Heavenly Sword • The Official Thread

Digital-Nitrate

Digital-Nitrate

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Heavenly Sword



SUMMARY
  • Developer______: Ninja Theory
  • Publisher______: Sony Computer Entertainment
  • Rating_________: Teen (T)
  • Genre__________: Action, Adventure, Martial Arts
  • Game Engine____: Havok
  • Gameplay Modes_: Single Player
  • Online Play____:
  • SIXAXIS Control: Yes
  • Picture Format_:
  • Audio Format___:
  • Demo___________: Yes
  • Release Dates
    • USA = Sep 12, 2007
    • EUR = Sep 14, 2007
    • AUS = Sep 20, 2007
    • JPN = TBA


LINKS


AWARDS
  • GamePro
    • "Best of Show" (E3)
  • GameZone
    • "Best of Show" (E3)
  • IGN's PS3 Best of E3 2006 Awards
    • "Best Artistic Design"
    • "Award for Technological Excellence"
  • Game Critics Awards
    • "Best Fighting Game"
  • next-gen.biz
    • "Top Playable Game"
  • Meristation
    • "Best PS3 Game"


The Story So Far:

Heavenly Sword is a tale of revenge, courage and self-discovery. For as long as the clan can remember, the prophecies have told of a son, born of their leader, who will lead them to their rightful place in heaven. So when the leader of the clan is born a daughter, Nariko, it seems as though the prophecy shall pass, unfulfilled.

Or so they all believe...

After her father is murdered by a bloodthirsty rival, Nariko sees one last chance to change her fate and avenge her father's death. To accomplish this mission she must wield the Heavenly Sword, a weapon so powerful that every blow she strikes brings her closer to death. As she fights, Nariko will not only come to understand that revenge is a hollow endeavor, but also discover her own worth and sense of place in the world. Only then will she be able to take command of the sword, becoming its master rather than its slave, transforming her lonely, cursed life, and fulfilling her destiny.



The Magic Behind the Scenes:

More than just a delicately woven narrative exploring bravery and retribution, Heavenly Sword pioneers in offering mind-blowing cinematic visuals and delivering a groundbreaking gaming experience, seamlessly uniting digital creation with emotional, dramatic performance.

By capturing full body movement, facial expression and on-set voice from various actors through the use of wireless microphones, hundreds of light-reflecting markers and infra-red motion capture cameras, Heavenly Sword thrives in setting a new benchmark for emotional performance in video games.

So brace yourself for an epic action adventure like you've never experienced before.



DESCRIPTION

Emotionally charged, stunningly beautiful, and delivering unprecedented dramatic character performance, Heavenly Sword™ showcases the power of PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system. A dramatic tale of revenge sees Nariko, a fiery red-haired heroine, embark on a quest for vengeance against an invading King and his army. The story builds around the ancient Heavenly Sword, which once belonged to a powerful deity. It can never be wielded by a mortal without it slowly but inevitably draining their life-force.

When the invading King (played by Andy Serkis) destroys the warrior clan that guards the Heavenly Sword, the clan leader’s daughter, Nariko, takes up the sword in a desperate fight for survival. Nariko must now pay the ultimate price as she embarks on one last mission of vengeance against the King and his army before her life is finally and irreparably overtaken by the omnipotent Heavenly Sword…

Andy Serkis, the world’s leading CG actor, famous for his roles as Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings" and Kong in "King Kong," was heavily involved in the creative process. As well as starring in Heavenly Sword as the villain, King Bohan, Andy was a major contributor to the character development, writing, casting, directing and performance capture for the PS3 title.

Heavenly Sword features a deep, diverse combat experience made possible only on PS3.



KEY FEATURES:
  • The Heavenly Sword – The Heavenly Sword itself can transform into three distinct weapons, each with its own accompanying fighting stance used by Nariko to vary combat styles.

  • The Combat Engine – The combat engine can scale up from sophisticated one-on-one encounters to one-on-many, where enemies employ intelligent squad-based dynamics, right up to combat against battalions pushing real-time gameplay and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to unprecedented new levels.

  • Physics-Based Combat – The physics-based combat allows players to sweep debris against opponents, kick tables to halt an oncoming surge of fighters, smash the enemy into the scenery, or throw bodies into other enemies using “aftertouch” controls.

  • Wide range of Objects & Weaponry – Heavenly Sword provides a wide range of objects & weaponry including rapid fire crossbows and massively damaging bazookas.

  • Creative in-game Cinematography – Coupled with real-time story evolvement and amazing set-pieces, Heavenly Sword feels like a blockbuster action movie that takes combat gameplay to new heights.

  • PLAYSTATION®3 – Greater processing power on the PS3 enables more immersive visuals and sound effects in Heavenly Sword, heightening the character performance and combat within the stunningly beautiful environments


Legend of the Sword: Part 1





Lo-Def Video Capture from Playthrough of Demo

 
Oh My. Yah know, this isn't even my kind of game and on the demo I was button mashing but good god this looks flippin amazing! :drool:

This remins me of God of War so much only a chick version.

The hot chick is not bad too. :sly:
 
I love the way that they integrated cinematics into the gameplay. It flows much better than I had expected, and the different stances are fun as well. There are so many different ways to hack and slash at your opponents. I also love the way that they seamlessly get Nariko to go from attacking one opponent, to jumping half-way across the screen and start slashing at another. It just flows so well.
 
Dead_Poetic
I love the way that they integrated cinematics into the gameplay. It flows much better than I had expected, and the different stances are fun as well. There are so many different ways to hack and slash at your opponents. I also love the way that they seamlessly get Nariko to go from attacking one opponent, to jumping half-way across the screen and start slashing at another. It just flows so well.
Click to expand...
I agree... I am really getting hooked on this title now!!!!!!!!

In fact, this may be the only game I've ever seen where I might even enjoy the cut scenes enough, that I would like to see them include a special feature on the disc where they seamlessly play out the "game" through all the cut scenes and "Hero Moments", so you can have the option of watching it like a movie!

I love all the new video clips that are getting released, and while at first, I found Nariko's flaming red hair to be odd in how it moves, but now I'd hate for it to be any different. The way its animated, it's almost like its another controllable extension of her body... very cool looking!

Speaking of which, in last week’s episode of "The 1up Show", they actually spend a little time discussing the animation of Nariko’s hair, and they mentioned that the developers initially wanted it to look more realistic, but I am sooo glad they didn’t! They also mentioned that they are planning on changing the hair characteristics for the sequel, but I hope enough fans who like the way it is animated chime in to encourage the folks at Ninja Theory to leave the hair alone! :)

BTW: This is a great video to watch, and they spend over 10 minutes reviewing and discussing the demo as well as the actual game (so it sounds like they also got to play with a pre-release copy. They discuss various gamply elements as well as some of the multiple weapons in the game, and include clips of new footage. They also discuss some of the cut scenes and the voice acting.

Lot’s of interesting info on Heavenly Sword, but also on Ratchet & Clank, MGS4, and MGS4 Online! 👍

Here is the LINK to the video.
 
I like this game a lot and I'll be getting it on launch (Halo 3 will have to wait..I'll have Bioshock first anyway).
I like the art, the style, the way it's put together. I like the music (by well known and award winning composer, producer and performer Nitin Sawhney) and the voice acting and the exceptional mo-cap used.
I've played the (short) demo dozens of times and I know I'll enjoy the game. Definately will be one of my faves of the year and my first purchase for my PS3 since Oblivion came out!
 
Heavenly Sword: Part 1 - Legend of the Sword




If this game takes off, I can see the strong lilelyhood of an animated series, as well as a feature length film.
 
Heavenly Sword Prequel
Posted August 9, 2007 by Mark Valledor, Marketing Manager, SCEA
Heavenly Sword marketing guy here. Usually I just watch this blog from the sidelines and let our production teams talk (because lets face it, you guys don’t want to hear our marketing mumbo-jumbo) … but our blog team asked me to elaborate on the recent Heavenly Sword videos we just released, so here it is. Hopefully without all the marketing buzz words.

This week’s release of the Heavenly Sword animation prequel and the “Making of” series marks the start of a five-week video campaign that leads into the game’s release. The plan was to provide an exclusive peek to our GAP members on Mondays, then release publicly on Thursdays via the PLAYSTATION Store and on HeavenlySword.com. But this thing called the “World-Wide-Web,” is an amazing animal that doesn’t do too well with keeping things um, secret. So as soon as it hit our “exclusive group,” it basically spread everywhere (not necessarily a bad thing). The good news is, despite the early release, the benefit of downloading the video on your PS3 is that you can watch it in full HD glory on your HD television screen [cue angelic chorus].

As for the videos - the animation prequel gives you a glimpse of the Heavenly Sword pre-history up until the start of the game. This “making of” series highlights the team’s efforts to bring you Heavenly Sword, focusing on different elements of production. I know many of you can’t wait to play the game (…something about the demo being too short…), but hopefully these will be enough to keep you waiting until September 12.
Click to expand...
"five-week video campaign"... I hope this means we can expect four more "parts" to the animation series and several more "Making of..." clips. 👍
 
GameTrailers.com posted both of the "Part 2" videos yesterday:

Neither is in HD, but I suspect they'll have the HD version by Thursday at the latest, and if not, they'll be on the PS stores by then.

The new "Making of..." video takes an interesting look at the early conceptual work, followed by insights into the long development process before they even had any information on what the PS3 was going to be capable of and before they received the first developmental tools for the PS3.
 
http://www.developmag.com/tutorials/28/Heard-About-Heavenly-Sword

Audio Team:
For Ninja Theory: Tom Colvin (lead audio); Nitin Sawhney (original music score); Dave Sullivan (senior sound designer); Play It By Ear (fole y and cut scene sound design); Harvey Cotton (audio programming)

For SCEE Cambridge: Garry Taylor (audio management and cut scene mixing); Lee Banyard, Jeremy Taylor, Andrew Riley (additional sound design); Ed Colyer, Shepperton Studios (additional foley); Dan Bardino, John Broomhall, Kenneth Young, Dave Ranyard (additional audio production); Chip Bell (audio programming)

The Numbers:
10GB of sound FX, approximately three and a half hours of music, 4,500 lines of dialogue

With an epic story, epic game and an epic audio production, Heavenly Sword oozes high production values. Even before audio lead Tom Colvin’s personal two and a half year labour of love began, a belief in the power of sound had already been demonstrated by the team’s calling for potential signature sound designers to pitch – a practice more commonly associated with composers.

Colvin explains: “Al Zaleski’s demo work (at audio team Play It By Ear) stood head and shoulders above the others and his movie pedigree speaks for itself. To top that, he was great to work with. I’m really happy with the foley and combat sounds – all vitally important for a game so focused on graceful, agile, martial arts-style sword fighting.

“For me, sound is very ‘immediate’ to the player. Music has a well-established cultural language; sound is much less clearly delineated – but you can get straight to someone’s emotional responses with it – there’s little time for the brain to analyse. Sound is key in making this awesome weapon – the Heavenly Sword – come to life so you can sense its brooding power and almost hear it feeding off each kill.”

The game features a strong narrative exploring the interplay between heroine Nariko, her father, their clan subjugated by an evil king, and their guardianship of the Heavenly Sword, an historical weapon with the power to change their fate. Cut scenes play a vital role but with visual finessing continuing late into the project, the sheer scope of work was a challenge.

SCEE’s Garry Taylor elaborates: “There’s an hour and a half’s worth of cut scenes in eleven languages, so mixing alone was a massive undertaking. That’s why we ‘in-sourced’ all the dialogue mixing to our colleagues in Foster City, USA whilst I focused on the music and effects mix at our new Cambridge-based recording studio. I kept a close eye on continuity issues to avoid any jarring between in-game and cut scene sound – whether ambiences or relative levels or even matching FMOD’s surround positioning. Some cut scenes are very small segments replayed within complex branching structures so we ended up using three-frame audio overhangs at the top and tail to cross-fade on – it works a treat.”

According to Colvin respected music artist Nitin Sawhney was a clear choice as composer: “We wanted someone with a genuine grounding in Eastern culture who was equally at home with contemporary or classical forms, as well as being completely comfortable with the project’s technological setting. With his eclectic talents, Nitin was perfect and enjoyed the opportunity to create for a wide-ranging and diverse set of requirements.

“In-game, we work a lot with his mix stems (e.g. perc, strings, woodwind) bringing them together in response to game events and status. Several factors (e.g. threat level) are weighted and combined to determine the exact music replay – but it isn’t just a universal ‘cross-fade, catch-all’ approach. We make the engine observe the music forms to allow (say) long emotionally-charged vocal phrases to play out properly, rather than being faded out just because the game state’s changed. This allows the music flow to be maintained – it keeps the connection to the action, without compromising musical sense.”

Taylor and Colvin undertook an overall mixing phase during the development’s final stages, again deploying SCEE’s studio as the objective listening environment and using Ninja’s powerful run-time mixing tools. Explains Colvin: “We have the virtual equivalent of a ‘flying faders’ film mixing console with extensive hierarchical grouping and scene snapshots. ‘Live’ editing of audio at this stage is absolutely essential – not just volumes, but proximities, frequency fall-off – even the listener position…”

Taylor continues: “…and also not being afraid to strip things back if necessary. Sometimes when you stand back and take in the overall sound picture, you think - does that really need to be there? Never distract the player’s focus! The machine’s so powerful now – capable of handling so much audio, which is great – but as we all know when you’re mixing, sometimes ‘less is more’.”
Click to expand...
 
Reviews are coming in, and other than the early IGN review that was suspiciously low, all the ones currently on GameRankings database are above 8.0/80% with an average score of 86%:
  • 70% IGN 8/24/2007 7 out of 10
  • 90% GamePro 8/25/2007 4.5 out of 5
  • 88% Game Revolution 8/30/2007 B+
  • 84% Cheat Code Central 8/30/2007 4.2 out of 5
  • 100% Play Magazine 9/1/2007 10 out of 10
  • 83% Electronic Gaming Monthly 10/1/2007 8.33 out of 10
  • 88% Game Informer 10/1/2007 8.75 out of 10

Also GameTrailers has the new HD trailer from the GC expo, as well as Legend of the Sword Pt. 4: The Divine Birth.
 
Digital-Nitrate
FoolKiller
Heavenly Bazooka? That was awesome.
Click to expand...
I just recently watched Discovery Channel's Discovery Atlas: China and they actually had a segment in the documentary showing this ancient Chinese ritual where these men must make these bamboo over-sized 'bazookas' and stuff them with explosive fireworks and then hold onto them while they launch these massive fireworks. Visually it's an incredible sight, and I'm amazed they were able to hold on to them. The one shown in that Heavenly Swords clip looks exactly like them! I do not remember what they are called, or the name of the ritual, but I recently ordered the HD version of the documentary on Blu-ray. It is back ordered right now, but when it gets shipped I'll pop it in and post more info about it if you are curious.

Any way, great idea for a weapon! :D
Click to expand...



Digital-Nitrate
In another report, posted yesterday, they include four new video clips from Heavenly Sword, one cut scene, and three gameplay clips.

They all look like they are from Gametrailers.com, so HD versions might be available on that site.

The first clip I thought was pretty funny... and stunning graphics! Glad to see they have added some humor into the characters and story. :)

They also have another long clip of the lead character using that traditional "fire/rocket cannon"... still have not had a chance to look up the real name for that thing which I saw what looked like Chinese monks using it in an ancient ritual of strength, where they must each hold these large cannons made of bamboo that launch a series of massive fireworks from... like giant Roman candles.
Click to expand...


Well now I know why I was having such a hard time finding that clip in the Discovery Channel's Discovery Atlas: China documentary on Blu-ray... as it's not a Chinese ritual. I clearly mistook some other documentary on Discovery Channel for the one on China.

:dunce:

It turns out it is a 300+ year old Japanese ritual, Tezutsu, held in Toyokawa, Japan.

Here are some clips of these 'Bamboo Canons' in action:







And here is a video that follows a young man and his father as they prepare and participate in the ritual:




This certainly helps explain the inspiration for this weapon in Heavenly Sword. 👍

HeavenlySword_Cannon.jpg



BTW: There is a nice Easter Egg in Heavenly Sword:

From the Wiki listing: Kratos' Blades of Chaos/Athena can be seen during Chapter 3, Part 8, Kai's Mission, near the end, before the Heavenly Sword is obtained.

HERE is a video clip of it.
 
Okie dokie... I guess it has been that long. xD

Anyway, got this for $20 and I have to say wow, this game is great! It's has all the things missing from Ninja Gaiden, DMC4, and GoW II. As a plus it's a button masher, but it's still challenging.

Cute chick helps too...

Krista%20Allen-Moritt-2.jpg


Reminds me of Krista Allen a bit. :drool:
 
V1P3R
Reminds me of Krista Allen a bit. :drool:
Click to expand...

You know I never made the connection, but you are absolutely right, both in looks and attitude.... only thing she needs though is some funky anime style red hair. :)




Rainmaster
I think Kristin Kreuk looks like Nariko :)

010106smallvillelana.jpg
Click to expand...

Wow.... I've never heard of her, but she is remarkably beautiful! If you don't nominate her for the Weekly Babe Contest, I will. :D
 
Digital-Nitrate
only thing she needs though is some funky anime style red hair. :)
Click to expand...

Works for me! :D

Digital-Nitrate
Wow.... I've never heard of her
Click to expand...

Oh, yeah. I'd so nominate her. Although, I'd do some other stuff erm... that I can't talk about on here too. :lol:

What!? You've never seen Smallville!? actually, I'm surprised it's not dead after the 2nd season because it becomes pointless after that. Is it still on?

Edit: Must be a premium thread, can't access it. :grumpy:
 

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