All you have to do is look at any tailer or screenshot to see that Beyond: Two Souls is going to be a fantastic-looking game. While gameplay is still in question, the visual fidelity Quantic Dream has achieved with the game on the PlayStation 3 is a remarkable feat — one that was only made possible by the studio's experimentation with PlayStation 4 development hardware "a few years ago."
"It's the reason it looks the way it looks," Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere said of Beyond. "High-definition rendering was something we thought was not possible to that [level] on the PlayStation 3. We found ways to easily do that on the PlayStation 4. We thought, 'Wow, my God, if we could do it on the PS3.'"
"Some of the graphical features and elements of Beyond are clearly inspired by our new engine on the PlayStation 4," he added.
Set to release this October, Beyond: Two Souls will likely be the last major first-party exclusive to launch before the arrival of the PS4 this holiday season. Between The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls, you really have to appreciate what developers have been able to accomplish on the PlayStation 3, especially toward the latter end of its lifecycle. While I eagerly await the arrival of a new console, it's important to recognize the amount of work that has went into making these types of games. The end of this generation has been filled with visually stunning games that have only given us a taste of what to expect on next-gen.