looking image in the final build
At the beginning of this walkthrough its the exact same area. The difference is huge
The original MGS4 trailer had the brilliant vibe of the MGS2 E3 trailer reveal back in the days.
The quality of the lighting and shadows were out of this world, Subtle details such us snake's tongue and teeth, the accumulated dust on his face and the lines of sweat leaving their trail on it, proper use of DOF, heat haze, subtle wind on his hair, the lighting from the burning wood, etc. We were all expecting to see Kojima achieve this amount of detail at 60fps just as he did with MGS2.
The trailer also had lots of natural looking speculars that were removed almost completely or were dialed down too much.
At 8:02 of the trailer we see an area that has beautiful speculars and lighting effects. All of which were removed and produced a flat looking image in the final build
At the beginning of this walkthrough its the exact same area. The difference is huge
Kojima talked that original MGS4 trailer was made on devkit that was significantly more powerful than what PS3 ended up being. He was not satisfied that hardware reduction forced him to lower the scope of the game [he wanted open battlefield, a thing he will finally get in MGS5].
RenegadeRocks
Legend
^ and from what was shown in the VERY first MGS 4 teaser, made in MGS 3 engine, it was supposed to be all destructible. It all had to go in the final game when he realised that the next-gen isn't as powerful as he hoped.
L. Scofield
Veteran
6800 SLI, IIRC.
Yep. I can imagine his frustration. We were expecting the PS3 to be so much more. Kojima was probably convinced that the console would be more capable after Sony raised the expectations too high. The 2005 E3 reveal was outlandish but it passed a message even though it was wrong at the end. I wouldnt be surprised if some people at Sony were promoting the capabilities of the PS3 to some developers without being truly in touch with what it could really do. Probably the promotion of Cell had something to do with it.
I read an article years ago about the state of affairs of Japanese game development. It was written by someone who appeared to have some experience with the industry in Japan. In the PS2 days (and probably even during the early days of the PS3), it claimed that most Japanese colleges werent exactly up to date with game technology as in the west. What students were being taught in colleges was bare bones and was relevant with game development of many years ago but not with advanced 3D games. In the west, colleges/universities were more in touch with the latest PC hardware, graphics and programming. New Japanese graduates would end up in studios having to acquire new knowledge that was mostly irrelevant to what they were being taught. They experienced the pressure to compete in an industry that was far ahead than them.
I suspect that was one extra reason why Kojima Productions couldnt set realistic expectations even after they had an idea about the console's specs on paper. We had some insiders in these forums I recall, who were claiming that the PS3 was much closer than the 360 during the same time that Sony was raising expectations higher and Kojima was announcing MGS4. It appears that western developers were more in touch with the hardware's capabilities than Kojima. It was after Kojima actually got his hands on the actual hardware that he understood he raised the bar unrealistically higher.
All I know is that they've been recruiting a lot of good people from the VFX business, as that kind of work is moved to countries with subsidiaries for quite a few years now. There are very few movie shops left in the LE/SF area, so there are a lot of experienced people to hire to bring game graphics to new levels.
L. Scofield
Veteran
I don't know, based on the initial tech demo Lair was hit hard by the downgrade as well and the programmers at Factor 5 were known to be wizards.
More developers should do this, particularly relating the area of asset creation.
I remember too well. I could have lived with the downgrade, but I think the change in art-direction was most striking at all. I quite prefered the green hue to what ended up being a rather bland and greyish looking game - or at least the 'war-zone' setting. The later levels looked quite good though. MGS2 wasn't all that either - at least not the oil rig. The tanker however was an amazing, both visually and art-direction. MGS3 was quite good too - as good as it could be considering the jungle setting.
My impression was that Lair's development was sort of re-started less than a year before the release date and they simply haven't had enough time to build a game.
You can sort of see the quality of some of the source art (mostly the dragons) but the way it's been rendered in the engine, with all the LOD stuff thrown at it to dumb it down enough to get a reasonable frame rate, is just plain ugly.
Then a lot of the content looked like it was thrown together in a few days, using methods that were just plain wrong. What really amazed me was that they still had the face to do a presentation on just how cool their workflow was, while the demo images were looking like crap. It felt like they really thought it was good, after all the previous stuff they made which was considerably better - I mean their previous gen Nintendo games looked better than Lair!
Still waiting to learn some specifics about what went wrong there and how...
L. Scofield
Veteran
A few months ago Julian Eggebrecht, the ex-president of Factor 5 appeared on a podcast by IGN and revealed that LAIR started as an online co-op Rogue Squadron game for the XB360. It was cancelled because LucasArts wasn't too confident on the performance of launch titles. Sony then asked them to make a launch game for the PS3 but it had to be an internal IP so Star Wars was out of the question. Due to the timeframe they came up with the idea of dragons so it could also be a flight game. However Factor 5 being Factor 5, tried to do too much and we all know the result.
The part starts around the 54min mark:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/10/nintendo-voice-chat-factor-5s-odyssey-to-make-star-wars-games
The whole a great listen because he talks about the whole story of Factor 5, including getting the german secret service to provide them with dev kits by reverse engineering the SNES and the Genesis
.
The part starts around the 54min mark:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/10/nintendo-voice-chat-factor-5s-odyssey-to-make-star-wars-games
The whole a great listen because he talks about the whole story of Factor 5, including getting the german secret service to provide them with dev kits by reverse engineering the SNES and the Genesis
.Gradthrawn
Veteran
The part starts around the 54min mark:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/10/nintendo-voice-chat-factor-5s-odyssey-to-make-star-wars-games
The whole a great listen because he talks about the whole story of Factor 5, including getting the german secret service to provide them with dev kits by reverse engineering the SNES and the Genesis
Thanks for linking that.
If anybody has any interest in Factor 5 that entire interview is worth a listen, as L. Scofield mentioned. Eggebrecht's hatred for the N64 hardware is quite amusing in and of itself.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
^Cos Snake likes to "keep you waiting!".....for the X1 version ! Har Har Har !
Apparently MGS V will be released September 1, this year 
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...olid-5-the-phantom-pain-release-date-revealed
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...olid-5-the-phantom-pain-release-date-revealed
