The incredible graphics of the bodycam game raises doubts and controversies

At the developer Alexandre Spindler revealed footage of a ‘body cam style game’ he was working on last fall, it exploded across the internet as people marveled at its eerie ambience and photorealistic look. “This is great,” he wrote district 9 Director Neill Blomkamp. Now the game has really been announced, and it’s prompting controversy over its concept and skepticism over its startlingly realistic graphics.

Spindler’s game is officially called cancel recordingand its graphics look even more incredible than they did six months ago in a new trailer posted this week on Steam. DRAMA, the French studio behind it, describes it as a mashup of a narrative walking simulation fire clock and tactical SWAT shooter Ready or Not. You play as a cop using tactical skills and detective instincts to solve a perplexing case, and while the available gameplay footage suggests a conventional shooter with die and retry combat, in cancel recording‘s Steam page description, the developers say the game will feature different characters and multiple plot twists.

Even more than last year cancel recording‘s latest trailer exploded at once because it looks so frighteningly real. At first glance, it looks like a virtual reality game in the style of Half-Life: Alyx or a full motion video (FMV) capture, but DRAMA says the game is being made in Unreal Engine and the footage in question is taken directly from the gameplay and not from scripted scenes. “These images are from real-time gameplay, not pre-rendered.” Spindler tweeted. He later followed Post additional footage of the game showing its editor in action, including real-time movements.

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Is the bodycam footage fake?

What’s so striking about that? cancel recording isn’t necessarily that the graphics are “better” than other visual powerhouses Cyberpunk 2077 And Horizon forbidden west. It looks less like a painstaking virtual recreation of a realistic environment and more like a recording of one, which makes sense as the aim is to mimic the look of a bodycam recording.

We’ve seen this before with that “frighteningly real” looking ride 4 filming And Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II‘s Amsterdam level. When lighting, blur, and other visual effects are calibrated just right, in-game scenes can take on a heightened sense of realism, at least when viewed briefly casually on your phone. later in cancel recording‘s trailer, things are starting to look much more recognizable game-y.

However, not everyone buys it. some developers have questioned how exactly the game will control, as the character, camera and gun all appear to move separately in the announcement trailer. There have also been suggestions that it could be a glorified tech demo rather than a real game. Doubts have also been raised about how much better the new trailer looks than the footage that was shown just six months ago. At the very least, it seems prudent to wait and see how the finished product fares, especially considering how little is known about the relatively new studio working on its first game.

But even if DRAMA doesn’t play fast and loose with the project’s presentation, the found-footage aesthetic combined with the cop-sim premise immediately turned stomachs, especially in the US, which has seen high-profile police killings are a regularly recurring news event. While some violent shooter sims try to distance themselves with stylized art direction or sci-fi instruments, cancel recordingThe creators of seem intent on making the game look like a real-world hate crime simulator as much as possible.

The cop sim is an instant turnoff for some

The studio tried to address both the doubts and the controversies in an update At cancel recording‘s Steam page. “As a French studio aimed at a global audience, the game does not engage in any foreign policy and is not inspired by real events,” it wrote. “The game will of course avoid any undesirable themes such as discrimination, racism, violence against women and minorities.”

That added the studio cancel recording does not take a black-and-white approach to crime and police brutality and understands when people are “disturbed” by the game’s look and content. “Art cannot fight interpretation,” she wrote. DRAMA also says that trying to defend the game’s concept on its own terms would effectively require spoiling the narrative.

“The audience generally trusts the film, [TV] Series and novelists about the intelligence of the perspective when it comes to detective, gangster or police stories. “Why not for a video game? When the game presents political messages, they are made consciously or in your interpretation. If the game is supposed to be subversive in certain countries, we take on the label.”

It’s far from clear if the studio means cancel recording may become “subversive in certain countries” by questioning or tacitly endorsing policing and state violence. The title certainly alludes to a corrupt cover-up, with plenty current analogues from the real world play out It sounds like this at the moment a version of Far cry the frequent claims of the publisher Ubisoft that his games are not political combined with “please trust us”. However, given the rarity with which games approach serious subjects with nuance and sensitivity, trust hardly feels owed.

As to whether or not the game footage is even real, DRAMA remains adamant that it is real. “Given the high cost of producing a video game and our global reputation that is at stake when cancel recording a scam, it would be a blockbuster scam,” the studio wrote. “Therefore, logically, it isn’t.”

The buzz around cancel recording has apparently prompted developers to try and speed up production, even if the team remains small and self-funded, though perhaps not for long. The game is still in pre-production with no mention of even a vague release window.