Quantic Dream’s ’Kara’ Tech Demo Will Have You Tripping Over Your Jaw
Let me get it out of the way: this footage is fucking extraordinary.
If you were under the impression Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain pushed graphical boundaries, witness the developer knock them right down. While the video above may seem like it could be toting the next generation’s capabilities, Kara is actually rendered on the PlayStation 3, in real time no less, to showcase the developer’s new way of animating virtual performances. The results blow reality-striving titles such as L.A. Noire out of the water.
Quantic Dream’s creative tour de force and founder, David Cage, states Kara came about after a want to present a cohesive animated performance that left behind the tried and true tradition of mo-capping performers and recording voice actors separately. “We wanted to do what Avatar did by having one full performance where we capture everything at the same time,” says Cage. “We wanted to demonstrate these new performance capture techniques and the new engine before going into production, so we developed a short showcase that would allow us to test these ideas and technologies.”
But Kara is not a new game from the developer nor a new character or story backdrop. Think of Kara as a short film that shows us what Quantic Dream can do with this new engine. And, of course, Kara also serves the purpose of making us wonder what Quantic Dream could do.