Eye candy: Quantic Dream’s new Kara tech demo
Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream has released Kara, a tech demo showing the output of its new game engine and performance-capture system, at GDC 2012.
The demo, which runs in real time on a PlayStation 3, has the same relationship to Quantic Dream’s next commercial project as its 2006 demo The Casting did to Heavy Rain: a preview of the tech, not the game itself.
The results are perhaps more striking than stunning – and [personal opinion] have the same combination of sex and violence, real or implied, that made Heavy Rain a sometimes disturbing experience [end personal opinion] – but according to press reports from the show, Kara was completed a year ago, at a point at which Quantic’s new engine had only around 50% of its current features.
GameTrailers.com has a two-part video interview with Quantic Dream founder David Cage, which adds a few more details – although if we’re not mistaken, the footage edited in to demonstrate performance capture is actually the MotionScan system used on L.A. Noire.
If so, it’s ironic, since in interviews, Cage has described MotionScan as a “dead end”.
In the interview, Cage reveals that he was dissatisfied with the conventional two-capture process used on Heavy Rain (or, indeed, L.A. Noire) in which facial and full-body performance are recorded separately: something the new technology is designed to address.