14 DAY TRIAL // David Cage, the creator of last year's Heavy Rain, has shared his thoughts on Rockstar and Team Bondi's upcoming L.A. Noire title, which will employ a new Motion Scan technology to reproduce accurate faces in the game.
Gaming technology is progressing by leaps and bounds these days, and David Cage, alongside the team at Quantic Dream, managed to convey that advance with Heavy Rain, a video game with realistic visuals and a wide array of animations.
This year, Rockstar and Team Bondi are giving Heavy Rain a run for its money with their new Motion Scan technology, which uses 32 high definition cameras to capture the faces of actors and then reproduce every single gesture in the game.
This allows L.A. Noire to have stunning graphics and will prove to be incremental in making the detective simulator work, as players need to analyze the facial gestures of suspects in order to uncover the truth.
Quantic Dream's David Cage, however, isn't all that impressed, and proclaims that the technology is interesting, but it will ultimately lead to a dead end.
"What to say about L.A Noire?" Cage told CVG. "I think it's an interesting solution to a problem for now. But it's also an interesting dead end. That's exactly what I feel. Their technique is incredibly expensive and they will never be able to shoot body and face at the same time."
Cage says that the new projects in development at Quantic Dream use a special performance capture system, which not only allows the faces of actors to be recorded, but it does so at the same time as it is recording their body movements.
This means that the process is more efficient and results in seamless performances in the actual games.
"We are doing that now [at Quantic], and our next games will be shot with performance capture," he explained. "We see a huge difference between shooting the face and body separately and shooting everything at the same time. Suddenly you've got a real sense of acting that is consistent. You can't imagine how related what you say with your face is to what your body does."
Cage says that the technology has progressed a lot since the release of Heavy Rain, and more will be shown in the near future, so we'll just have to wait and see what the studio has in development.