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Sony Santa Monica Studio is supposedly working on a patch to add 3D awesomeness to the already awesome God of War 3, HipHopGamer reports.
Believe me I don't really like to publish rumors unless they come from a super trusted source (and the one HipHopGamer got this from hardly falls into that category), but the chances of this being actually true are big enough to warrant publication here. And I also enjoy the enthusiastic attitude of HipHopGamer (always brings a smile on my face), so I though I'd report this as a personal homage to him.
Anyways, here is the story.
While attending the so called "Gaming Xplosion 2010" event in Puerto Rico yesterday, HipHopGamer was informed by a "Sony representative" met at the Sony stand there that a God of War 3 3D update is in the works at Santa Monica Studio, and is expected to be available early next year.
Now, the reason why this might be true is twofold. First, we do know that Santa Monica Studios has already expressed interest in investigating the possibility of bringing 3D to its latest Kratos adventure. Last January, in fact, NowGamer quoted the GOW3 game director Stig Asmussen as stating the following:
"If it’s really easy to do and there’s an interest there’s no reason why we couldn’t discuss in the future adding a patch or re-releasing the game to work with the 3D stuff. I’d love to see it happen. I think it would be cool as ****."
The second reason is that, technically, adding 3D to the already PS3-spanking God of War 3 graphics engine is not completely out of the realm of possibilities. Asmussen himself had this to say to NowGamer back in January:
"I know that it is something, having talked to one of our engineers, that we could do. We don’t have one of those 3D TVs so we wouldn’t be able to see what it looked like if we’re able to do it, and I’m sure that it would require a little bit of ramp up to do it, but from my understanding it’s not incredibly complicated."
Considering the current game runs at a variable frame rate fluctuating most of the time between 40fps and 60fps, perhaps locking it to 30fps and doing some optimization to the original code could allow the developers to fit in an extra dimension.
If they menage to do that (not giving for granted they are even trying), expect it to be like "looking through a window seeing a miniature world or something like that, a three-quarter perspective, little world or diorama", as Asmussen dreamed about with NowGamer.
As we dream about this as well, I've sent a couple of inquiries where due, so hopefully I'll be able to confirm or deny this speculation soon. Fingers crossed.