There are so very few moments in videogames when a trailer can grab your attention and never let go. Dead Island's reveal trailer is certainly one that created a visceral experience and otherwise helped catapult the name Dead Island into trailer infamy. Quantic Dream's showcased a tech demo today at the Game Developers Conference for an android named Kara and it's simply breathtaking.
..and no. It's not Quantic Dream's next IP, so don't get your hopes up.
While, Kara isn't Quantic Dreams next IP, it does showcase what could potentially be the future of video games in regards to storytelling and visual graphics.
Director, David Cage was on hand at the tech demo to go into depth on what Quantic Dreams plan is for the future. He spoke to Playstation Blog in length. Here is what he had to say:
"After Heavy Rain, we wanted to push the envelope in terms of quality, starting with the visuals. We wanted to improve many things — things that were not possible with the Heavy Rain engine. So we had to develop a new engine from scratch.
We also wanted to improve the quality of the acting. With Heavy Rain, we did what many games do — split performances, recording a voice on one side and a body animation on the other, putting everything together and crossing your fingers that you get a consistent performance. It worked okay for Heavy Rain, but you lose a lot of a performance by splitting into two and rebuilding it artificially.
We wanted to do what Avatar did by having one full performance where we capture everything at the same time. And we wanted to demonstrate these new performance capture techniques and the new engine before going into production, so we developed a short showcase that would allow us to test these ideas and technologies. This is how “Kara” was created.
“Kara” is not our next game. It’s not the character, it’s not the world, it’s not the story. …We do things in a very strange way here, things that have nothing to do with the games we make. But I think that’s a part of the DNA of the studio, and hopefully something that people like about us – they never know what they’re going to get!"
In my opinion, this is one hell of a tech demo and a hell of a tease. Heavy Rain, even with it's issues, was awesome and if Quantic Dream wants to improve on that, I say go for it. The video below is 7 minutes of wonderful storytelling. I dare say it could easily be showcased as a beautiful and compelling short film in both acting and gorgeous graphics. For now, we'll just have to wait and see what Quantic Dream has in store for the future. I sure hope it's more Kara.
Check out the video after the break and let us know what you think.
http://www.youtube.com/v/JtbDDqU3dVI?version=3&hl=en_US