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Killzone 3

Guerrilla Games' Steven Ter Heide.

EurogamerHermen (Hulst, Guerrilla MD) was saying (in the opening presentation) that every process in the Killzone engine is now completely streamlined - that everything is working at its hardest. Do you think you've hit the bricks in terms of hardware capability now, or is there still more to come from the PS3 and Cell?
Steven Ter Heide

Undoubtedly there'll be more. When we were doing Killzone 2 we were saying 'OK we're firing on all cylinders, we're maxing it out.' Then along came Uncharted 2 and God of War III and they raised the bar even further. There's always new tricks. At the end of Killzone 2 we figured that there are smarter ways of doing things, so we're implementing all of those features.

Of course, we're working with the other studios too and seeing what sort of things they come up with. I think, over time, much like the PS2 - at the end of the life-cycle you're seeing games like GoW 2 coming out - compare those to the early games, there's a huge difference. I don't think we've seen the end of the possibilities yet, especially in our genre. There's a lot of talented people hard at work out there, we'll see a lot more.

EurogamerAre you allowed to talk about any technical details?
Steven Ter Heide

Absolutely. It's 720p, like Killzone 2. It's always a trade-off between how crisp you want things to look and how much you want going on on-screen. We feel that with our cinematic feel, with lots of particles and graphical filters and motion blur which we put on top of each other, that works best in 720p. We're aiming for 30fps, both for 3D and standard. 3D is obviously a little bit of an overhead, because you have to render twice.

EurogamerAnd it'll work with all forms of 3D?
Steven Ter Heide

Yep, we don't have to do anything differently - we just supply the TV with the images and it does the rest.

EurogamerYou talked about how UC2 and GoW influenced and inspired you, what about things on the other platforms, and elsewhere?
Steven Ter Heide

There's lots of inspiration to take. We've all been to Avatar by now, I guess. That's a source of inspiration because it's in 3D and they're creating this amazing make-believe world, but there's lots of different games out there, and movies and books.

EurogamerThat's a lot to cram in.
Steven Ter Heide

In this level which we have on show today we have four distinct experiences, which was something we wanted to focus on in Killzone 3 as well. In Killzone 2, in was much more, well, I wouldn't say it was just one experience which you got, but it wasn't as varied as we wanted it to be. This time around we're introducing a lot more gameplay experiences, in this level you start on the intruder, shooting - which was something else people said about 2, you spend all this time on an intruder and you don't get to fire the gun - this time around you're allowed to do that.

Then there's the regular gameplay, where you get your combat rifle and off you go, you encounter the jetpack enemies, and then you get the jetpack, which opens up this whole new experience - all of a sudden you're able to jump around and do this aerial combat and reach new areas and have new routes open up. Then we introduce the big rocket launcher, this portable weapon of mass destruction, and suddenly you're able to take out tanks and vehicles really easily, that feels really powerful. So there's these really distinct experiences, even in the scope of a single level, and that's going to happen throughout the game. We want to keep the user experience really fresh.