Herculean Task: Remastering God of War: Origins Collection for PS3

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Herculean Task: Remastering God of War: Origins Collection for PS3

Re-mastering both of the God of War PSP games in full HD for the PS3 God of War: Origins Collection definitely had its share of challenges for us. The first goal we had was simply the daunting task of up-rezing the engine and content authored on a PSP running at 480 x 272 resolution and 30 frames per second to 1920 x 1080p at a steady 60 fps on the PS3. This required a custom PS3 version of our engine, coded in-house exclusively for the Origins Collection, as well as a painstaking process by art team. We ended up going through every single character in the game and doubling or tripling polygon count by hand, as well as up-rezing and re-painting every texture across both games at 4x resolution on both characters and environments.

Being gluttons for punishment, we also decided from the beginning of the project that just re-mastering content from PSP resolution to 1080p wasn’t necessarily challenging enough (as a quick aside…we were wrong), so we also wanted to take advantage of our custom PS3 engine and try to implement full stereoscopic 3D support. After a first pass of 3D implementation and careful playthroughs of both games in 3D, we identified certain trouble areas with and addressed them with techniques such as near-screen fading on certain particles and camera focal plane compensation for a smooth and enjoyable 3D experience. The quality of the final result of the 3D on the Origins Collection so surprised us that it actually sold myself and a number of others on the team 3D TVs in general. Personally I wouldn’t want to play the games any other way after being able to experience it firsthand.

God of War: Origins Collection HD for PS3God of War: Origins Collection HD for PS3

Besides adding upscaling in-game content and 3S support, there was one other challenge that is worth noting (and elicited groans of despair from both artists and programmers alike). Between Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta we had over an hour of pre-rendered cinematics, and the gap in video resolution between our PSP source footage and full HD was so extreme that no matter how many custom video up-scale solutions we tried, there was just a glaring quality difference between the 1080P real-time gameplay and the video. It was pretty demoralizing for us to play the game in beautiful HD and hit a cinematic trigger where Kratos looked like he was rendered through a dirty sock, so we realized we would just have to bite the bullet and properly re-render all cinematics in full 1080p. To do this we ported all of our cinematic scenes to the PS3 and, months and terabytes of data later, had every single frame re-rendered in HD through the new Origin Collection’s engine. From there we had to up-rez all of the post production effects and re-composite every single cinematic again in HD, giving us a final result that blended seamlessly with the in-game quality.

Needless to say, all of the above made for quite a laborious process for us, but we were set on doing justice to the original games that we put so much blood, sweat, and tears into. We hope this effort really pays off for God of War fans able to experience both PSP games in glorious 1080p!

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110 Comments

  • OHH HELLLL YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA , first day buy for me. god of war is the most amazing series i have ever experienced. i have every single one of these games and never hade a chance to try these, looks like itl be 40 dollars well spent in september.

  • well i mean every single one of the other GOW games besides these, cant wait.

  • AWESOME!!!!! can’t wait!!!

  • Will be picking this up day 1 add to the collection.

  • Yup, adding this to complete the collection. Plus, how do you NOT reward Ready At Dawn for all that hard work. Perfect example of how to remaster a game.

  • Looking good…can’t wait.

  • I have question. hopefully you will nice enought to answer them. Please becuase.. alot of psn legionaree group memebers are wanting to know. ?

    How many months did this take? To do this conversion for ps3? and was it very costly. You dont have to give exact cost figure. Ty for you time/answer in advance.. loving what we are seeing..

    mcbuttz78
    vp-psn legioniaree group

  • @46
    No it’s not rocket science and I am not talking about the demands of the game, I am just looking for confirmation of it pushing 1080p in 3D at 60FPS as I have read that Sony has limited 3D games to 720p in 3D 30FPS

  • Wah hoo! Next month!

  • Will get this at some point, but can wait on it. Loved Ghost of Sparta, it’s my favorite PSP game ever. And Chains was a great game, too.

    I think other than God Of War 1 (which will most likely always be my fav GOW game), you guys at Ready at Dawn have made the best God of War games.

  • Question, I’ve bought and played both games on the PSP, but I might get if for my brother who’s never played them and doesn’t like the PSP controls. I know the controls will be there just like GOW3, but I must as whether or not they’ll have codes for the PSP versions as well included. It would be great if they were, I would love to play them again on my Playstation Vita when it’s released, and I won’t buy them 3 times. Thanks!

  • Great job guys!

    I can’t wait to get my hands on this game. I am always a huge fan of GoW series and I’m glad that not only the game looks amazing but the team worked hard on it. A big thanks guys and keep up the good work :)

  • great, I didn’t know you were redoing the textures, :)

  • I love that you re-rendered the cutscenes, if only they had done this in the original God of War Collection!

  • thx for the great work!!! FIRST DAY BUY!!!. I love GOW games. I hope you guys are making other GOW game for the PSVITA :D

  • This is why I buy PlayStation. Day one purchase for me, Thanks so much for all the hard work.

  • When can we expect the psp remaster series options to show up on our dashboard like the japanese users currently have? This is already pre-ordered for me :)

  • Wish when remaking the games they would make them look like their big bugget games like i wish this looked like god of war 3.

  • For your hard work I’ll be getting this asap!!!
    Thanks so much for doing this, I hope many more companies follow.

    I’ve already played and beat both, but I can’t wait to do it again with trophies!!!

  • Looks pretty cool! If i didn’t already pre-order dead island i would have picked this up. Looks awesome!

  • Can’t wait to get the game!

  • Oh wow. You guys really went all out eh? Glad to hear it (as a lot of gamers also will be), as a lot of developers don’t seem to want to do that these days – instead taking the easy route just to maximize profit (I presume). I already own the titles for PSP, but will deff pick them up in this re-mastered package. Thanks a bunch :D

  • @40, go to an eye doctor, immdiately.

  • Definitely will be getting this, it’s great that I can play all 5 GOW games on my ps3 in HD. Looking forward to how the 3D looks on these games, hopefully it looks good. I won’t expect Killzone, wipeout or superstardust 3D effect, but hopefully its at least somewhat close to those games 3D effects.

  • Also I just read the whole article, you guys went to great lengths to make this game great, I really wish that they had done the same thing you guys did with the cutscenes in GOW collection, it definitely takes you out of the experience a bit when you get that old lame quality outta nowhere. As a 3D modeler myself I feel for you guys when you said you guys had to double or triple the polygon count and redo the textures. That can be a real b****

  • i did beat Chains on the psp, so to replay it in HD and 3D…BRING IT ON! never played ghost of sparta

  • thank you for putting a lot of work into these games and not doing a [DELETED] job like those other guys did with the hd remasters of gow 1 and 2.

  • I loved god of war collections but the one thing o hated was the cut scenes were not hd I was like ahhhhhhhh what the heck now I have never played the psp versions so I’m glad cut scenes r gonna b hd thank u Sony Santa Monica u rock

  • The OCD in me loves the amount of detail you guys have put into this game to make it that much more of an enjoyable experience for the fans. Only 1 month to go now until I can sit on my couch to play this, and not having to worry about my hands cramping up like they did when playing these on the PSP. Not to mention it’s another 3D game to add to my collection which is always nice :)

  • i never played this on the psp. so i’m looking forward to playing this on the ps3

  • what God of War really needs is David Jaffe back….

  • I can’t wait for this!!! ^^

  • GOD OF WAR!

  • That sounds awesome guys! I can’t wait to play the game in 3D! Now if you can just somehow get the other PS3 versions of GoW in 3D that would be great!

  • We appreciate the continued effort, RAD. Will be buying this day one. My PSP screen broke, so this purchase is a no-brainer for me. :DDD

  • Whats the price? I see some sites saying its $59.99 others saying its $39.99. If it’s $39.99 I’m definitely going to pick it up.

  • So, will by any chance will the WDIDTDTML series and Valkyira Chronicles games get the same treatment?

    Hell, wouldn’t be easier to just let us play PSP games on the PS3? I don’t feel like buying another PSP honestly.

  • Please make an article like this for the ICO/Shadow of the Colossus Collection!

  • amazing might buy god of war collection and this god of war ORIGINS collection

    can the people at sony make a ratchet and clank trilogy? i mean in HD will be Great and you cant really get ratchet and clank 1 or 2 in stores in uk if you could get it thousands of fans will buy them giving a great selling market

  • Redemption_7 the price is confirmed at 39.99, look at the respond comment in the front.

  • great work guys. im definitely buying it

  • WOW! The Remastering of these games look amazing from being PSP titles they looked more like PS2 games from the PS3 view which is great & I can’t wait! to buy this on the 1st day it comes out Thanks RAD & SSM you guys are Truley BADASS!

  • Another addition to my god of war collection http://mygodofwarcollection.blogspot.com/

  • Another great addition to my god of war collection

  • I think I’m in love

  • just wondering, is the ps Vita going to have the quality of the old psp or about the ps3?

  • Nice. Now everyone regrets buying a psp more than ever.

  • @6
    yes. most games on ps3 have it. if you havent noticed.

  • @93
    yes the ps vita has “console like graphics” MUCH BETTER then the psp

  • @72
    HA he needs it

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