Beyond Better & Evil!

[juv3nal]

For instance, the PS3 HD version was supposed to be released last month while PSN was down, yet no announcements have been made since on what the new release date would be or even if it's still coming. You'd think someone at Ubisoft would give a rat's ass enough to inform fans who were planning to buy said HD remake a heads up the game's new release date and reassure them it was still coming out, but possibly it's a better marketing strategy to ignore everyone and say nothing? I don't know, I didn't go to school for marketing so maybe I don't know the new cool tactics marketers use.

Well, there was this on the European front a few days ago.

[syntheticgerbil]

Hmm, good news. If it were to never come out in the U.S. I guess I could just make a European account.

[Kolzig]

Now I'm ready for the sequel. Bring it on Michel Ancel!

I finally completed the whole game yesterday on PC and it was sooooo good. Such a masterpiece. I had some graphics glitches, but that didn't bother me so much.

I should punish myself somehow to neglect this game for so many years. I have always wanted to play it but for unknown reasons have continuously pushed it back.

Shame that Ubi didn't attach those oh so useless achievements of the HD version to the Steam version. I was checking those and I would've got 95% of those during my playthrough.

I was comparing videos of the HD version and the Steam version that I have and is it really so that the textures and character models are exactly the same, just the fonts and hud looks more sharper as the font resolution has been made better for higher resolutions? Seems like a lazy Ubi Shanghai "port"?

[Thrik]

It's pretty common for last-gen games to be ported as-is with the only real enhancements being improved resolution and redesigned UI elements — and a better frame rate if the original ran sluggishly. This has been the case for the God of War, Metal Gear Solid, and ICO/SotC HD collections anyway, apart from some very minor enhancements.

I'm OK with it as I've often said to people that the last generation is where games hit the point where they could look pretty attractive forever so long as the art direction and production was good, whereas PS1/N64-era 3D games will always be hard to get into visually no matter how well they were made.

BG&E is definitely one of the games that still looks wonderful thanks to it excellent production the first time around.

[elmuerte]

That's because there was also a PC release, which was "HD" back in the day.

[Kolzig]

I think I read that they were promoting it as a enhanced "HD version" with better character models and textures and from the videos I saw none of that.

But yeah, the PC version was already HD years ago.

[juv3nal]

I think I read that they were promoting it as a enhanced "HD version" with better character models and textures and from the videos I saw none of that.

They didn't do literally nothing, but it seems like the kind of stuff no one would notice much unless actually looking at comparison shots.

[Lu]

They removed the flowers! They did less than nothing!

[juv3nal]

They removed the flowers! They did less than nothing!

But they added a planter/ridge thing which is all 3D. It is the futar!

actually, I prefer the flowers. Regardless of which looks better, it's still just such an odd insignificant thing to decide to devote resources to.

[syntheticgerbil]

Ah the flower fiasco. Those are early comparison screenshots. People on the official Beyond Good and Evil board were up in arms about the flowers. I can confirm they are there in the final product though. It's possible the texture was missing when the earlier HD screenshots were taken. There's other screenshots of the intro fight floating around that are also missing the purple flowers, yet there are there in the finished game as well.

But yeah, really it's just cleaned up/redrawn UI elements for HD, new or redrawn textures in probably double the resolution, and supposedly there is high quality audio and remastered music, but I'm not an audiophile nor do I have a neato sound setup so I can't tell.

I have read before that Ubisoft's HD remakes have normal maps on top of the new textures to give everything a more fully formed look. It seems like this happened from what I can tell. It's very apparent in Prince of Persia HD because of the rocky textures of flat surfaced environments, but if the normals were put on things in Beyond Good and Evil, it's very difficult to tell as a lot of environments are organic jagged polys or stylized graphics that would not need normal maps. It's probably on the grittier textures, but I am not positive. It could just be the difference between bump maps originally displayed in 480p vs. 720p, but in the above screenshot, it appears as if there are normals going on in the buildings.

I was a lot more forgiving of these HD versions from everyone before playing Oddworld Stranger, and now I just feel disappointed since that was the only game to completely redo all of the character models. I feel like that's the most important part as there's a big disparity when going close up to the characters on the Ubi HD remakes (see through polygons, broken portions, etc.) and it would have been nice had they taken the time to at least clean up and smooth out the main characters in these games.

I think we've reached about the last of these now. The ones I'm looking forward to are Ratchet and Clank, Rayman 3, and Oddworld Munch's Oddysee. I'm sure once again the Oddworld game is going to be the only one with actual hard work put into it.

[Ben X]

it would have been nice had they taken the time to at least clean up and smooth out the main characters in these games.

Sounds like we need a Beyond Good And Evil Deluxe fan project!

[syntheticgerbil]

I was actually thinking about why companies do this and the most I can get is that adding polys to preexisting models just completely fucks up your animation... at least in my experience, I don't have a major amount of professional 3D knowledge. Add extra vertices, then you have to tell the bones what to warp all over again.

I'm guessing for everything in Oddworld HD, the company went through and rerigged all of the new models to the existing skeleton animation and probably had to clean up all of the existing animation in turn, looking for breakage. Seems like it's a major headache, but if they are repackaging an existing game for this console generation, why not?

But I certainly don't want to be involved in anything like that. I'd rather just repaint textures all day.

[Murdoc]

I was actually thinking about why companies do this and the most I can get is that adding polys to preexisting models just completely fucks up your animation... at least in my experience

Yeah, it would screw up the weighting, but that shouldn't be a big deal(takes like an a few hours to weight a character these days at most)and, yeah, deforming a more complex mesh on a really simple rig might not work... but I've know some pretty ingenious riggers that could easily use the old rig, the old animations, and add a few extra bones to compensate for the added geo.

So I don't think the overhead to do that sort of thing would be terrible consuming. Facial animation would be a whole different ball park though and I honestly don't know how simple those rigs were back in xbox days.

Did Oddworld actually do that? I just remember Strangers wrath looking pretty damn smooth back in the day and figured it was the same stuff. Also, animation gets compressed, which is usually why a lot of it kind of sucks in games, I'm wondering if there is ever a case where they could go back to the original data to re-compress it with modern technology and specs.

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah I was thinking it probably couldn't be THAT hard after noticing on the Grim Fandango remake project they had smoothed out the model and had not broken the animation. Thinking about it, I'm feeling more and more ripped off by these HD versions.

There's multiple HD comparisons of the models for Stranger's Wrath, but all of the characters were remodeled to look more like those in the prerendered cutscenes. It's actually kind of funny now because on one particular prerendered cutscene, they are using the old jaggy models for the minions while in game they look much better now.

[thorn]

I'm guessing for everything in Oddworld HD, the company went through and rerigged all of the new models to the existing skeleton animation and probably had to clean up all of the existing animation in turn, looking for breakage. Seems like it's a major headache, but if they are repackaging an existing game for this console generation, why not?

It's possible that their job was made simpler by the fact that most of the the higher-res models were originally produced for the game for the cut scenes and did not need to be developed from scratch for the HD version. The lower-res models were produced from the high-res ones, not the other way around. I'm guessing that the rigging and whatnot were pretty much interchangeable.

[Murdoc]

There's multiple HD comparisons of the models for Stranger's Wrath, but all of the characters were remodeled to look more like those in the prerendered cutscenes. g[/img]

Ha, Yeah, its funny how memory works, because the HD version is how the stranger looks like in my memory.

Good for them for making a proper HD version, it was alright a good looking game they made look better. In fact, I think it warrants a purchase, I was also a fan of the movement feel in the original, just not the 3rdperson/1st person thing.

I'd also be more impressed if someone had the source art of all the cinematic models and the studio got access to it after 4-5 years. That's almost unheard of.

[Nachimir]

Muddily remembered from the various GameCity Q&As Stewart Gilray and Lorne Lanning have done:

I think Just Add Water had a few problems with old/undocumented stuff, but Oddworld Inhabitants seem to be good at keeping stuff for reference.

[syntheticgerbil]

It's possible that their job was made simpler by the fact that most of the the higher-res models were originally produced for the game for the cut scenes and did not need to be developed from scratch for the HD version. The lower-res models were produced from the high-res ones, not the other way around. I'm guessing that the rigging and whatnot were pretty much interchangeable.

Either way, it's great of them to do that. Beyond Good and Evil did not have higher poly cutscene models, but all of the Sands of Time games did which would have been nice if they were used, assuming that made things easier.

[thorn]

Muddily remembered from the various GameCity Q&As Stewart Gilray and Lorne Lanning have done:

I think Just Add Water had a few problems with old/undocumented stuff, but Oddworld Inhabitants seem to be good at keeping stuff for reference.

Pretty much. From what I've heard, they had hundreds of DVD-ROMs with their old archives, all pretty much random. I was told that by the guy who's job it was to copy all the data from the DVDs and work out what the hell was on them. He wasn't all that happy about it.

The main issues they faced (more with Munch's Oddysee than Stranger's Wrath) was that most of the software used to develop and compile the game is obsolete. So, for instance, MO-HD will have HD character models and the landscapes will have hi-res textures, but they can't change the environment models at all.

[Murdoc]

So, for instance, MO-HD will have HD character models and the landscapes will have hi-res textures, but they can't change the environment models at all.

Aw that's disappointing...I wonder what they used since the three major packages are now owned by the same company it couldn't be that difficult to find an older version and export to a common format... but that would just another step/pain in the butt.

[Thrik]

I'm guessing it's some proprietary level editor that's the problem. Most old games and indeed many modern ones use an in-house solution for that and import textures/models in unless they use something like Unreal Engine, CryEngine, Unity, etc. If your level editor is knocked out of commission and/or nobody knows how to use it that pretty much limits you to replacing existing stuff with better versions.

[Nachimir]

Holy shit, there may be a BG&E sequel after all!

Holy shit, there may be a BG&E sequel after all!

[syntheticgerbil]

Why is it still the same news? If we have to wait until the next consoles it will be like 2013-14, assuming all new consoles just don't bomb the instant they premiere. I'm hoping for maybe just a PC game exclusive at this point.

This is really getting silly, but as long as they are working on it...

Edited May 7, 2012 by syntheticgerbil

[Erkki]

Woohoo!

[toblix]

Remember that video that was leaked a couple of years ago? Here's another:

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I don't know what this is for (internal design concept thing, I guess) but if they're taking the game in this more realistic, contemporary-looking direction I'm on board. I can dig that toilet.

Also, I liked that they used this:

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