People ”think of it as the power” that delivers features, but it’s really ”creativity and the cleverness” of problem-solving. Power can only deliver ‘initial wow’.
”Absolutely. It always does,” said Turn 10 creative director Dan Greenawalt, asked if Xbox 360 has more to give. It’s time for a moving van analogy to explain it all.
”It’s like when you’re moving from one apartment to another, and you pack up the van, and you unpack the van, and then you re-pack it, and magically you have an extra metre of space. Then you’ll unpack it, and you’ll repack it, and you’ll find an extra 10 centimetres.”
”You unpack it and then you repack it and then you get another 5 centimetres. So you do reach a limit, but you always find more because you keep optimising, and optimising and optimising. But it’s the approach. So the IBL is not necessarily more expensive or less expensive. It’s just how you approach the problem,” explained Greenawalt.
Forza Motorsport 4 includes an ‘Auto Vista’ mode with very pretty cars, but these vehicle models won’t be slung around the tracks because they’re too detailed.
”I think people think of it as the power that gets you the features, but it’s not the power - it’s the creativity and the cleverness of the problem-solving. You can throw power at a problem, or you can throw intelligence at the problem. And I actually find the intelligence gets you more than the power,” continued the Turn 10 boss.
”The power gets you the initial “Wow! This generation is crazy!” but what gets the games to look really amazing is when people finally tame that power and get really clever. We also share techniques, so we work with the guys from Epic, from 343, we work with the guys from Bungie and we trade secrets.”
”So it means you’ve got multiple development communities – all with really smart, clever people – saying “Hey, have you ever tried to use your shaders in this way?” because we’re all working on the same platform,” he added.
”So you know what’s going to happen? All of our techniques are going to be shared with everybody else, and all the games in the next few years are going look better after this, but they’re also going to keep learning things that will make us better.”
”So yes, we’re reaching the limits where’s there’s less we can optimise, but there’s always smart people doing smart things.” Where should the next cycle of consoles go if power itself isn’t really the limiting factor? The creative director can’t be sure. ”I don’t even know where to start. I mean, honestly, we’re launching Forza 4, and the things we’re doing in this game are really things that have not been delivered in any other game.”
”…I think the sky’s the limit on the same console, because there’s always little things to be done. We’ve got a very strong vision, and we have very clever people. I’m not saying we’re the most clever people in the world, but I think we do have a track record at trying to excite our customers and bring innovation into the racing genre,” he said.
Forza Motorsport 4 releases on Xbox 360 October 11th in the US, 14th in Europe. Check out the full interview between Dan Greenawalt and VideoGamer.com.