June 14, 2013 by Paul Curtin
With the team still focusing on the August release of Beyond: Two Souls, Quantic Dream didn’t reveal any new games for the PlayStation 4 at this year’s E3, but they did however show off a jaw-dropping real-time tech demo on the level of Hollywood CGI animation and better looking than any pre-rendered cutscene on current generation consoles.
Like previous tech demos from Quantum such as Kara, their latest project showcases how they’re once again taking visuals in video games to the next level, now by using the processing power of the PlayStation 4.
Back in February at the PlayStation 4 unveiling, we got to see a model of an old man’s head teasing what could be possible with the PS4. And now we know exactly what that model was for: The Dark Sorcerer, a visually-stunning short that strays from the usual drama we get from Quantic Dream and instead uses the tech demo to have a little fun with a hilarious surprise twist from the characters.
After the demo that was shown to us, which you can see below, QD showed us the trailer in real-time on the ps4 by moving the camera around and turning on and off various textures and lighting effects. But it wasn’t just them simply proving that the demo was in fact on a PS4, and what they showed us makes you have an even greater respect for the direction they’re trying to take video game graphics and cinematography.
Its crazy hearing just how detailed the characters in QD’s games are becoming, from strands of hair to now bone counts being in the hundreds. Zooming into the eyeball of the Sorcerer was where the level of detail becomes insane with even the slightest details that players will likely never see themselves such as the red lines in a character’s eyes and the water around the eyelids are all done with photo-realistic detail. It’s simply stunning and QD’s OCD for visuals really shows.
Even the way the picture as a whole looks has been given a great level of thought with QD explaining that they even slightly rounding the corners of the screen to give it the look of being shot by a rounded camera lens. Features like this might seem a little obsessive, but as QD explained, it’s something you might not ever look for, but you might subliminally use to deem what you’re looking at as fake CGI because your eyes are just used to how real movies look.
The real-time visuals that Quantic Dream are producing look just as good as CGI movie animation from 5 years ago and their tech just keeps getting better and better. One funny thing they mentioned that I couldn’t forget was that if you go back and look all all the previous tech demos, they’re constantly getting better, and The Dark Sorcerer is their first tech demo for the PS4, so if you really think about it, what you’re watching below is the worst you’re going to get from them on the PlayStation 4. Pretty crazy if you think about it and exciting to see what’s next.
