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Sony Clarifies Mark Cerny's Role With The Last Guardian

Javin98

Banned
Holy shit!. PS4 downgrade confirmed!. PS3 version has better shadows,lighting and textures. I can't believe they cancelled the superior PS3 version in favour of that.

Seems like GenDesign pulled an Ubi stunt! This industry sucks!
I hope this is a joke post or you mistook the PS4 version for the PS3 version.
 

Walpurgis

Banned
Well, then, you shouldn't have said "look quite similar" since you can easily notice the improvements. Also, read the EG article linked. It's foolish to expect a generational leap in a game that was already running horribly on the PS3.
I don't think it is foolish to expect a generational leap for a game that was being developed for the PS4 since 2012. Maybe that's just me though.
Why expect a generational leap when the original reveal was beyond the PS3?
Because the game went MIA for four years and has been being developed for the PS4 since 2012. It's not an open world game or anything so if they had to rebuild the entire game for PS4 on a new engine, 3-4 years seems like a reasonable amount of time.
 

Javin98

Banned
I don't think it is foolish to expect a generational leap for a game that was being developed for the PS4 since 2012. Maybe that's just me though.

Because the game went MIA for four years and has been being developed for the PS4 since 2012. It's not an open world game or anything so if they had to rebuild the entire game for PS4 on a new engine, 3-4 years seems like a reasonable amount of time.
The problem is the game already couldn't run on PS3 at an acceptable frame rate. Now the PS4 has better frame rate and visuals, so I think you were expecting too much.

Uh, it was pretty obvious /s.
It is quite obvious, but sometimes it's hard to tell on the Internet.
 

MaDKaT

Member
Because the game went MIA for four years and has been being developed for the PS4 since 2012. It's not an open world game or anything so if they had to rebuild the entire game for PS4 on a new engine, 3-4 years seems like a reasonable amount of time.

The game went missing because it didn't work on the PS3. The reveal was augmented to levels the hardware couldn't achieve.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
There is no game out there that has a character animated as good as the one in The Last Guardian during gameplay.

Not on any other console, nor PC. (And I am not talking about a tech demo or cut scenes).

There are more to graphics than textures and specular maps.
 

Walpurgis

Banned
The problem is the game already couldn't run on PS3 at an acceptable frame rate. Now the PS4 has better frame rate and visuals, so I think you were expecting too much.


It is quite obvious, but sometimes it's hard to tell on the Internet.
I was not. Look at any other first party exclusive and compare it to The Last Guardian. Are you seriously telling me that this is all they can achieve with the PS4?
The game went missing because it didn't work on the PS3. The reveal was augmented to levels the hardware couldn't achieve.
I know. They were using a PS3 debug unit with higher specs. Obviously the specs weren't so high as to be comparable to the PS4 (otherwise they wouldn't waste time optimising it to the SPU's of the PS3). The fact that the game couldn't run on PS3 doesn't really excuse the lack of ambition with the PS4 version.
 

Javin98

Banned
I was not. Look at any other first party exclusive and compare it to The Last Guardian. Are you seriously telling me that this is all they can achieve with the PS4?
To be fair, I never said this. I even said in this thread itself that there is a lot of room for improvement with over a year to go. Also, like the poster about you said, Trico is the best animated creature in a game. The way the feathers move is phenomenal.
 
I still think PlaystationLifestyle forced Sony's hand with leaking the project Trico footage. Maybe if that did not happen they would not have unveiled it in 2009.
 

Javin98

Banned
I still think PlaystationLifestyle forced Sony's hand with leaking the project Trico footage. Maybe if that did not happen they would not have unveiled it in 2009.
And we would have 6 years of boredom? No way, I loved the anticipation for TLG in threads and I loved its reveal at E3 even more. I couldn't stop yelling the title while watching the conference, I shit you not.
 

Walpurgis

Banned
To be fair, I never said this. I even said in this thread itself that there is a lot of room for improvement with over a year to go. Also, like the poster about you said, Trico is the best animated creature in a game. The way the feathers move is phenomenal.

Trico was the best animated creature in the PS3 version too.
 

xaosslug

Member
yWrA7d8.gif
 

Kieli

Member
I was not. Look at any other first party exclusive and compare it to The Last Guardian. Are you seriously telling me that this is all they can achieve with the PS4?

I'm not sure what you're looking for in TLG.

Last we heard, there was a small core of about 40 people working on it. Highly talented individuals that likely command a respectable salary.

This is not a Skyrim or GTAV. It will not sell gangbusters.

I think it looks great. Its artistry is what will carry it through to future generations.

Edit: Ok, let's say they blow enough money on this game that it will no longer make a small profit. Ok. The graphics are now good. Does that elevate the game in any meaningful way? No.

Team Ico games were never about pushing the graphical boundaries. That's wasted money that could go into better things, like funding Shenmue 3.
 
The Last Guardian. But the ex-Shadow of the Colossus team I think Yoshida is referring to, is "Friend & Foe" and their also doing their own title called Vane.

He said they're working on The Last Guardian though.

Also lol at the "PS3 graffix!" clowns. As if there's anything comparable to The Last Guardian on PS3 or PS4 in terms of art style and scale.
 

Fat4all

Banned
Why the obsession over the looks of TLG? Ico and Shadow were far from the most technically good looking games, but their beauty came from their aesthetics and underlining themes.

Also their amazing soundtracks.
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
Why the obsession over the looks of TLG? Ico and Shadow were far from the most technically good looking games, but their beauty came from their aesthetics and underlining themes.

Also their amazing soundtracks.

Lol. At the time, size of the world, enemiesize + fur + animation where industry leading.
 

Arion

Member
I read somewhere that Ueda would be done with video games after TLG. So him being a part of a new indie studio makes me think he will continue to make games after this. If so I am excited for whatever comes after.
 

DocSeuss

Member
GenDesign is led by Jinji Horagai, who was the AI programmer for Ico's Yorda.

"in other news, bethesda playtesters, final fantasy writers, and that guy who came up with the diablo 3 auction house are beginning work on a new MMO"
 

Kieli

Member
I read somewhere that Ueda would be done with video games after TLG. So him being a part of a new indie studio makes me think he will continue to make games after this. If so I am excited for whatever comes after.

Yeah, was kinda sad we were going to lose him.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I am aware of the frame rate issues with the PS3 version. That doesn't make a difference to me because I can only compare with what I have seen. I'm sure the PS4 is a lot more powerful than their higher specced debug PS3 anyway.


I agree that the improvement is easy to see, especially the lighting. However, I was expecting a generational leap and I'm not seeing that.

A game running horribly on PS4 at a much lower resolution and with worse lighting and assets receives a big resolution boost to 1080p, quite fluid frame rate,improved lighting and assets, and seemingly improved AA... yet, it is still not a generational leap? Oh well, we will have to agree to disagree.
 

Javin98

Banned
Why the obsession over the looks of TLG? Ico and Shadow were far from the most technically good looking games, but their beauty came from their aesthetics and underlining themes.

Also their amazing soundtracks.
What? The colossi in Shadow of the Colossus had fur in a PS2 game! Admittedly, the frame rate was horrible, but it was very technically impressive at the time. Not that I'm saying that The Last Guardian looks bad or anything...
 

Walpurgis

Banned
Your point is? I don't know about you, but the feathers move much more realistically now in the PS4 version. If that's not a big improvement to you, I don't know what is.
Like I said, I expected them to take advantage of the PS4's hardware. I don't think that is unreasonable considering when The Last Guardian was announced, it was one of the greatest looking games on PS3. I understand if they tried that on the PS4, it could lead to disaster again but that doesn't mean the game couldn't at least have graphics on the level of launch period titles like inFamous: Second Son or Killzone: Shadow Fall. I'm a little surprised at the reaction to my posts in this thread to be honest. I don't think it is controversial to say that The Last Guardian on PS4's graphics are pretty unambitious and look rather cross-gen. And I don't think that it would be radical to say that they could be better without screwing up the frame rate. I'm not asking for The Witcher 3 here.
A game running horribly on PS4 at a much lower resolution and with worse lighting and assets receives a big resolution boost to 1080p, quite fluid frame rate,improved lighting and assets, and seemingly improved AA... yet, it is still not a generational leap? Oh well, we will have to agree to disagree.
I guess if you consider the PC versions of PS3 games a generational leap, we will have to agree to disagree.
 

Javin98

Banned
Like I said, I expected them to take advantage of the PS4's hardware. I don't think that is unreasonable considering when The Last Guardian was announced, it was one of the greatest looking games on PS3. I understand if they tried that on the PS4, it could lead to disaster again but that doesn't mean the game couldn't at least have graphics on the level of launch period titles like inFamous: Second Son or Killzone: Shadow Fall. I'm a little surprised at the reaction to my posts in this thread to be honest. I don't think it is controversial to say that The Last Guardian on PS4's graphics are pretty unambitious and look rather cross-gen. And I don't think that it would be radical to say that they could be better without screwing up the frame rate. I'm not asking for The Witcher 3 here.
I think this feud started when you posted the comparison video and said the PS4 version looks quite similar to the PS3 version, which is just plain wrong. But honestly, I myself am not very impressed with the visuals besides Trico looking amazing. Though I wouldn't worry about it since there is a lot of time left for major improvements.
 

Arion

Member
I was not. Look at any other first party exclusive and compare it to The Last Guardian. Are you seriously telling me that this is all they can achieve with the PS4?

Are you really comparing a studio like team ico/gendesign with the 200+ man studios like naughty dog and guerilla games?
 

Walpurgis

Banned
Are you really comparing a studio like team ico/gendesign with the 200+ man studios like naughty dog and guerilla games?
I don't really see how studio size is relevant in this case but Sucker Punch had around 80 people for inFamous: Second Son, iirc. 80 people developed an open world game that looked that good in 2-3 years. The Tomorrow Children also looks much better with a smaller team. Guerilla Games doesn't have 200 people working on one game, I believe Naughty Dog is the same. In any case, I am not comparing SCE Japan and gendesign to any specific studio. I can pick out almost any other first party title and the graphics disparity would be as clear as day.
What am I reading here?
I don't know. Would you like me to write it again with smaller words?
Platform war intention revealing itself.
giphy.gif
 

Ishan

Junior Member
I am aware of the frame rate issues with the PS3 version. That doesn't make a difference to me because I can only compare with what I have seen. I'm sure the PS4 is a lot more powerful than their higher specced debug PS3 anyway.


I agree that the improvement is easy to see, especially the lighting. However, I was expecting a generational leap and I'm not seeing that.

anyone whos followed this game closely has always known that the main problem was not anything graphics related but rather the vision ueda had of trico acting like whatever dogcatbird thing with ai reflecting a real human pet relationship. hence technical problems. if anyone thinks of tlg's problems or focus as graphics related ... well they just havent been paying attention. And good ai kills cpu cycles like hell (gpgpu compute on ps4 etc etc)
 

Walpurgis

Banned
anyone whos followed this game closely has always known that the main problem was not anything graphics related but rather the vision ueda had of trico acting like whatever dogcatbird thing with ai reflecting a real human pet relationship. hence technical problems. if anyone thinks of tlg's problems or focus as graphics related ... well they just havent been paying attention. And good ai kills cpu cycles like hell (gpgpu compute on ps4 etc etc)

I have followed the game and don't recall them saying anything more than them having an unacceptable frame rate. I always assumed it was because of the feathers because those looked unlike anything else on PS3 at the time. The Last Guardian clearly started off with a focus on graphics (like almost every other Sony first party game), I'm not sure why you would say that it didn't. Maybe you should watch the announcement trailer again.
 

HORRORSHØW

Member
what? team ico games were never graphically prioritized. they purse a certain aesthetic--one of ephemera and poetry to elicit a certain mood.
 

Sjefen

Member
Grimløck;169145183 said:
what? team ico games were never graphically prioritized. they purse a certain aesthetic--one of ephemera and poetry to elicit a certain mood.

This so much....
 
Although I wasn't impressed by the game technically, this is pure hyperbole (art style looked great, though). As others have pointed out the initial trailers were not even running in real time on PS4. Plus, they probably still have over a year of dev time. A lot of improvements can be made.

there will be no graphical improvement though.
As Yoshida said, that's Ueda's vision, that's what TLG is supposed to look like.
 

bigjig

Member
Comparing the graphics of both is kind of pointless as there's no guarantee the PS3 version shown would've actually looked like that if it were released on PS3. Does no one remember the visual downgrades for Watch Dogs, Witcher 3 etc?
 
I have followed the game and don't recall them saying anything more than them having an unacceptable frame rate. I always assumed it was because of the feathers because those looked unlike anything else on PS3 at the time. The Last Guardian clearly started off with a focus on graphics (like almost every other Sony first party game), I'm not sure why you would say that it didn't. Maybe you should watch the announcement trailer again.

Maybe you should follow the game harder because you really don't seem to have a clue.

But please, continue with this dumb argument, it's hilarious.
 

Arondight

Member
I kind of got that same impression about what he does from the interviews he's given so not really surprised.

That TLG tangent though,I think people need to load up their PS3 games again because most people seem to be actually forgetting what they actually look like on the PS3. There's even a few first parties that don't look as flattering now.

Heck, there's plenty of games current gen that don't even look as good as this.
 

Walpurgis

Banned
Grimløck;169145183 said:
what? team ico games were never graphically prioritized. they purse a certain aesthetic--one of ephemera and poetry to elicit a certain mood.
Watch the announcement trailer again. The graphics were incredible for it's time. Besides, the aesthetic you speak of can be achieved better with improved graphics.
 
So, Cerny is acting purely as a messianic figure on the project, then?

Anyway, Shu's recent interview actually gave a very sensible depiction of how events worked: the game, from an artistic and design standpoint, was virtually finished years ago, but the hardware was not capable of making it happen. The decision was made to move it from PS3 to PS4.

Very little about the design or art changes as a result of this. That means years of technical work where the designers would be doing next to nothing. Rather than doing that, Ueda takes a leave of absence to work on other projects while the programmers complete the almost purely technical procedure of rewriting the code for PS4. This is absolutely normal; designers usually move onto a new project months before the game is finished, but in this case it got extended to years before it finished because of the extenuating circumstances of needing to almost completely rebuild the engine from the ground up for new architecture.

Mark Cerny is brought in to consult during this period because no one actually has experience programming for the PS4, so he's the closest thing to a subject matter expert you can find. This is normal, especially for small teams where many of the members may be highly specialized in working with specific sets of hardware and need training on programming for different platforms.
 
I was not. Look at any other first party exclusive and compare it to The Last Guardian. Are you seriously telling me that this is all they can achieve with the PS4?

I know. They were using a PS3 debug unit with higher specs. Obviously the specs weren't so high as to be comparable to the PS4 (otherwise they wouldn't waste time optimising it to the SPU's of the PS3). The fact that the game couldn't run on PS3 doesn't really excuse the lack of ambition with the PS4 version.

You forget to take into consideration that this is, in all essence, the production manpower the size of of an indie studio. It is as if you expect the guys who are kickstarted Yooka-Laylee to compete with the likes of ND and 343 studios in production value.

The game technology clearly is beyond the PS3, that has been confirmed and the main reason of the delay. What you are observing is a very high quality title beyond the areas of Journey or Flower at most but under Uncharted or the Witcher 3.
 
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