God of War: Origins Collection – Out Now! Demo Available - Blu-ray Forum

Shin-Ra · 06-07-2011, 08:06 AM

Ready At Dawn Studios / SCEA
Released September 13, 2011

OVERVIEW

The God of War franchise has set the bar for the action-adventure genre, selling over 11 million units worldwide and receiving various awards, while enjoying critical acclaim from the videogame industry’s top media. This began in 2005 when Sony Computer Entertainment America’s Santa Monica Studio introduced God of War, a game that won over a dozen ‘Game of the Year Awards.’ Then in 2007, the award-winning development team introduced God of War II, the second chapter of this sprawling odyssey, followed by God of War III in 2010, the franchise’s first title designed for the PlayStation 3 and one that sold over 1 million copies in its first week of release last March.

In 2008, the adventure moved to the PSP with God of War: Chains of Olympus, a game that is currently the highest rated PSP title of all-time on MetaCritic.com with a score of 91. Developed by Ready At Dawn Studios, in collaboration with SCEA’s Santa Monica team, Chains of Olympus has been praised by fans and critics alike as one of the best portable gaming experiences to date. The same creative team then continued that excellence with God of War: Ghost of Sparta for the PSP and PSPgo systems, detailing a journey that takes place after the conclusion of God of War, telling the story of Spartan warrior Kratos’ ascension to power as the new God of War. Combining intense action, a fresh storyline, stunning graphics, and depths of scale never-before-seen on the portable platform, Ghost of Sparta was also critically acclaimed, boasting a current MetaCritic.com score of 86.

Now, discover the origins of Kratos with the definitive compilation of God of War: Chains of Olympus and God of War: Ghost of Sparta on a single Blu-ray disc for the first time! Fully remastered in 1080p and stereoscopic 3-D, players will discover the dark past that continues to haunt the Spartan Warrior, and why he is forced to choose between his own personal redemption and saving the ancient world from destruction.

KEY FEATURES:

Experience the award-winning PSP games – God of War: Ghost of Sparta and God of War: Chains of Olympus in high-definition and on one Blu-ray disc for the first time.
This is the very first time PSP titles will be made available on Blu-ray for PlayStation 3 in the US.
Fully remastered in 1080p HD and stereoscopic 3D.
Full PlayStation Network trophy support.
DualShock compatible with rumble support.
Dolby 5.1 / DTS surround sound support.
Bonus content will include DLC contents from Ghost of Sparta – God of War: Game Directors Live roundtable video and Legionnaire Kratos & Forest of the Forgotten.

Herculean Task: Remastering God of War: Origins Collection for PS3
+ Posted by Nathan Phail-Liff // Art Director, Ready At Dawn Studios

[ PSP / PS3 Comparison Video ]

Re-mastering both of the God of War PSP games in full HD for the PS3 God of War: Origins Collection definitely had its share of challenges for us. The first goal we had was simply the daunting task of up-rezing the engine and content authored on a PSP running at 480 x 272 resolution and 30 frames per second to 1920 x 1080p at a steady 60 fps on the PS3. This required a custom PS3 version of our engine, coded in-house exclusively for the Origins Collection, as well as a painstaking process by art team. We ended up going through every single character in the game and doubling or tripling polygon count by hand, as well as up-rezing and re-painting every texture across both games at 4x resolution on both characters and environments.

Being gluttons for punishment, we also decided from the beginning of the project that just re-mastering content from PSP resolution to 1080p wasn’t necessarily challenging enough (as a quick aside…we were wrong), so we also wanted to take advantage of our custom PS3 engine and try to implement full stereoscopic 3D support. After a first pass of 3D implementation and careful playthroughs of both games in 3D, we identified certain trouble areas with and addressed them with techniques such as near-screen fading on certain particles and camera focal plane compensation for a smooth and enjoyable 3D experience. The quality of the final result of the 3D on the Origins Collection so surprised us that it actually sold myself and a number of others on the team 3D TVs in general. Personally I wouldn’t want to play the games any other way after being able to experience it firsthand.

Besides adding upscaling in-game content and 3S support, there was one other challenge that is worth noting (and elicited groans of despair from both artists and programmers alike). Between Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta we had over an hour of pre-rendered cinematics, and the gap in video resolution between our PSP source footage and full HD was so extreme that no matter how many custom video up-scale solutions we tried, there was just a glaring quality difference between the 1080P real-time gameplay and the video. It was pretty demoralizing for us to play the game in beautiful HD and hit a cinematic trigger where Kratos looked like he was rendered through a dirty sock, so we realized we would just have to bite the bullet and properly re-render all cinematics in full 1080p. To do this we ported all of our cinematic scenes to the PS3 and, months and terabytes of data later, had every single frame re-rendered in HD through the new Origin Collection’s engine. From there we had to up-rez all of the post production effects and re-composite every single cinematic again in HD, giving us a final result that blended seamlessly with the in-game quality.

Needless to say, all of the above made for quite a laborious process for us, but we were set on doing justice to the original games that we put so much blood, sweat, and tears into. We hope this effort really pays off for God of War fans able to experience both PSP games in glorious 1080p!

SideEffect34 · 06-07-2011, 08:50 AM