Naughty Dog Talks PS3 Hardware – “We Still have a Ways to go With Technology”

Naughty Dog, the Sony-owned developer has been a studio who has showcased the PlayStation 3′s hardware and its capabilities with their Uncharted franchise. However, while many will believe the company has utilized every inch of power the PS3′s hardware can possibly deliver, the award-winning developer has stated that they still have ‘a ways to go with technology’ in regards to Sony’s platform.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception co-lead designer Richard Lemarchand told Eurogamer:

For a start, we still have a ways to go with technology. Human beings are very difficult to replicate in computer graphics. We’ve made great strides in the techniques and approaches we’ve used to get emotion out of CG characters, and there are many other different ways to approach the same kinds of issues and problems. But, we still have a long way to go in terms of technologies for animation, for shader technologies, lighting technologies are in the ascendancy right now, post-processing. It’s going to let us do a lot of new stuff in terms of creating different kinds of emotional effects through different graphical and different audio technology as well.

But I do think we are reaching a stage where the creative, where the ideas behind video games and the emotions you can evoke with video games are really coming to the fore. I’m interested in the indie scene and the art game scene, because I see it as the active avant-garde of video games. And just as the avant-garde has informed every great medium, whether it’s the novel or stage plays or indeed film.

Lemarchand continued:

The history of film has a lot of great lessons in this regard, with the indie explosion that happened a number of times throughout the history of film, whether it was Easy Rider or Raging Bull. Indie games and art games are going to have a big impact on the mainstream of video gaming in terms of bringing new ideas to the table and demonstrating different things are possible both emotionally and also in the realm of game design.

I’m a huge Minecraft fan. Minecraft is a fascinating game. I’m a big fan of LittleBigPlanet, which broke so much new ground. I’m a big fan of thatgamecompany’s games. I can’t wait for Journey. I was proud to be wearing a Journey t-shirt on stage in our session yesterday. These kinds of games, the ones I mentioned are just a few indicators of many hundreds, even thousands of games, which are pointing new directions for game design, new directions for the art form that is video games. So, yeah, there are exciting times ahead.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is due for a release exclusively on the PlayStation 3 come November 1st in North America and a day later in Europe.