Gamers will get more details for crowds and instruments

May 24, 2015 23:04 GMT  ·  By

The development team at Harmonix working on Rock Band 4 believes that the combination between the new Forge engine and the capabilities of the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 means that the coming experience is close to the actual act of playing music than ever before.

Details and light use are the focus for the team.

Chris Hartelius, a technical artist working on Rock Band 4, tells IGN that, "One of the fun things, to get into the new details, is of fingerprints showing up on a used guitar, and scratch marks on pick guards and stuff like that. Just having large amounts of wear and tear that’s natural for guitars. And again, because of the lighting engine, it just looks way better than it did in previous games."

For gamers the wear and tear linked to each set of instruments means that the realism level of the title is enhanced.

More than 700 people are at the moment part of the crowd that watches gamers as they play their music and reacts in unique ways to their performances.

Abstraction will remain important in Rock Band 4 but Harmonix also wants to make all characters cooler than they were in previous installments.

The use of Forge also means that an options has been introduced to create custom characters with a host of options.

Rock Band 4 will be focused on backwards compatibility

The new title from Harmonix is designed to support those players who have been engaged with the series for a long time and have picked up instruments and songs along the way.

All of them will be supported in the new installment of the music title and will also be enhanced with new features.

Rock Band 4 will introduce more options for vocal harmonies and gamers will have bigger opportunities to improvise, which makes sure that playing through a track two times does not result in the same experience.

At the moment the title does not have an official launch date but it should be out before the end of 2015.

Rock Band 4 will go head-to-head with Guitar Hero Live, the new music experience from Activision, which will also be introduced before the year is through.