Arguably the biggest PlayStation 4 launch title this November is Killzone: Shadow Fall, coming to us from the fine folks over at Guerrilla Games.
One of the people behind the game is Steven ter Heide, Game Director, who went on the PlayStation Blogcast and explained how they’re using the PlayStation 4 to make Shadow Fall feel like a new game, while also keeping the Killzone feel:
I think the most immediate thing people notice is the leap in visual fidelity. We have more horsepower with PlayStation 4 and that means you can do bigger, bolder things. It’s running at 1080p, it’s running far above 30 frames – we’re aiming at 60 – so that’s a very good thing. That’s the first thing people notice just the visuals, the way it feels.
But I think, what’s really exciting to me, is the new options that we have available in terms of creating Warzones and giving more freedom to the players and saying, ‘How do you want the game to play out?’ If you look at the whole package, where people start streaming their games, where they start sharing videos and all sorts of stuff, we really want to see unique gameplay and what people come up with.
Following this, ter Heide discussed how the weapons in multiplayer will all be unlocked at the get go, with 1500 challenges (internal estimates show unlocking everything taking a month) that will unlock other items upon completion shipping with the game. That won’t be the end of the challenges though, as Steven said that they will be adding more through expansions, new DLC, and new (free) maps after launch.
To finish up the talk of multiplayer, ter Heide mentioned the bots of Shadow Fall:
We’ve always had bots in our previous games but we wanted to really have that bot experience transfer into the custom games as well. You can have those bots either in online matches, and they’ll replace some of your human friends or you can play an offline match against bots. And they know how to play with the abilities, they know how to play all the different mission modes, they can deal with whatever customization you throw at them, and best of all, they really mimic human player behavior. So if you set them to hard, that’s a pretty good challenge.
Bots have always been a good addition, but this time around they’re more special because you get to set up your match and practice the things you want to practice and get good at.
As of now, Guerrilla Games are in the final stages of fine-tuning and balancing Killzone: Shadow Fall.
Will Killzone: Shadow Fall be one of the games you pick up at PS4 launch? Let us know in the comments below.
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