The Conduit does full screen Normal Mapping

This is a portion of a new interview with Matt Corso and Eric Nossinger from High Voltage with respected site "thatvideogameblog".

Thought the Wii wasn't really capable of full screen/scene Normal Mapping? (Matt Casamassina I'm looking at you) Read on:

TVGB: High Voltage has mentioned before that the Quantum 3 engine allows the use of bump-mapping, but how about normal mapping? There’s been great debate whether this technique can be used extensively on the Wii.

MC: The technique that we’re using to generate the character models are exactly the same for a PS3 or 360 game. All of our models are being built in z-brush and the we’re applying them to the lower res models. What you’re seeing in the game are normal mapped characters. The thing we need to work out is the lighting systems. The more we continue to tweak, the better it will look. I don’t know what the debates are but we are in fact running full normal maps on everything not just characters.

EN: In the game when you run up next to a wall it clearly has it on it and that’s true of pretty much everything in the game.

TVGB: What about aliasing?

MC: Like everyone, we’re restricted to the 480p resolution that the Wii puts out. As far as dealing with that we’re coping.

EN: There are some hardware limitations with the system and we’ve said from the start that we want the game to look as close as possible to the 360 and PS3. We can’t somehow do a pack-in that will allow us to kick out at 1080p it’ll look as pretty as it can look within the resolution.

TVGB: Sounds like you’re promising a lot with this game and as you know gamers can be demanding. Got any worries that you won’t be able to deliver?

EN: All we can absolutely guarantee is that what will be in there is going to be the best in there. The things we’re leaving off the table can’t be done right now in the time frame. The things we are targeting are what are important to the game and we know we need to do them very well. Our expectations are very high. That goes not just for the leadership level at High Voltage but every person on this team. They all want to make this the best game they can possibly make. We’re about 9 months out from shipping and we’re going to be working hard to get everything as perfect as possible. The short answer is yes we are making a lot of bold claims and yes we think we’re up to the challenge of delivering on those claims.

MC: There’s no benefit for us to build hype and make a bad game. It’s going to be good.

EN: All the things we have been claiming in press we feel confident we can deliver. We’re aware that’s a lot but we’re all gamers here too and we want a lot out of our dollar too.

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When Nintendo announced the "Revolution" back in 2005, Nintendo's president Iwata said that when played on a standard definition TV you wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference between it and 360/PS3. We may finally see that statement proved true when the Conduit releases early next year. It's just a shame that no else took advantage of the Wii a lot sooner and actually had some faith that the system could produce some great graphics.