The developers wanted to spice up Project Origin with more action but didn't want to cut back on the scary moments. John O'Roke, Leading Software Engineer at Monolith, tells us what has changed in matters of graphics and technology.
Fear 2: Project Origin - The game is supposed to be released in early February 2009. [Source: view picture gallery]
Monolith is currently developing Fear 2: Project Origin, the anxiously awaited successor of Fear. PC Games Hardware interviewed John O'Roke, Leading Software Engineer at Monolith, about how the developers have upgraded the Lithtech Engine to modern standards. Besides the technical details he also mentioned that the PC has the capabilities to deal with high resolution textures and higher quality graphics effects. Fear 2: Project Origin is supposed to hit the markets on 10th February.
PCGH: The Engine of F.E.A.R is an approved piece of technology that was used in all former parts of the game. Do you utilize this technical base for F.E.A.R. 2 too? Do you nevertheless "modernize” or upgrade the engine for F.E.A.R. 2? John O'Rorke: While FEAR 2 started from the FEAR technology, there were a dramatic number of systems that were heavily overhauled and a large number of additional systems and features added to them. A lot of this work was to better support making the game cross platform, but this work has dramatically helped the PC by improving performance, load times, and memory usage. A huge number of features were also added to really bring the technology to the next level and make FEAR 2 stand out from not only its predecessor, but also the other games out there.
PCGH: Can you give an overview what technical features you enhance or modify? Are there any new technical features especially in the render part of the engine that you program from scratch? What features do you keep and why do you keep them? John O'Rorke: For FEAR 2 we wanted the game to be everything FEAR was but even better, and therefore we kept all of the original features and functionality from the first game, but worked to make them faster and interoperate better. We added lots of new features on top of those as well to make them really stand out. This includes fog, HDR, motion blur, new overlays and effects, new lighting solutions, new UI, and even volumetric rendering for some very immersive environments that look absolutely amazing.
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