Maybe the size of the shot I'm seeing isn't describing it all but it doesn't look to be much more than what he stated. Speaking from within the industry I'm hesitant to frown upon what is pretty common practice. Oh well, *awaits mad kotakuite shark-like thrashing*

Eh, the era has passed when graphics sell me on a game, so excuse me when I say, "Meh."

A tiny bit touched up? The good thing about typing these kind of statements is that you don't have to keep a straight face.

*prepairs for the inevitable comparisons to the infamous motorstorm trailer*

Oh, for fuck sake.

Here's a though: why don't you touch up the GOD DAMN ENGINE, and quit blowing smoke up my ass!

At least they are honnest!

Maybe the actual in-game shot is just blurry because its in motion, but the picture looks dratically retouched when compared to the original.

@KeithCourage: The shot on the left is definitely superior. There's also some back lighting on the jumping guy that may or may not actually exist. But more to the point, it's just dishonest. And these guys REALLY shouldn't be doing anything else to drum up negative press for their game. At this rate, somebody's gettin' sued.

it's like watching commercials for Crysis, then playing it on your actual PC :(

The game looks great as it is. How about selling what exists rather than sullying a potentially great game when it turns out it doesn't look as good as promised?

I don't care how tiny the touch ups are, it's meant to be a screenshot of the game, not a screenshot of the game run through Photoshop. This crap is blatant lying to the consumer and it's inexcusable.

Really feels like all that was done to it was just a quick colour overlay and maybe a bit of sharpening. Pretty just as he says. All in all, I'm pretty ambivalent in this: it's not like this is the only industry to touch up its promotional material from the final product.

That's just the basic levels adjustment. The same thing that video games tout as HDR.

@BigChiefSmokem: Not quite. After all, that's yoru PC's fault for SUCKING! Bwahahahahhaa...ha...ehh.
Yeah, it looks like crap on my machine too. But in 3 years!...
@Kuraudo: Word. If it doesn't stand on it's on, after all this, it shouldn't stand at all.

@bigchiefsmokem

...so true...

@InsomniaBob:

I actually thought the shot on the right was the one that received a color injection and clearing up, with the left-more shot looking a bit drabber and blurrier. As far as lawsuits go, I don't see any laws being broken? Take a large majority of graphics-touted games and scan their entire collection of shots in magazines and on the web. Artists go over these things.

I submit that honesty aside, in a profit-driven industry, 10% of hardcore gamers finding out about an ohnoes doctored screenshot might in some cases be outweighed by a resulting superior screenshot to which fanboys and "lesser" gamers are more likely exposed.

After the debacle with the original KZ2 trailer Guerilla comes out and admits this? Bad move dude, bad move. They would have been better served by not showing anything on the game until it was ready. It's getting to the point where I'm really beginning not to care about KZ2. It's a reminder of the bullshit PR spin that helped put Sony in the bad position they're in now. I don't understand why they just couldn't let the engine stand on its own if they had to show screens or just improve the engine until it looked as good as the touch up. KZ2 FTL!

@arashi: [en.wikipedia.org]
It's a little different. Also, if your game actually HAS HDR... you don't need to run it through photoshop.

@KeithCourage: Whoops, I meant right. My bad.

As for somebody getting sued, I mean Sony might end up suing Guerrilla if KZ2 ends up tanking because of scandals like this. But, then again, considering how hungry PS3 users are for, well, ANYTHING, that isn't terribly likely.

The sad thing is, I'm a Sony fanboy, and have always had enough sense to keep mum about most console-war issues...

...until something like this pops up. Heh.

Kinda makes you think that they hire monkeys for their PR departments. Seriously, my little brother could have told you that this was a bad idea.

Well at the very least they admitted to it now, rather than later. Now, admitting this is akin to say, telling your mum that you spiked her drink with lizard poo.

Geurilla admitting the touch-up job AFTER the game has gone on sale... is like telling your mum about the spiking AFTER she drinks it all down.

The smoke and mirrors won't help the negative feeling towards this game.

Yet I can still see the media looking kindly upon it and pushing it as a system seller (see: BBC).

okay...did I miss something. Some of you actually think the shot on the left is superior? Is that supposed to be a joke? The shot on the right is the touched up shot and the changes aren't minor. Better lighting and more dramatic shadows as well as better color throughout. That's shot on the left looks drab with too much grey and the lighting isn't all that great. But that's the superior shot?

I was going to buy the game solely based on the previous screenshots, but now that I have discovered this vast conspiracy I will commence to boycotting this whole terrible franchise and its demon photo editors from Hades.

im starting to think kz2 doesnt even exist and its all just spiderman 4 "touched up"

It looks like the difference is the colour saturation, brightness, and contrast. I don't see much there that would cause a fuss.

You shouldn't put much stock in screenshots anyways.

You just can't get a handle on a game till you see it in motion.

Like MP3, I've yet to see a single screenshot of that game that doesn't look awful, yet in motion the game looks amazing.

And I'm sure we can all think of a couple games which had phenomenal screenshots yet lost their luster when you saw the actual product running at an abysmal 20fps.

Eh, thats ok, i dont blame them for touching screenshots up, i mean, after all, they are only screenshots, you dont really know anything about a game until you've actually played it,

@brent_w:
Damnit right as i was typing you post that, gg my friend, gg. *agree*

FFS devs people arent impressed by touched up shots, they want to see REAL pics from the game. :/

@explodingman:
Meh? This isn't truth in advertising, and you don't care? Wow.

Oh please. It is not like it has not been going on for ..oh I don't know.... EVER! in just about every industry that has advertising. [drublair.com]

Wooo, it feels good to be right. I knew they had touched them up.

^nuts. I wish I could edit that. It doesnt read right.

Nothing too major. They really should have just released the original shots to avoid this kind of thing, or not released any at all until they are completely happy with the output.

@brent_w: true that but Nintendo never tried to sell us on touched up photos. I don't agree with it because it makes the consumer believe the game is producing visuals or effects that aren't actually in the game. Sony can't shout about how much more powerful the PS3 is when they have to resort to touching up photos to get people excited about a "kiler app" It's the principle. If 360 can produce a Gears of War or an even more impressive Mass Effect then Sony has to have faith in its hardware and development teams and show the photos "raw"

@K-Squad: that's true too but sometimes that's all we have to go on for months and in the case of games like FFXIII...years. (I don't count CG as a good example of game footage) Look at Street Fighter IV. Based on the screens that we've seen so far it doesn't look that great. Brings back horrible memories of Street Fighter EX and the ultimate smack in the face is Capcom isn't developing it. True, none of us have played it yet or even seen it in motion but those few details don't inspire a lot of confidence.

@InsomniaBob: True. I didn't mean that touching the pics was a good thing to do, just no surprised at all when seeing how monotonic the original is. If you intend to use those pics for press and whatnot, it's really natural to notch up the contrast a bit.

@Striderhayasa: I think you'll find that is "sarcasm."

Could a game possibly get their PR more wrong?

It is truly laughable.

@K-Squad:
I've seen quite a few Sony fanboys who think they do.

As for those screens, it looks like comparing the PS2 and Xbox versions of Splinter Cell.

It looks like they just increased the contrast up a notch... or ten.

yeah big fucking deal that color corrected it.

more self righteous "game journalist" whining

Does it even matter anyways? Just another game set in a world of brown.

What were they thinking?!? Just after Sony is recovering a little bit from two years of overpromising and downright lying they pull stuff like this - and on this infamous title?!? :-(

Minor polish to the color correction? If you ask me it's been bumped up considerably. The shadow on the wall seems sharper and the textures from the shadow of the rail look better too.

Didn't we have this same shit a few years ago when Killzone 1 came out? Have they learned NOTHING?

Anyone picked up a copy of Maxim lately? Do you honestly believe that those ladies' photos just come off the film looking exactly the way they appear on the page? It sure doesn't stop anyone from getting their spank on. I would imagine if one wants to play this game bad enough, this "touching up" isn't going to dissuade them.

Uhhhm doesn't anyone else notice how muc more detail there is in the wall texture to the left of the screenshot? Like visible potmarks and cracks, i don't belive that the one on the left was just ignoring those better details just because its in motion.
But i will give them the benefit of the doubt and say the video quality was crap and maybe it is just motion blur.
But this game is all just hype, dammit im a sucker for hype....

One might want to note that things can have changed a bit since the Leipzig trailer was made. Can't know for sure how big the touch up is compared to the current alpha.

@TitillatedOcelot:

Just check out drublair.com for a great example of that comment.

What on earth makes people think that the picture to the left is accurate? It's a bad video capture - and I'm sure the right one is more accurate to the real thing. Stop whining.

Thats pretty pathetic. I'd be pissed if they did that to... lets say for ex. cod4 and when i finally sit down and play it, the game looks drab and doesn't look nearly as good as the screens. Thats says alot to me about the developer, that they don't have the integrity to let their work stand on its own. It also puts the ps3 in more of a negative light. WEAK.

Big deal, you can change colour settings on your tv, at least theyre being open and saying that the images are modified.

Im not saying it was a good idea to do this, but its not going to be something anyone should lose sleep over

Oh my... no company in the game industry
does readjust the pictures for the media /sarcasm

This is pretty standard in the industry, guys. Every publisher does it. (Others - notably EA and Rockstar - have been "caught" before, but believe me, everybody does it, especially for the big games.)

I'm not sure I even consider basic retouching dishonest. It's like when you take a photo and the exposure and white balance doesn't look quite right, so you adjust the levels and curves to better match reality - is that "dishonest"? The output when you take a screenshot from a game console is not always accurate - the shot on the left above, for example, looks pretty washed out. There's no true black in that shot, which is something the PS3 is obviously capable of, and most likely the game is too.

Obviously you can go too far with this, like anything else. EA got caught actually combining more than one shot together to make it look like there was more going on, and they also smoothed out jaggies. But there's nothing wrong with some color correction and level adjustments.

sorry but you can't compare a video frame to a screenshot, well the screenshot might be color-corrected and all.
I'm not saying this is good or anything, but still you can't compare that.

a compressed video frame always has less color and contrast.

from this small screenshot, looks like just a change in the contrast and color correction...you know, the kind of changes you can make ON YOUR TV.

we've seen the game engine and we've seen it in motion. i could let this one slide...but for gawd's sakes, developers...STOP TOUCHING UP THE SCREENSHOTS.

Its what I said when the screens where released, massive pr phail.

*Epic hand to forehead*

Haha people cannot wait to bash this game can they?

Remember the Rainbow Six Vegas promo shots?

Red Steel promo shots?

Mission Impossible 64 promo shots?

Exactly the same thing here... except here all that has happened is the colors have been modified and the contrast changed. Nothing they couldn't do in game if it wasn't for the fact that they are going for realism. All the models and lighting effects are from the game engine.

It doesn't help that the screen cap on the left is blurry and washed out either.

People have had it in for this game since it pretty much lived up to the render. The press didn't like having to eat their words also.

COD4 has taken the edge off, but the game still looks to be the cream of the crop in graphics, effects and animation.