It looks AMAZING what ever the hell it is.
Lets hope it is gameplay ^_^
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E3 2005: The Mystery Behind Killzone
Was it all a farce, or was it the real deal?
by Andrew Alfonso
May 17, 2005 - This is just a warning before we start: what follows in this article is pure, unadulterated speculation. You hear that? S-p-e-c-u-l-a-t-i-o-n. This is based on what we know about the game, and what we were able to catch during numerous views of the trailer.
There has been tons of speculation about whether or not the videos that Sony had shown at their press conference were pre-rendered or done in real-time. Well, Epic Games's Mark Rein has gone on record to say that "in addition to the Sony demos being shown by Phil Harrison, the Epic and EA presentations were the only third party portions actually running on the PS3 in real-time."
This has sparked a huge controversy about who exactly was behind the demos shown at the press conference, and if it's any real indication of what the PS3 can actually do. At the center of this argument is the highly detailed Killzone video, in which we saw a platoon of troops take on some enemies in a very heated fire fight in an unnamed town. To put it simply, the level of detail that was present in the demo has lead many to believe that it was purely pre-rendered. Of course, Sony fans were quick to come to the defense of their beloved daddy, swearing that it was all real-time, and that detractors were "totally stupid."
But there are two schools of thought when it comes to this debate. The first is the fact that it might be real-time because there are too many 'mistakes' in the demo. You can clearly see near the beginning of the demo that a character mysteriously pops up onto the screen without any notice; a sure sign that the video is real time, right? Pessimists would argue otherwise. We're lead to believe that whoever was responsible for the demo was probably under a strict deadline that would be impossible to make if they were shooting for a 'flawless' demonstration. Stuff like pop-up and whatnot could be acceptable if it was minute -- like it was in the Killzone movie.
By running with some sources and checking various leads, we have found the identity of three studios that could (keyword: could) have pulled off the Killzone video. The first is Axis Animation, and they're the most likely candidate due to the fact that they actually created the opening scene (among other clips) for the first Killzone on the PS2. However, many of our leads point to Sheffield in the United Kingdom has the birthplace for the demo.
Out of Sheffield, there are two prominent animation studios that specialize in high-quality animation and 3D models. The first is Red Star Studio, who actually specialize in game cinematics. The other is Ark VFX, who also do some pretty 3D animation work. Out of the two, it seems that Red Star Studio would be the logical choice if the demo did come out of Sheffield, due to their industry connections. However, as of now it's still unknown whether or not they were responsible for it.
While this information was found by doing some hardcore spelunking, it should be taken lightly for now until we get some more hardcore facts about the game and who was actually behind it. We'll have more information as it becomes available.
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E3 2005: Killzone 2, War Witnessed
The greatest interactive war ever told, assuming it's real.
by Ivan Sulic
May 16, 2005 - This is just too damn good. There's no way, man. There's just no freaking way.
Something this amazing cannot be. It's a physical impossibility. I am incapable of eating the planet Jupiter with a plastic spoon and this game can't be real. It's way, way too awesome for life to handle it. Hell, I don't even think it can be CG. You know what? It probably doesn't even exist! I think we just imagined it, so let's just blindly carry on with our lives, eh? But then again...
If the Killzone 2 video shown at Sony's E3 2005 press conference was made entirely from the in-game engine and does indeed represent the power of PlayStation 3, look the hell out.
It begins with ISA forces rapidly descending down from a pristine sky onto an entrenched Helghast army that has taken hold of a now ruined city. Our eyes sharpened. Our hearts quickened. Our blood tingled. We could hear the battle cries of a thousand brave warriors throughout time ringing in our ears. Any bastard that doesn't lay down and submit when we land is going to die and die damn hard. We're going to fly straight in there and kick the holy hell out of those dirty mutated sons of bitches.
As the clouds whip past and the stabilizing engines of our flying dropship fire to slow our fall, we're hit in the face by a heavy World War II sensation. Much like the battle hardened men who road bravely aboard Higgins Boats were ready to face the worst threat of our time, these fictional boys of the future are about to stride into the jaws of hell and rip the devil's tongue straight out of throat.
And so the oddly helmet-less heroes of the ISA descend through rocket and machine gun rounds, but not all of the boats make it. One gets tagged by a stray missile and careens right into a nearby building, lighting up the world with brilliant streak of burning death and then darkening it with a wretched plume of deep black smoke. The dropship we're focused on does land, however, and our hero loads a grenade shell into his weapon and leaps over the rail to kill the hell out of the enemy.
The scene is chaos.
Good Lord
Heavily scripted action governs progression as the men shoot their way through enemies at all angles. Up and down, people are dying and the landscape becomes littered with corpses, the wounded, the broken, and the shattered remnants of civilization. It's an utterly astonishing site of horror that combines the sharp grit of Saving Private Ryan with the distinct futuristic clarity of one of StarCraft's many stylized CG battles. As the demo rolls on we're treated to flamethrowers, barrages of missiles, vicious death scenes and elaborately laid out firefights. It's amazing, but perhaps a bit too amazing.
Look, we want it to be real. We honestly do. If it is, we'd feel complete -- whole. But we have suspicions we simply cannot shake.
In August of 2004 this editor visited the offices of Guerilla in Amsterdam. There team members admitted that Killzone 2 development was well underway, but that they did not intend to release on PlayStation 3 and that they had, in fact, not even been provided with PS3 development kits at the time. That means that between August of 2004 and May of right now, Guerilla received tools and made a game for a system they knew pretty much nothing about -- a game that is as ridiculously polished as this one, no less. I don't care how fantastic of a developer your company might be, something like that just doesn't happen.
We're inclined to mistrust Killzone 2's gameplay legitimacy even further because of the way the video plays out. No shooter in existence features characters that do exactly the right thing at exactly the right time all the time. It seems as if the entire Killzone 2 showing was like a wish that did not waver, not even once. Then there's the way the control seems suspiciously fast to be done on analog sticks. The circumstantial evidence is just too much to ignore, you know?
All that being said, I cannot in good faith tout Killzone 2 as the best looking game ever because I really don't think it's a real game yet. But it sure is one hell of a CG sequence that, if in anyway happens to be representative of the final product, shows us what next-generation shooting should be like.
We've got the full movie and a few pieces of early art assembled in our media page below. Check those out when you a get a chance and marvel at what great scripting and proper art direction can accomplish for a game.
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Killzone 2 E3 2005 Preshow Report
All right, it's Killzone 2. Although the original game wasn't very warmly received, Guerrilla is back with Killzone 2, and at this point, it's definitely the talk of the show.
Although the footage of Killzone 2 is fairly brief, it manages to walk viewers through an entire landing sequence. It opens with nothing but a shot of clouds, but quickly pulls back to reveal human faces. And oh, what faces they are. The fidelity and reality of the models here are frankly unbelievable, easily matching fully CGI Hollywood films of just a few years ago. It's not too difficult to imagine something like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within rendered in real time with the Killzone 2 engine. The models and animations here are so smooth, in fact, that it's tempting to assume that the Killzone 2 footage is prerendered or somehow doctored, but if it is all in-engine, and we have no reason to believe that it's not, then it's going to be hard to imagine a game coming along during E3 that's more visually impressive than this.
The footage, as mentioned, starts off in the air, as an aerial landing craft filled with soldiers descends onto a ruined urban landscape. After a near collision with another landing craft, and after witnessing the destruction of a fellow vessel, which subsequently crashes into a building, the landing craft that the video focuses on manages to safely land, and soldier whose point of view we're following leaps over the side onto the ground. The whole sequence is somewhat reminiscent of the Normandy invasion as seen in films like Saving Private Ryan or in the first Medal of Honor game for the PC.
The action doesn't end there, though, as the first-person viewpoint takes you underneath a bridge near the landing zone, where you begin fighting off the unknown enemies, which sport trenchcoats and gas masks and bear a striking resemblance to the combine soldiers of Half-Life 2. After picking off a few of them, they counterattack with a flamethrower, which engulfs a few of your compatriots. After you shoot the flamethrower enemy, though, he whips around and accidentally burns his own teammates alive and also manages to destroy one of their vehicles, which explodes. Well, it looks quite nice is all we can say.
The last segment of the video takes you atop the bridge near the landing zone, where more of the unknown soldiers are getting slaughtered. Unfortunately, they bring in backup in the form of a gunship, which quickly eliminates yet more of your soldiers, but you have an answer for that, as you pelt it with a heat-seeking rocket and send it crashing...right into your position on the bridge. The final image of the trailer is of the gunship crashing and flipping off the bridge into midair, which occurs just before the image fades to the Killzone logo.
We're not ashamed to say that the Killzone 2 video has made many GameSpot editors' jaws drop; most of us have watched it half a dozen times or so since it hit our booth. Our only lingering thought is whether or not this is actual in-game footage; the footage looks a far sight more impressive than some of the other games on display (although they're all quite impressive), and there are virtually no frame rate discrepancies to be found, even when the screen is overwhelmed by particle effects, such as when the various vehicles explode. If this is true in-game rendering, though, and again, we have no reason to believe that it's not, then Killzone 2 is definitely one of the most impressive visual demos ever to appear at E3, alongside the first appearances of MGS2, Half-Life 2, and Doom 3. Only time will tell if Killzone 2 turns out to be a good game or not, but for now, we're definitely pumped to see more of this game in the future.
By Matthew Rorie, GameSpot POSTED: 05/16/05 11:29 PM
All Righty .... Killzone 2 E3 2005 Preshow Report
All right, it's Killzone 2. Although the original game wasn't very warmly received, Guerrilla is back with Killzone 2, and at this point, it's definitely the talk of the show.
Although the footage of Killzone 2 is fairly brief, it manages to walk viewers through an entire landing sequence. It opens with nothing but a shot of clouds, but quickly pulls back to reveal human faces. And oh, what faces they are. The fidelity and reality of the models here are frankly unbelievable, easily matching fully CGI Hollywood films of just a few years ago. It's not too difficult to imagine something like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within rendered in real time with the Killzone 2 engine. The models and animations here are so smooth, in fact, that it's tempting to assume that the Killzone 2 footage is prerendered or somehow doctored, but if it is all in-engine, and we have no reason to believe that it's not, then it's going to be hard to imagine a game coming along during E3 that's more visually impressive than this.
The footage, as mentioned, starts off in the air, as an aerial landing craft filled with soldiers descends onto a ruined urban landscape. After a near collision with another landing craft, and after witnessing the destruction of a fellow vessel, which subsequently crashes into a building, the landing craft that the video focuses on manages to safely land, and soldier whose point of view we're following leaps over the side onto the ground. The whole sequence is somewhat reminiscent of the Normandy invasion as seen in films like Saving Private Ryan or in the first Medal of Honor game for the PC.
The action doesn't end there, though, as the first-person viewpoint takes you underneath a bridge near the landing zone, where you begin fighting off the unknown enemies, which sport trenchcoats and gas masks and bear a striking resemblance to the combine soldiers of Half-Life 2. After picking off a few of them, they counterattack with a flamethrower, which engulfs a few of your compatriots. After you shoot the flamethrower enemy, though, he whips around and accidentally burns his own teammates alive and also manages to destroy one of their vehicles, which explodes. Well, it looks quite nice is all we can say.
The last segment of the video takes you atop the bridge near the landing zone, where more of the unknown soldiers are getting slaughtered. Unfortunately, they bring in backup in the form of a gunship, which quickly eliminates yet more of your soldiers, but you have an answer for that, as you pelt it with a heat-seeking rocket and send it crashing...right into your position on the bridge. The final image of the trailer is of the gunship crashing and flipping off the bridge into midair, which occurs just before the image fades to the Killzone logo.
We're not ashamed to say that the Killzone 2 video has made many GameSpot editors' jaws drop; most of us have watched it half a dozen times or so since it hit our booth. Our only lingering thought is whether or not this is actual in-game footage; the footage looks a far sight more impressive than some of the other games on display (although they're all quite impressive), and there are virtually no frame rate discrepancies to be found, even when the screen is overwhelmed by particle effects, such as when the various vehicles explode. If this is true in-game rendering, though, and again, we have no reason to believe that it's not, then Killzone 2 is definitely one of the most impressive visual demos ever to appear at E3, alongside the first appearances of MGS2, Half-Life 2, and Doom 3. Only time will tell if Killzone 2 turns out to be a good game or not, but for now, we're definitely pumped to see more of this game in the future.
By Matthew Rorie, GameSpot POSTED: 05/16/05 11:29 PM
All Righty... VOTE. Post taughts on this game. :D
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