PS4 Enables 'Uncharted 4' To Get 'Really Close To Film' Says Character Artist

The quest for photorealism has been a long-cherished goal, with each new generation of hardware gradually inching towards the same. Naughty Dog's Upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" claims to have reached closer to that goal of photorealism. At least, that's what the game's lead character artist believes. According to Naughty Dog's Frank Tzengi, the game is "really close" to the CGI employed in Hollywood blockbusters.

As the main character artist for the game, Tzengi is tasked with ensuring that every character model in the game looks and feels as realistic as possible. Apparently, the new game engine harnesses the increased rendering muscle of the PS4 well enough for the character artist to believe that the visuals could fit right into a film. According to Tzengi, the degree of detail that goes into creating the protagonist Nathan Drake's model makes it good enough to be used as a digital stand-in within a movie according to Gamepur.

"Based on the quality, the detail, the blend shape, the colour, everything that we put on the character this is basically a film character to me," said Naughty Dog's Fran Tzengi in an interview with CG Master Academy. "So to me, videos games are getting really close to film quality, and this is exactly what I wanted to do."

Tzengi acknowledges PS4's contribution by pointing out that the console's added graphics processing headroom allows the game to render more polygons and adopt higher resolution maps for textures, shadows and other rendering disciplines, which makes for a better visual experience. This abundance of power allows more blend shape and wrinkle maps, which in turn make the character models appear that much more photorealistic according to VG247.

The "Uncharted" franchise has been both loved and hated for its affinity for a cinematic approach. Gamers have loved the rich tapestry woven by the game's excellent script, with well fleshed out characters. On the other hand some gamers have reservations regarding the gameplay restriction posed by its setpiece-dependent cinematic approach. The Sony-exclusive games have been known to push the limits of the PlayStation hardware, so "Uncharted 4" has even an even wider room for improvement thanks to PS4's graphical prowess.

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Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Gameplay (credit: PlayStation YouTube channel)