the ico and shadow of the colossus hd collection series

In some cases, the original developers use the Z-buffer to divide the distant view from the foreground to create a black/white mask, and then lower the resolution of the mask to 64圆4 to create the blurring effect on PS2.

The pseudo-HDR bloom appears to be handled in a somewhat different manner, in many situations producing a noticeably lower intensity on the PlayStation 3.

There are other changes between the PS2 and PS3 versions. This has the bonus effect of reducing the size of low-resolution textures and generally seems to give the artwork more room to 'breathe' - though purists may have preferred the original developers' shot composition to be respected, or at least available as an option. Moving on to Shadow of the Colossus and it appears that Bluepoint has essentially worked with the original artwork without feeling the need to do make any significant changes to the look of the game.Ĭuriously, the developer does appear to have changed the field of view in the cut-scenes, typically pulling the camera back to provide a more expansive view. PC shots - here, the overall experience is much more similar, but you'll note the additional tiling of the textures on the PlayStation 3 version. In other cases, the move to a higher resolution presents additional image quality goodness by default: texture filtering is obviously subject to an enormous level of improvement the higher you ramp the resolution.Ī second set of PS2 vs. There have been attempts to improve overall presentation though: for example, the somewhat off-putting frame-blending motion blur/anti-aliasing solution employed in Ico is present in the PS3 remaster but the ghosting effect is far less noticeable. Generally, when the camera is pulled back, the handling of the textures looks wonderful (just the intro screen represents a phenomenal improvement) but when the action zooms in more closely, the original low-resolution artwork does become a bit more of an issue. The overall impression is that Bluepoint didn't really want to mess around too much with the game's original aesthetic but have made sympathetic adjustments to suit the new look generated by the PlayStation 3.

The ico and shadow of the colossus hd collection series