God of War is one of the most anticipated PS4 exclusives and fans are eager to know more about the game. Just recently, the studio revealed that the game is looking better every day, now the studio has revealed some new info about the game’s engine and how they plan to achieve realism.
Speaking with Gamasutra, God Of War principal programmer Florian Strauss talked about the game and how the team plans to take full advantage of the PlayStation 4. He revealed that unlike the previous entries in the franchise, the studio made the switch to physical-based rendering for God Of War PS4.
We’re aiming for a grounded, realistic style, set in an environment that feels like a real place but with fantastical elements. In order to achieve this look, we needed to make the switch to physical-based rendering
We wanted to read subtle emotions on characters’ faces and used specific technology to help achieve this, such as pose-space deformation, which was previously only used in films, and very accurate lighting to make the characters look right.
He added that PS4 is much more powerful compared to the PS3 and revealed that the team was surprised that getting the most out of PS4 was possible through brute force techniques instead of clever optimizations.
There is much more power available on the PS4 than there was on the PS3, and the hardware does a lot more in order to hide latency, which required a different strategy for getting the best possible performance. One surprise was that sometimes it was faster to do something brute force than through ‘clever’ optimizations, as it resulted in better pipelining and an overall better performance.
Also, the studio has revealed that Kratos’ son, Atreus, will be quite useful in the game and will be a competent companion. He can be used in battles and the only time he will be in danger is players put him in such a situation.
God Of War is an upcoming action-adventure game in development at Sony Santa Monica Studio and will launch exclusively for PlayStation 4.
Source: Gamasutra
