GOW Origins HD cinematics in full 1080p

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 12 August, 2011

Ready at Dawn digs deep for HD Collection.

Developer Ready at Dawn has re-mastered all of the cinematics from PlayStation Portable games God of War Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta in native 1080p for God of War: Collection Volume 2.

"Between Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta we had over an hour of pre-rendered cinematics, and the gap in video resolution between our PSP source footage and full HD was so extreme that no matter how many custom video up-scale solutions we tried, there was just a glaring quality difference between the 1080p real-time gameplay and the video," wrote art director Nathan Phail-Liff on the EU PlayStation Blog.

"It was pretty demoralizing for us to play the game in beautiful HD and hit a cinematic trigger where Kratos looked like he was rendered through a dirty sock, so we realized we would just have to bite the bullet and properly re-render all cinematics in full 1080p.

"To do this we ported all of our cinematic scenes to the PS3 and, months and terabytes of data later, had every single frame re-rendered in HD through the new Collection’s engine. From there we had to up-rez all of the post production effects and re-composite every single cinematic again in HD, giving us a final result that blended seamlessly with the in-game quality."

In re-mastering the two PSP games Ready at Dawn went through every single character in the game and doubled or tripled their polygon count by hand. The studio also up-rezed and re-painted every texture across both games.

That's on top of implementing full stereoscopic 3D support.

"The quality of the final result of the 3D on Collection II so surprised us that it actually sold myself and a number of others on the team 3D TVs in general," Phail-Liff continued.

"Personally I wouldn’t want to play the games any other way after being able to experience it firsthand."

PS3 vs PSP.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (28) Latest comment 9 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Sunyavadin #1 10 months ago

    I'm getting sick of clicking on GOW links thinking they are Gears of War.

    Can we have less games with the same initialisms please, devs?

  • Vortextk #2 10 months ago

    Lol cause there is a gears of war origins hd collection coming out for ps3 right?

    Anyway, glad to see this happen. Kind of pisses me off how many games come out on pc or even ps3 and they have AWFUL compressed videos. 360 is pressed for space, you do what you can, but there is no reason why the other systems have to look like they're some movie rip compressed for a 700meg cd when they have literally unlimited space.

  • captain_Carl #3 10 months ago

    @Suny

    Gow = God of War

    GeOW = Gears of War.


    Looks like RAD have put tons of work into this. Awesome. Fully intend to buy it :)

  • Chompee #4 10 months ago

    "they have literally unlimited space"

    Is there literally anything more annoying than someone who incorrectly uses the word "literally"?
    Edited by Chompee at 12/08/11 @ 15:48

  • Vortextk #5 10 months ago

    "they literally have unlimited space"? Should I apologize? What, you're an ass and I've been up for 20 hours? Yeah, you're right, no I shouldn't.

  • CheesecakeBobby #6 10 months ago

    While this effort is certainly a good thing, it is a shame that it is deemed newsworthy due to a lack of effort from certain other ports. When a game is ported to the HD consoles, this level of retouching is seen as 'special treatment' for the fans. While these games may not be quite as expensive as from-the-ground-up releases, they still aren't cheap, and something like re-mastering cut-scenes does not seem like a lot to ask for. Releasing these HD ports is a hell of a lot cheaper for the developer and publisher than starting afresh; if you are going to charge 75% the cost of a usual game, spend at least 75% as much time making it feel like a quality product.

  • SaintDaveUK #7 10 months ago

    "Is there literally anything more annoying than someone who incorrectly uses the word "literally"?" - Chompee

    lit·er·al·ly   [lit-er-uh-lee]
    adverb
    1. iin the literal or strict sense: What does the word mean literally?
    2. in a literal manner; word for word: to translate literally.
    3. actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy: The city was literally destroyed.
    4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.

    I think you will find that our friend Vortextk was correct.
    Edited by SaintDaveUK at 12/08/11 @ 16:35

  • Sikosh #8 10 months ago

    Literally you say?

  • arcam #9 10 months ago

    4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.

    Ugh.

    Must. Restrain. Self.

  • arcam #10 10 months ago

    Soon we will have:

    brought   [brawt]
    verb
    1. simple past tense and past participle of bring: "she brought Luke home"; "Liz brought her umbrella to the park"
    2. simple past tense and past participle of buy: "he brought me a new dress with his Christmas bonus"; "I brought a new dictionary and it makes me want to top myself"

  • Ryze #11 10 months ago

    Nice.

  • Kaminari #12 10 months ago

    He should of have brought a new dictionary. Literally.

  • carlosdfn #13 10 months ago

    Wow nice! Since they didn't bother doing this for the previous collection I wasn't expecting this. Very cool.

  • Snake_2011 #14 10 months ago

    nice one loving Splinter Cell hope Rockstar do a GTA one.

  • trubadman #15 10 months ago

    PS2's don't do trophies, but on a serious note, if this is the only way to play PS2 games on the PS3, then I don't mind, although it should be less pricey or you can do the sensible thing and wait for the games to drop in price. The top series o want 'remade' is of course the good old Grand Theft Auto

  • Lemming81 #16 10 months ago

    I actually wasn't going to bother with this collection, thinking it wouldn't be as good as the GOW1+2 HD collection, plus GOW3 but having now seen it in motion, I've very tempted indeed.

  • freethinker101 #17 10 months ago

    I played the first one on my psp and loved it, with my only issue being that the platforming element had been lost due to the restrictions of the PSP. My feeling is that it was agreat game on the PSP, it may not be so good on the PS3, he says staring at Sly Triology gathering dust.....

  • Miths #18 10 months ago

    I love that all these HD remakes are getting stereoscopic 3D added as a bonus as well - although it is somewhat disappointing that a remake of even a five or six year old game, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which I'm currently playing, has a slightly shaky framerate in 3D mode.
    But I guess in that case it may for once be down to lazy optimization by the developers rather than the aging hardware in current gen consoles.

  • P1GEONPOO #19 10 months ago

    Im going to pick this up with the gow 1+2 hd collection and have a gow marathon,cant wait.

  • Razorus #20 10 months ago

    "Literally" literally means literally. Interesting.

  • menage #21 10 months ago

    Buying this eventually, after the big ones still leave me money that is.

  • FooAtari #22 10 months ago

    I don't really get the point. The HD footage is working with the source footage so there is only so much you can do to improve the image, and I'm not seeing much of a difference in the video above.

  • Sunyavadin #23 10 months ago

    @vortextk [link url=http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally
    ]http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally
    [/link]

    You LITERALLY don't know the meaning of the word.

  • WukWhiteWolf #24 10 months ago

    I have nothing special to say, but i wanted to do this.
    literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally

  • geeza2020 #25 9 months ago

    4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually

    How can literally and virtually mean the same thing?

  • CamberGreber #26 9 months ago

    Allright WORD NAZIs get a life.

  • riseer #27 9 months ago

    Sunyavadin,God of War has been out long before Gears has need to learn your acronym's

  • man.the.king #28 9 months ago

    "Developer Ready at Dawn has re-mastered all of the cinematics from PlayStation Portable games God of War Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta in native 1080p for God of War: Collection Volume 2"

    What about the games? :)