COD: Ghosts art assets go ‘beyond next, next-gen’

Call of Duty: Ghosts has been designed with art assets that are well beyond the next generation of video games, Infinity Ward has claimed.

Speaking to Develop, COD: Ghosts’ development lead Mark Rubin said that new recruits to Infinity Ward from the film industry have created art assets that are of cinema-quality, which he believes will ultimately mean the game looks the best it can on all its target platforms.

“They really brought a new vision of how our art assets were even created. They actually changed our pipeline,” said Rubin.

“On the previous game – and previous engine actually – when we made an art asset we made it basically with a ‘here’s the polygon budget and here’s the texture size budget.’ And it was something that would be able to fit on all the platforms, so it is an average out of what all the consoles and devices can do.

“But these guys aren’t used to that kind of development. They create art assets at cinema level, which is beyond next, next, next, next-gen.

“It’s beyond PC right now. It is these really big cinema-quality assets. And what we can then do is pull them down onto the various platforms. That way the assets are always the best that they can be for that platform. So you never have an average, you have the best for PC, the best for current-gen, the best for next-gen."

Infinity Ward has hired two top artists from Hollywood, who are experts in computer-generated imagery, and previously worked on the likes of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Animatrix and Beowulf.

Whether the final result will be noticeably above what players expect when the game arrives on PS4 and Xbox One, we will have to wait and see. Ghosts is built on a remodelled version of the previous Call of Duty engine, which may temper how much of the cinema-quality art assets actually make to the small screen.

Nonetheless, Rubin believes the studio is bringing Hollywood practices to gaming that will have a positive impact on the product.

“We are bringing into gaming a lot of little techniques and things that these guys have been doing in Hollywood for many years now.”

You can read more on Infinity Ward’s return in our June 2013 cover story.