Killzone 2: Exclusive Guerrilla Interview
Kikizo gets a rare opportunity to sit down with the top staff at Guerrilla, for a detailed interview on the most talked about game of this gen: Killzone 2 for the PS3.
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Kikizo: How difficult was it to achieve the results you have with this animation system that combines both motion capture and actual physics?
What we've done is created something called blending, and our animation blender is powering all of that. So we have a big system for the entire character basically - the entire model - all of his joints and all of the impacts that are there have animations associated with them, and then to combine that with physics impulses is really where the trick comes in, and we have to smoothly transition from one animation into physics based - if they are on an elevated area, they may slide down, because at some point it has to transform into ragdoll [physics], and if you shoot at some poor guy who's already dead, you'll see him moving on the floor, that's because it's a ragdoll, so at some point we switch from mo-cap to physics, and we're able to sort of have a slider to say how much of each we need in that process, and that's all driven by the game engine.
The thing that we did with the Heavy - one of the mini bosses we have in the game, because bosses is also something we carried over from Liberation - is again using the hit response system to add to the gameplay, his vulnerable spot is at his back because he's a big guy and fully armoured at the front, which means you have to flank him to get to his back, or use the hit response system by shooting at his head; that disorients him, turns him around, and you can fire at his back. He's got a big gun that is very deadly and if he can't get to you because you're behind cover, he can shoot a grenade, you'll see a smoke trail coming at you and you'll hear the beeping sound of the grenade, and you know you'll have to run at that point. So different animations are triggered for different types of enemies too.
Kikizo: One of the freshest aspects of FPS games in the last few years has been puzzle-based elements that are grounded in the game's physics like we see with Half-Life 2, do you have anything like that in Killzone 2?
Well I think in a shooter the core gameplay is shooting, which has to be really good. And of course one of the other things you have to do is leverage from other systems; if you look at things like Home, where trophies are going to play a big part, you of course have to look at how you're going to implement that into your gameplay. [Achievements on Xbox Live = Trophies in Home?!]. So we are looking at different kinds of systems to support. But for physics based puzzles, well you can use physics to your advantage, which is not so much a physics based puzzle as with Half-Life but it's going to be different.
P L E A S E V I S I T O U R S P O N S O R :
Kikizo: You told us that weather, in general, is going to play a big part in the game, not just lightning - what kind of other weather effects will be significant?
Heide: Yes. In this level, lightning is very important... in other levels, other weather elements will happen! We can't talk about it yet. The one environment you've seen is an urban environment, but there will of course be different environments, and the added benefit of these post processing filters is that you can do some nice visual tricks to ensure that it really feels different, rather than as one same environment. But weather is going to play a bigger part in Killzone 2, because it's part of the Helghan atmosphere, and we're paying particular attention to lightning in this level, that's powering not only a weapon, but it's impacting everywhere and it has to behave realistically; even though it's on a different planet, in a sort of sci-fi setting, we still want to keep the world believable. So there are no laser beams and things like that, but known elements like lightning, and making sure that it all behaves realistically is quite a job, because we wanted to make sure if lightning strikes metal that it sparks, and that it hits other metal as well and jumps to different things, and that's all rendered in 3D and randomised, as lightning should be.
Kikizo: So do you have to escape the lightning so the invasion can begin?
Heide: That's the idea.
Kikizo: And finally, will you be supporting Sixaxis?
Heide: We will be supporting Sixaxis, but we'll be saving the specifics for a later date.
Kikizo: Thanks you for your time today guys - I can't wait to see more of this.
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