Ico Creator Loves and Hates Technical Limitations
Fumito Ueda, creator of such legendary games as Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and the upcoming The Last Guardian, recently talked about his love and hate for a console’s technical limitations.
“I both hate and love the technical limitations. If we don’t have any limit to work from, it becomes hard to make anything good out of an idea. But if we on the other hand have a very distinct technical limit it’s impossible to go beyond it. It will put the bar in a certain place without any way to raise it.”
Ueda then went on to talk about how he and his team can create “aesthetic profile” to the game, so the player concentrates less on the technical downfalls, and more on the environment and the experience.
“It’s thanks to that my games have a very special aesthetic profile. It’s a way to make the player forget about technical limitations and focus on the gaming experience.
If a player sees a beautiful landscape or pretty light effects that’s probably what he will remember and not the bad texture next to it.”
If Ueda was exposed to a console without any technical limitations, would the quality of his games be heightened, or held back? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.
[Source]
11 Responses to “Ico Creator Loves and Hates Technical Limitations”
these guys are my idols!
I have to disagree with one of his statements. Last generation what he says about the bad texture would have been true, but we are in an age of pixel counters who like to look at games under a microscope (literally) to point out graphical flaws. It’s pretty sad actually.
@ John Draisey
That is so true. I was actually thinking about that very article when I was making that comment.
I think Fumito really “get’s it”
With out limits then you have to wonder how long it will take to get a game to market. Look at PD and GT5 perfection takes to long and costs to much. With limits you know how far you can go and then push it farther…
No, he is false…. Without limits they could easily create game engines, the graphics, the physics, … Their games would release much faster and would look much better… But the developers would still be forced to set their own limits… If they wouldn’t do that, it could easily take them to much time…. (Like having 1 idea… And while programming this idea, having 2 more ideas… And so on…)
A Ray-Tracing based Graphics Engine, is the easiest 3D-Engine to make… But has the best graphics…
Ueda is the man he will make a great game.
Even if the developers had no limits themselves, their managers and company stockholders would be more than willing to impose some. Programmers are a curious lot; they tend to want to make things pretty, even things you can’t see (like the code itself) and they will take forever to do it if you let them…
I say this as an engineer who designs and writes software for a living – I have to try my best to deal with these sorts every day
I think once we get 1GB VRAM and 1GB RAM in a console with an updated cell processor… there won’t be much limiting game design.
The PS3 is doing amazing things with 512MB between the graphics chip and the ram. The Cell Processor was used in Killzone 2 to process stuff before even getting stored in RAM (which is somewhat backwards)
By the time the PS4 comes out I can imagine the price of such RAM production being cheap enough to be used even though they use special kinds of RAM. We already have 16GB PCs out there and I have 4GBs already.
I just wonder if heat is a problem with the next generation and if they’ll have to watercool the next gen. I don’t think anyone has thought about this limitation before on the consumer side.
@AssassinHD
you should have given opinion when the article was posted…..
If any developer is exposed to a system without limitation… Than the game’s limit will run on his imagination and creativity because you wont have barriers like resolution, frame rate issues, textures etc.
if you could have every power at your disposal how will you use it? in the end, it comes down to how creative you can be. In his situation ( Fumito Ueda) its his Vision in game designing.