eFootball PES 2022
Series producer Seitaro Kimura talks realism and real passion.
The ‘photorealism’ we aim for is exactly the reproduction of the real world itself.
With Konami revealing it’ll miss this year’s E3 (which is now an online conference beginning on 12 June), some fans have been left fearful this year’s eFootball PES 2022 will be delayed. While we have no news on whether that’s the case, Seitaro Kimura, eFootball PES series producer at Konami Digital Entertainment, has spoken to us about the team’s ambition for the next instalment. It’s exciting news, and gives us confidence the game will release as usual this autumn.
Importantly, this year’s game is a reset that’s aiming to push PlayStation 5. Fans were concerned this could be similar to the transition PES made from PS2 to PS3, which saw the Fox-Engine-powered soccer sim stumble before coming back strong on PS4. The next game will drop Fox Engine in favour of Unreal Engine, pointing to a bold new future as we anticipate the photoreal results teased by Epic Games during last year’s Unreal Engine 5 reveal. A photoreal football sim on PS5, with visuals matching the PES series’ renowned attention to detail and tactical gameplay? Sounds like a match made in heaven.
“I think it is important to be able to experience the excitement and sense of accomplishment that football has, in the game,” says Kimura when we ask what a PS5 ‘next-gen’ football game needs to offer. “Not to mention being able to play games in photorealism…” he teases.
Speaking specifically about the challenge of meeting expectations for a PS5 game, and the desire for photorealism, Kimura reveals the team’s views on beginning the era of PES on Sony’s new-gen console.
“The performance of PS5 is incredible, and while benefiting from it, we have faced many challenges and feel that we are steadily approaching ‘the next level’ step by step,” he says, before explaining further. “However, no matter how good the performance of PS5 is, there are various restrictions, and therefore, I think it is an extremely difficult road to reach ‘the next level’. This is because the ‘photorealism’ we aim for is exactly the reproduction of the real world itself.”
Kimura points out a great challenge in the pursuit of realism in sports games: while shooters and fantasy roleplayers can dupe us into accepting something as real because their locations are imaginary, football games like PES 2022 need to recreate the world, the stars, and the stadia we know from real life.
Kimura explains: “This [next-level realism] includes atmosphere of the stadium and the enthusiastic supporters, the players’ passionate facial expressions, the texture of the skin and hair, and detailed movement of their muscles and sweat. Even the seams of the uniforms.”
The PES 2022 developer says making the new game photoreal is a cumulative process, one in which every detail adds to the sense of realism. “We can say that ‘photorealism’ could be achieved only by reproducing all these phenomena,” says Kimura, adding: “And to get there, we need to face yet more challenges.”
GOAL NEW WORLD
We’ve already seen in other sports games how attention to the small things can dramatically boost the sense of realism. For example, NBA 2K21’s focus on crowd AI and the mundane detail of a hotdog vendor mingling in the crowd or fans leaving during breaks in the action heightens the sense of believability.
“In my opinion, it’s about recreating the real world itself,” says Kimura, who adds
that attention to detail in PES 2022 will be a mixture of player reactions and expressive behaviour as well as crowd and stadium animation. “The general definition would be reproducing a live-action expression, however, that alone can lead to an inorganic and imperfect world. We believe that ‘photorealism’ will be completed by adding various ‘elements’ to impress users […] Users know what the players look like, they’ve seen the enthusiastic supporters, and they’ve felt the atmosphere of the stadium. Therefore, the ‘virtual deception’ is much harder. However, this is the exact reason why we feel the challenge in this field is worth it.”
Achieving photorealism with PES 2022 is “indeed hard”, admits the developer, but says using Unreal Engine is enabling the team to achieve results.
Getting technical, he tells us: “One specific example is that with Unreal Engine, designers can take on various tasks without programmers’ help by using Blueprint. By doing so, we believe that we can improve the production speed, improve the skills of individual designers, and receive many other benefits.”
TRICK SHOT
Achieving photorealism also requires knowledge of the real world, and recreating how we think we experience watching football goes beyond just technical accomplishments.
“Of course, factors such as lighting, animation, framerate, and resolution are very important and necessary, but this is not enough,” shares Kimura. “In addition to these elements, we must have the knowledge and skills of a camera for photo development in order to obtain ‘photorealism’. We learn how an actual lens captures the light and other features, and consider that expressing these phenomena is important.”
The way Kimura talks about achieving lifelike visuals in PES 2022 leads us to expect something incredible from the next iteration of the series on PS5. The developer suggests that with such heightened graphics, any mistakes in realising a lifelike recreation of football will be noticeable. The team is working hard to merge the fluid gameplay seen in the series’ last two excellent PS4 releases with photoreal animation and modelling.
“Animations are real at the time of motion capture, but how the animations are used in-game is important, and AI determines that,” says Kimura insightfully. “If something goes wrong here, users will not be able to concentrate on the game. It is necessary for players to choose the right movements in the game to create realism.”
We pose the idea PES 2022 will have the most realistic Messi beard yet. “Of course,” says Kimura, “please look forward to the quality of Messi,” adding: “But as for beards, you will have to wait and see if Messi actually has a beard when the next title is released.”
Factors such as lighting, animation, framerate, and resolution are very important and necessary.