Gamernode: News - Guerilla admits Killzone 2 screenshots were altered

Guerilla admits Killzone 2 screenshots were altered

Category: PlayStation 3, Posted: 12/10/2007 at 03:55PM CST by Frank Ling, Editorial Director

Killzone 2, the upcoming PS3 shooter that Sony hopes will fare well against Gears of War and Halo 3 has run into some problems--not with the development of the game, but it was revealed that screenshots for the game were doctored and altered to make the screenies look better.

Kotaku spotted the "irregularities" and caught Guerilla Games red handed.

Guerilla's Seb Downie, admitted to this on the official PS3 forums and said:

"They are only the tiniest bit touched up. Short answer is yes. Long answer is that there was a little bit of color-correction done and some minor polish, but nothing major. Still very close to reality and it looks better in motion in my opinion."

Is that like saying to your police officer that, "Well gee, I forged that phony ID with the "tiniest" of changes to cash that check..."

Representing a game accurately to the public should be at the top of the list for game companies in their campaigns to sell their games. But is the altering of screenshots widespread? It's hard to say one way or another.

PSU did a side by side match-up from the Leipzeg game convention demo of Killzone 2 and the enhanced sceenshot of the same scene. Do the changes make a big difference?

[via PS3 forums]

Posted by Archem on 12/10/2007 at 04:21PM

More Killzone 2 scandal. While I must say that altering photos is a big no-no, and the difference really is noticeable, with a little work, the game very well could look like what their doctored photos represent. Here's hoping that the Photoshopping was simply because they didn't have time to add colored lighting and higher levels of contrast.

Posted by Requiem on 12/10/2007 at 04:38PM

The improved screenie does look a lot better. The game would look superb if it kept to that lighting style.

Posted by SoDev on 12/10/2007 at 07:27PM

Shocker... I hope this game can live up to the hype for the PS3 people. There is so much drama with this game. If it's not as good as it's been manipulated to be I'll feel bad for the gamers. Shady tactics, but it's not like other games haven't done the same. You would think they would learn...

Posted by lskennedy on 12/10/2007 at 08:29PM

i agree with you sodev.

The developers need to elarn that, well, lying is bad, for business.
Also, i hope it is as good as it seems as well, simply because its been hyped so much. Better not suck.

Posted by Flarty on 12/11/2007 at 05:45AM

to be fair, i think a lot of screen shots seems to look better than actual game footage

Posted by popecodex on 12/11/2007 at 07:18AM

Bullshot strikes again. They may have rationalized the changes to themselves as "just colour corrected and tweaks!" but they changes are rather dramatic for that to really be a realistic excuse. Amusing how this sort of thing keeps turning up with killzone2 ..you'd think they'd learn people react badly to it when it's that obvious.

Posted by goatlinks on 12/11/2007 at 07:50AM

IMO a whole lot of demos from conventions have that washed out, low contrast feel. This is only an observation, and it really does suck that they would change something that much, but it could be the reason why (maybe they didn't finish the lighting code for the demo...)

Posted by Collision on 12/18/2007 at 06:57AM

I don't care.

I still love Killzone and I'm still going to get it, the sole reason I'm getting a PS3.