Killzone: Shadow Fall lead designer Eric Boltjes recently spoke to VG247 about the DualShock 4 controller, and Guerrilla Games’ role in the same. He talked about the need to improve the triggers, and also talked about how it was touch-sensitive but didn’t quite jive with the team.
“One of the things we wanted to improve upon was the controllers. I personally feel that in previous Killzones, the DualShock was always good, but when you looked at other controllers they had an edge. We really worked together with Mark from Sony on improving the controller. For example, the triggers. We wanted better triggers. They previously reverted inwards where, in a shooter game, that’s not very good. Your fingers slip off.
“We really pushed them to make better triggers that go up. Also stuff like the touch-pad. When I first saw it on the prototype controller I was like, ‘What the hell am I supposed to do with that? It’s not an iPhone game.’ But I’m really surprised as to how well that little thing works. I’m not promoting it, I don’t have to sell that controller, but I’m really happy with how it works in our game. Everything else works now, from response time, the dead-zones, everything is better. The lag is gone, and that makes Killzone a better game.
“When developing PS4 and our game as well, we held a lot of prototypes, and we played around with them as well. In one, they had replaced all of the buttons were touch-sensitive. We just said, ‘No’.”
Considering the gimmick that was the SixAxis and how badly they worked with PS3 games, it’s good to see that Guerrilla just side-stepped the gimmicks altogether. Will Killzone: Shadow Fall become better to play as a result? We’ll find out when it launches on November 15th in North America and November 29th in Europe along with the PS4.