Enslaved PS3 Demo Impressions

Ninja Theory's, the developer of Heavenly Sword, next game is called Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.  Largely an unproven development studio prior to the release of Heavenly Sword, there was a big risk taken with their first PS3 title.  Despite selling 1.5 million copies, they barely broke even and ultimately led to their decision to make the next game multiplatform.

Enslaved using NaturlMotion's morpheme system for animation and Unreal Engine 3 for all other aspects of the game (models, textures, level layout, etc ..).  That being said, let's dig into the demo.

Right of the bat, its quite evident that Enslaved uses Epic's Unreal technology (credit joystiq.com and kotaku.com).  I guess the facial structures give it away.

 

If there was a checklist of graphical positives/negatives from an Unreal 3.0 game here are some of them (below). The first two items aren't a bad thing. If the art direction of the game requires it, Unreal 3.0 is the way to go.

- deformed human characters that emphasizes muscle definition and mass
- limited color palette that tailors to post apocalyptic atmospheres
- texture pop-in

Outside of the occasional texture pop-up, inconsistent texture work, and screen tear (during intense geometry crushing moments where half the screen is flooded in flames), the game looks beautiful. If this were categorized just based on looks, it would be between Gears of War 2 and Uncharted 2. However, there is one large issue with the graphics. When Monkey's skin palette is sometimes the same color as the wall texture or burning objects (yellowish tint), you lose focus. At least the COGS had armor suits that had a blue glow (in the dark) to keep the player focused the central character.

(Credit image above to gamersyde.com)

Now onto the animation.  A significant part of the game play is to trek through the environment from one platform to another.  Jump on a pipe, climb it, and then jump to another platform.  There were moments where the environment degrades through destruction and Monkey is tasked to keep climbing.  This is very Uncharted-like minus fluid animation.  It felt like the animations were missing frames, making it clunky between transitions.  On top of this, there is only ONE way to go, making a linear experience much more linear.  The insulting part of the linear level design is that there were glowing markers/indicators to jump/climb to the next point.  If there is only ONE way to go, why not make it a bit more exciting for players through trial and error by removing these markers?  Needless to say, the animation and level design (at least for the demo) left an unsatisfying taste.

There isn't much to comment on the story because it is only a demo.  I have no doubt that Ninja Theory will be able to lock down a storyline that is compelling enough for a players to play through the game.  They did it with Heavenly Sword.  In a nutshell, Monkey and Trip escape a ship of captured "humans" where 150 years in the future robots control the land.  An atypical male/female relationship where one literally can't live without the other.  She controls his fate by locking him down with a slaves headband.  He controls her fate by promising (unwillingly) to keep her alive.  If she dies, he dies.  End of story and no happy ending.

It will be interesting to see what the final product looks like.  The PS3 demo was promising and the hope is that those technical details are taken care of.