Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: NemoTheCaptain

Lucky to meet Bole, Phoenix Nirvana.

Twenty years ago, the space mecha game "Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner" (hereinafter referred to as "ZOE2") was released on PS2. This work is released by Konami, developed by Hideo Oshima team, GONZO is responsible for 2D animation, gold one horse cameo design, forming an unprecedented all-star lineup. As the first game to take the performance of PS2 to the limit, the overwhelming battle scene of "ZOE2" is comparable to that of PS3, an epic game that players remember to this day.

The first article: the unprecedented space mecha game: "ZOE2" development secrets

This work has been republished many times since then, and players of PS3, PS4, Xbox One and PC can all get a higher-definition experience than the original PS2. This article will sort out the context and details of each version. Although the Kojima group has gone its separate ways, this classic game always exudes tenacious vitality and blooms as much charm as the new work on one platform after another. Perhaps "ZOE2" is the diamond on the crown of the gaming world, even if it is once dusty, as long as it is polished again, it will still be dazzling.

In addition, I would like to reiterate that although "Zone of the Enders" is traditionally referred to as the "ultimate zone", there is no official translation in China. The word "Enders" refers to "people living at the end of space", and "Zone of the Enders" really means "frontier zone" or "limit zone". Because there is no uniform translation of the title in China, this paper does not translate the title, only the abbreviation "ZOE".

The actual development of the delayed storm "ZOE2" was handed over to director Zhou Yang Murata, while producer Hideo Oshima was mainly responsible for publicity work. Kojima hopes to train Murata as a successor and enhance the popularity of the new director as much as possible. Before the release of ZOE2, Murata was interviewed in a number of Japanese magazines, and the Japanese cover of the work was also printed with the words "producer Hideo Kojima and director Zhouyang Murata." Unfortunately, because of the urgent development task, Murata is rarely interviewed by European and American magazines, and Western players know little about the director, so the European and American version of "ZOE2" is only printed with the words "producer Hideo Kojima."

Hideo Kojima edited wonderful trailers for "ZOE2" 2002 E3 and TGS exhibitions. "ZOE2" was originally scheduled for release at the end of 2002, but the year-end release list is quite crowded. Masterpieces such as "Ghost crying 2", "Ocean of Stars 3" and "final Fantasy Strategic Edition Advance" are scheduled to be released by the end of the year. These games are not similar competitors to "ZOE2", but will still affect the sales of "ZOE2". On the other hand, the development team also needs more time to polish the quality of "ZOE2". The launch schedule in early 2003 looked less crowded, and after weighing the pros and cons, Hideo Kojima agreed to extend the launch date of "ZOE2" to early 2003.

The TGS trailer eventually became the opening animation of the game. Surprisingly, the above-mentioned masterpieces also postponed the release date from the end of 2002 to the beginning of 2003, and "ZOE2" once again faced fierce competition. Kojima worked very hard on publicity. In addition to all kinds of interviews, Japanese magazines also gave away more than 300000 trial CDs. However, various masterpieces squeezed the market. ZOE2 sold only 100,000 copies in Japan in 2003.

The island finally regretted the extension. According to Zhuge Liang's mindset analysis after the event, if "ZOE2" goes on sale at the end of 2002 as planned, and other masterpieces continue to postpone, "ZOE2" will face much less competition, and higher sales will pave the way for the sequel, allowing the "ZOE" series to continue to develop, all of which has been wiped out by a mere 100000 of Japanese sales.

In any case, the development of "ZOE2" must come to an end in early 2003, when the engine of "Dragon Bourne 3" gradually matures, and the island team needs to shift its main force to "Stealth Dragon Bourne 3", while "ZOE2" can only do some follow-up repair work.

The Japanese version of ZOE2 is released on February 13, 2003, the American version on March 11 of the same year, and the European version on September 26 of the same year. The subtitle of the European version is "Special Edition". In addition to slightly improving the number of frames and anti-aliasing, the game adds more miscellaneous battles to the plot flow. Classic levels such as high-altitude fleet warfare and wilderness warfare can be challenged repeatedly as separate tasks, and the new Extreme maximum difficulty enhances the playability value of the game.

The European "special edition" cover is outside Japan, and "ZOE2" has sold about 300000, because the development of "hidden dragon spy film 3" is not complete enough, and "ZOE2" does not include a trial version of "hidden dragon spy film 3". European and American markets for machine games are far less enthusiastic than Japan, lost the bonus, naturally no one is looking forward to the European and American sales of "ZOE2". Konami proposed a 1 million sales plan for "ZOE2", with the main target in Japan, where the failure of the Japanese version made 1 million out of reach.

Hideo Kojima didn't give up completely, and on January 15, 2004, "ZOE2" launched a "special edition" in Japan, bringing back new content previously exclusive to Europe. The Japanese "special edition" sells for 3300 yen, far less than the standard price of 6800 yen for PS2 games, a cheap tactic that Hideo Kojima calls bitter meat. Murata Zhou Yang said that "many works are not very popular for the first time, and the ratings of the first TV premiere of 'Gao Da' are not satisfactory. Later, the rebroadcast was not successful, and ZOE2 'also has a chance to make a comeback."

The problem is that at the beginning of 2004, the Japanese game market was still fiercely competitive, in addition to supermasterpieces such as Bao Ke Meng: fiery Red Leaf Green, and enhanced versions of other games, such as "Ocean of the Stars: director's edited version," which sold 150000 yen in Japan, while the "special version" of ZOE2 sold only 40,000 in Japan. Even in terms of sales of the enhanced version, ZOE2 has failed again.

Hideo Kojima is still trying to build a line of action games different from the "Stealth Dragon Bourne" series, but he is no longer counting on the Japanese market. According to this line of thinking, director Murata Zhou Yang developed an experiment codenamed "Guy Savage". Because of the lack of interest in mecha games in Europe and the United States, Sasquatch has become a game that operates humans to knock down zombies. Konami thought the game's bloodshot was too exciting even by American standards and halted development. Sasquatch eventually became Mini Game with Dragon Bourne 3, and Mini Game became a black-and-white screen to reduce the excitement.

After a long silence in the high-definition collection of "Sasquatch", the experimental color picture, the original "ZOE" and "ZOE2" went on sale on October 25, 2012 as "ZOE: high-definition collection". Hideo Kojima hoped that the "HD collection" would become the "restart" of the series, paving the way for the sequel, but failed again. Because of Konami's limited budget, HD Collection was outsourced to High Voltage Software, a second-rate company in the United States, and the transplant level was poor.

The original "ZOE" of the two games, "HD Collection" and "HD Collection", lacks some special effects, but the frame count is smooth. As for "ZOE2", not only is it lack of special effects, but even the number of frames is much lower than that of PS2. Xbox version "ZOE2" often falls to 30 frames, and PS3 version drops to 20 frames, causing serious slowdowns. At first, the HD Collection even planned to launch a PSV version, and then the handset version was quietly cancelled for an obvious reason: High Voltage Software can't even handle the mainframe version, so it's impossible to fix the handset.

On July 16, 2013, HexaDrive, a Japanese company, released a fix for the PS3 version of "ZOE2". HexaDrive has previously developed Xbox 360th version of "Rez" and PS3 version of "God", which has a good reputation in the high-definition outsourcing industry. The fix of "ZOE2" in PS3 version completely reconstructs the program, High Voltage Software's shoddy engine is abandoned and HexaDrive's engine is used, and the number of frames and picture quality have been significantly improved. The rendering resolution of the 3D part is increased from 1280 × 720 to 1280 × 1080, and FXAA anti-aliasing is added, the number of frames is smoother than the PS2 version, and the missing special effects are not only fixed, but also raise the particle computation to the high definition level.

The comparison of particle effects, before and after repair, despite the immediate results of HexaDrive's fix, the 9-month gap still made PS3 players unhappy, and Konami did not even provide Xbox 360 with the budget to fix the patch, resulting in no improvement in the Xbox player experience so far.

Hideo Kojima and Yoji Shinagawa released the early concept model and setting diagram of ZOE3 in 2012. Jehuty is no longer a metallized machine armor, but a living demon. In order to take care of the European and American markets, Kojima hopes to transform "ZOE3" from a sci-fi mecha game into a fantasy myth game. Kojima is not sure whether such a drastic change can be accepted by players, so he released a few pictures to test the player's reaction. Many players did not approve of the change, and Kojima later promised that the early concept setting would be abandoned and "ZOE3" would return to the traditional mecha route.

Fantasy mythology-style "ZOE3" was abandoned. The 2012 island team was busy developing "Dragon Bourne 5" and temporarily shelved "ZOE3". After the release of "Stealth Dragon Bourne 5" in 2015, Hideo Oshima and Yoji Shinagawa, Zhou Yang Murata and others left Konami to set up their own business, and "ZOE3" went nowhere.

Although the "restart" in 2012 did not achieve its goal, it still left some material. The "ZOE2" in the HD Collection redraws the 2D avatar of the radio picture, fixing the blurred pixels in the original. Konami also launched a large number of settings, music CD and model toys and other peripherals, developers also took the opportunity to share a lot of unknown secrets, including "Haidara", the biggest mystery in "ZOE2".

Konami of the United States once struggled with how to translate the line "Haidara". In fact, Japanese vocalist did not know the meaning of the word. "Haidara" was scribbled by Zhou Yang of Murata. Murata believes that language will slowly change over time. Hundreds of years ago, in the Edo period in Japan, there were many old sayings that modern people could not understand. "ZOE2" set the time at 2174, and there must be future languages that modern people could not understand, so he casually wrote a "Haidara", so the truth made everyone laugh or cry.

Fortunately, after meeting Hideo Kojima to set up his own door, there have been many rumors on the Internet that he will outsource the development of "hidden dragon spy film" or "Silent Hill". Kojima refutes these rumors, saying that he has run out of time on new IP such as "death stranded" and there is no room for outsourced development.

However, not all team members followed Kojima, and many employees left Konami to join Cygames, including musician Hirohiro Honda and programmer Shoji Yamauchi. Horie Duanzhang, a programmer who was in charge of the patch for "ZOE2" in PS3, has also joined Cygames, providing an opportunity for the resurrection of "ZOE2".

When it comes to Cygames, most players often think of mobile games such as "Blue Fantasy" and "Horse Niang". In fact, Kenichi Watanabe, the president of Cygames, was a console game developer 20 years ago, and it was "ZOE2" that made Watanabe experience what a first-class console game is. Whether it is the picture, feel or performance, "ZOE2" shows the super quality that Watanabe will never forget. That is why Cygames will offer a high salary to recruit the above-mentioned talents.

Hokuhiro Honda, the composer of "ZOE2," was also involved in the development of "Saima." in 2016, Kenichi Watanabe made a request to develop PS4 and Steam versions of "ZOE2," and Konami producer Ken Okamura quickly approved the request, which is subtitled "Mars." Considering that the effect of the PS3 fix is relatively perfect, Mars is not satisfied with continuing to improve the resolution and must make greater changes.

In order to adapt to the 4K resolution, Mars has repainted all the game material, and mapping is the focus. The PS2 version of the map gives up a lot of details due to its size and color, and Mars restores these details as much as possible according to the setting map, and adds normals to the map. The addition of modern special effects such as focal depth of field (Bokeh), high dynamic range (HDR), screen space reflection (SSR) and ambient light occlusion (AO) makes the picture of "Mars" comparable to that of PS4.

The high-definition map of "Mars" on the left and the original PS2 on the right.

The ground-reflected SSR special effect "Mars" also adds theater mode for watching animation, significantly reduces the Very Easy difficulty of the threshold, and a professional operation (Pro Mode) button configuration that facilitates the switching of weapons, while the sound effects support Dolby panoramic sound (Dolby Atmos).

As for the new VR mode, Cygames has made a series of targeted adjustments, adding a model to the right side of the cockpit to indicate the current posture of the body, and a wide range of tricks such as throwing techniques have also reduced the range of screen shaking and improved players' sense of dizziness. Overall, although the perspective changes frequently in high-speed combat, as long as the cockpit is locked in a target, players always stare at the enemy aircraft, the sense of vertigo is not obvious, but the state of exploration after the battle is more likely to be dizzy.

With the addition of the body posture model PS4 and the Steam platform "Mars" to the right side of the VR cockpit is undoubtedly the best "ZOE2" version, and only the dubbing problem is flawless. The European and American version of Mars does not provide Japanese dubbing. PS4 players can switch servers or buy CDs. Steam players must switch to the Japanese area if they want a normal Japanese experience. Although the Steam version can be dubbed in Japanese through the module, the Japanese in the radio part cannot be synchronized with the picture.

As a cold meal for many reprints, Mars still has not achieved sales success, but Cygames is already satisfied with the result. Kenichi Watanabe believes that Mars provides valuable experience for Cygames and is helpful to the development of other console games.

From left to right, the PS2, PS3 and PS4 versions of Mars went on sale in September 2018, when Microsoft released a "HD collection" compatible patch for Xbox One. Although there is no change in the performance of "ZOE2" on Xbox 360s, Xbox One players can experience 60 frames of smooth "ZOE2". Although the patch still lacks some special effects, its overall effect goes far beyond the PS2 version, and Microsoft users finally get a decent compensation.

Looking to the future, Tanichi Watanabe regards ZOE3 as a new work of his dream, which is actually very difficult to achieve. Cygames has only recruited a group of capable programmers and musicians, still a long way from the island group in its heyday, and the luxury team has long gone their separate ways.

Hideo Kojima, Yoji Shinagawa and Zhouyang Murata are still at the heart of Kojima Studio after leaving Konami, and they are currently developing death stranded 2 and an unknown new work released by Microsoft.

Nishimura, who worked as the art of the 2019 mobile game "the City of Alcatraz: the Book of Soul," and Kenaki Okamura, who is now Konami's most senior producer, stayed at Konami.

Zhengwei Yi became the art of Square Enix, redrawing the character's avatar in the 2010 PSP version of the Knights Royal: wheel of Destiny, which will be used until 2022 in the high-definition version of the Knights Royal: rebirth.

Although the developers of these "ZOE" series are still struggling in the game industry, the chances of their reunion are close to zero. It is for this reason that "ZOE2" has become an unprecedented work. On the other hand, the gradual improvement of "ZOE2" on all kinds of HD mainframes and PC gives players comfort in chatting. Although the Kojima group has gone its separate ways, this classic game always exudes tenacious vitality and blooms as much charm as the new work on one platform after another. Perhaps "ZOE2" is the diamond on the crown of the gaming world, even if it is once dusty, as long as it is polished again, it will still be dazzling.

The picture of "Mars" is still remarkable today.

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