One Minute Mr. Kaz-san, One Question Please

After tracking Mr. Kaz-san down to Polyphony Digital's secret UK head quarters, which as it turns out is a large shed on an allotment just outside of the Brentford Triangle guarded by several hundred cyber ninja robot squirrels, we managed to jump him as he made his way across the freshly manured sprout patch and upon threats of keying his shiny GT-R we had this to say:

Do you think it could be said you've made a game that looks better than reality?

"Better than reality?" - yeah, that's one way of putting it. In a way,it's kind of a given that it's going to look better than reality. The thing about reality is that the criteria for looking 'real' is actually a lot stricter and volatile than you'd expect. The way the sun shines, reflects off something, the way it lights scenery - we seldom have the opportunity to see what we consider 'reality' under the best and most pleasing conditions.

Every time we go out to the circuit and take photos of cars we get that same impression again. When you see a race on TV, compared to a race in a game, you realise that the reality isn't as shiny or pleasant as the game. However, these 'best conditions' do exist. They happen every once in a while. Maybe, once a year, you'll be watching a race on TV, or you'll be outside, and a cloud will move in an ideal direction, and the sun will shine down at a perfect angle, and maybe just for a moment you'll have this beautiful scene in front of you.

Games... like Gran Turismo, have something of a duty to present the player with the best and most beautiful parts of reality. So our game looks 'realistic' only if you consider reality to only ever look this beautiful for short periods of time. We work hard to represent these rare conditions in our games. So, yes, in short, it should look 'better than reality'.

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