I Love Tech Demos

As the title suggests, I absolutely love tech demos. While the final product might not completely resemble what we see in a developer's tech demo, they do at least give us an idea of what we can expect. Quantic Dream just happens to be one of the few developers that I can count on to release a tech demo that not only hints at the kind of project they'll be working on next but it gives an excellent example of how far their techniques have come since their last project. In the early days of the PS3's lifespan Quantic Dream released a tech demo that showed just how realistic the PS3's visuals could become. With their advanced motion capture technique's they sculpted a scene that was completely translated from an actual actor's performance into their tech space. The result was amazing to say the least and the game that spun out from it, Heavy Rain, was a highly acclaimed release for the PS3. Since then Quantic Dream and it's founder, David Cage, have been pretty quiet. It's been about two years since the release of Heavy Rain and here it is again Quantic Dream has released another tech demo to show off what they've been working on from GDC 2012.

Yet again they're showing off a very character driven and performance oriented piece that is running in real time on a Playstation 3 console. As someone who played and loved Heavy Rain I find myself highly impressed with the demo. Not only does it have a similar feel to their previous work but it also takes a nice leap over the visuals they showed off with The Casting and Heavy Rain. This can probably be attributed to the attention to detail in the facial motion capture which can better show off the emotion conveyed in the character's performance. One complaint I had with Heavy Rain is that sometimes the eyes came off looking a little glazed over and vacant which they seem to have remedied a bit in this demo. Still it's early and we have no idea what they're really working on in their studio but this demo at the least shows off the kind of advancements they've made in the visual department. I'd gladly take another offering from the studio with this kind of tech powering it. Below you'll find the tech demo in it's entirety as provided by EuroGamer.