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The 2005 PlayStation 3 Killzone Demo Was Not Development Footage, Guerrilla Games Confirms
A core battle of the PlayStation 3 generation's console wars, the 2005 trailer of Killzone 3, has finally been confirmed as a concept trailer not representative of the game.
NoClip, a Kickstarter- and Patreon-backed studio that focuses on bringing behind-the-scenes looks to tell the stories of games, released their documentary on Horizon: Zero Dawn. As part of telling the story of the game's development, NoClip looks back at the evolution of the studio, which includes the 2005 PlayStation 3 reveal of the first trailer of Killzone 2.
Guerrilla's executive producer Angie Smets explains that the CG trailer was their vision for what they wanted Killzone 2 to look like, after initial planning for the game had it set for the PlayStation 2. After waiting a few months for their devkits, the team watched the E3 stage show intended to be Sony's coming out party for the PlayStation 3. Sony's now-CEO Kazuo Hirai introduced a segment where he said Sony had asked partners for footage.
Then, the Killzone 2 footage aired, blowing people away at what the PlayStation 3 could apparently do.
Guerilla was not incredibly worried, as they figured no one would believe that could be realtime footage for the game. However, the show was followed by a PlayStation Rep saying exactly that, flat out telling the world that the Killzone 2 footage was running in-game on a PlayStation 3.
"I think we had only rendered a triangle by that point," Smets said.
The old trailer has long since been removed by Sony, but it would still be impressive from a scripting and animation standpoint today. Smets does remark that the confusion was for the better, as it convinced Guerrilla that they needed to expand to meet the expectations of the new generation of development.
[Source: NoClip - Horizon: Zero Dawn Documentary]
Our Take
Now that we have realtime graphics at the level of Toy Story, too, I am fascinated by how much console launch lore we can examine and attain.
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