Archive for the ‘Cutscenes’ Category
14.07.08 Final Fantasy Face-Driven Technology
This, the final talk I’ll post from GDC’08, centred on the development of the first company-wide technology platform (or engine) for Square Enix. Despite the heavy tech-focus, this was the largest lineup I attended at the conference due to the chance of gleaning any information from these Japanese RPG masters.
Square Enix: The Technology of FINAL FANTASY
Taku Murata - General Manager, Technical Research Division
Traditionally, a new platform was created for each title, with the game first made in Japanese and translations following much later. This looks set to change with the latest upcoming releases which will be very exciting to many western fans, and the target platforms (for the engine) are PS3, PC and XBOX360.
Murata’s history reads like something of a chronology of technological breakthroughs in Japanese game development, with much of his work driven by animation - in particular facial animation. Of interest most of all was the admission that several of the driving forces for this new engine centred on displaying characters’ faces to a very high fidelity in close-up.
02.07.08 Lost Odyssey’s Cutscene Consistency
Next up, in the first of three animation-related GDC ‘08 presentations giving us an insight into modern-day Japanese game development, here are my notes from the Postmortem of Feelplus’s Lost Odyssey, one of two Japanese RPGs created exclusively for the XBOX360 under the watchful eye of Microsoft Game Studios and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi.
Feelplus: Looking Back at LOST ODYSSEY - The Challenge of Cross Cultural Development
Ray Nakazato - President, Feelplus Inc.
As with each of the Japanese presentations, Nakazato began by detailing the hierarchy of the companies involved in the project. Feelplus Inc. was established in 2005, with the team quickly growing in size to the final headcount of around 100 developers, many of which came from Microsoft and SEGA. Feelplus is 1 of 3 companies under the AQ Interactive Group, (including Artoon and Cavia), and the project was a collaborative effort with Sakaguchi’s team at Mistwalker who formed the core desgin team.