High production value in PS3 games

I've been reading and watching some of the upcoming Playstation 3 games, which also happen to be Playstation 3 exclusives, many of them first party as well. I've noticed that much of them have something in common: extremely high production values.

In particular I've noted how games like Uncharted: Drake's Fortune are using a truly unprecedented level of motion capturing technology both in-game and during cutscenes, and the truly interesting layered animation system that allows for some fluid movements inside the game for some added realism. Also, the game is lush and frighteningly beautiful.

Lair has a SPECTACULAR scope and size. The music in this game is startlingly good, so much so that I often watch gameplay videos just to hear the music. A few, in particular, in MP4 are on my Playstation 3 and get a good runthrough once in a while. While many criticize this game as though it will be bland, linear, repetitive, uninteresting story, etc, IGN and a few gameplay videos dispelled this rumor. In addition, everyone can all agree that this game has some shockingly high production values in audio and visual content. 1080p, 7.1 surround sound. That's rich.

Heavenly Sword is another astonishingly beautiful game. If I may direct you to these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR7e8HOm9ag

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWev2oogYp0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Aa0lIyjUcN

I promise, you're not getting rickrolled. These videos are actually new content from some foreign (probably English or Australian) television program featuring Heavenly Sword. If you haven't seen them already, watch them. The first video makes clear what I'm talking about. This game also has some amazing production values. As if tacking on a very enthusiastic Andy Serkis (Gollum from LOTR) to be your dramatic director is not enough, this game features motion capture throughout, extremely high end facial motion cap animation during cutscenes, huge numbers of enemies with an advanced AI set, and full HDR+4xAA. 450,000 man hours have been put into the game, and it cost a lot to develop. The story is already shaping up to be advanced, and Andy Serkis doesn't mind saying the characters are complicated, and have their own life.

Killzone 2 being created by the new and improved Guerilla Games, with a $40 million budget and a huge development team. Not much is known about this game except that it is a very, very big project that will have undoubtedly high production values.

Other notables include GT5 (which gets the "basically, when it's finished" go ahead by Sony), FF13 (which will probably be...uh, big), MGS4 (which will be a heaping monstrosity of audio and glorious story), and Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (which looks extremely wow).

While we lack "quantity," all of these titles have hit the "high level" production values that should ensure a high level of quality in most of them.

i thoroughly agree with you man, these games look amazing. Also, i agree with the notion of quality not quantity. Pretty much ps3 is getting a lot of high quality exclusives, just as many as 360 if you look at the long run and anything else will be multiplat. Most of these games i look forward to playing simply because of this production quality, and i'm glad that they put so much effort into it.