Hitman: Absolution development limited by current-generation consoles, says art director

By: Muhammad Qasim Hassan

  |   November 17th, 2012   |  

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The current-generation consoles have been here for quite some time and so far neither Sony nor Microsoft have shown any signs of moving on.

While the publishers, developers, analysts and gamers have been complaining about the extended life-cycle of the current hardware, it is only recently that the actual limitations of the console have started to become really prominent.

The console version of one of the most anticipated games this month, Hitman: Absolution, has been affected by the use of traditional technology, revealed the game’s art director Roberto Marchesi.

In a recent interview with Trusted Reviews, he conceded that there had been so many things that he wanted to see become part of the console version of the game, but the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware did not make the implementation possible.

With limitations because of working with the current-generation hardware in place, the developers were made to make a number of compromises, which included leaving out certain things and taking a different approach from what they wanted because of being short of options.

“It’s always a give and take,” he said. “You also have to balance it with the gameplay; is it really a loss to the game or not? Sometimes you have an idea and you think it’s really good but when it gets removed from the game and no-one notices maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to begin with.”

Marchesi did, however, add developing titles for the current-generation consoles of Microsoft and Sony was not completely a bad thing.

He explained that the developers have learned so much about the hardware from the time when it first arrived that it has become possible for them to really unleash its potential and do great things with it, things that they did not think were possible on it at one time.

“Working with a proven platform is not necessarily a bad thing,” the Hitman Absolution Art Director said. “We have learned so much compared to when the consoles first came out, we can push so much more.”

A look at the recent Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 titles makes it quite evident that the level of detail in games has been continuously rising. The graphics and visual effects are also getting better with every passing day, thus indicating the growing familiarity of the developers with the consoles.

However, there is only a certain limit of pushing that the developers can do, after which they find themselves coming to a halt because of the limitations of the technology.

It is for this very reason that the industry is calling for Sony and Microsoft to start putting serious thought into introducing the next PlayStation and Xbox respectively into the market.