Last week, posters on GameFAQs discovered a hidden secret in which God of War II could be played in HD mode, but apparently, this mode is only exclusive to television sets which run the NTSC signal. In other words, only gamers in Japan and the US will be able to take advantage of this upgrade, while Europe cannot because it runs on the PAL system.
Sony addressed the question of why the HD feature for God of War II was omitted from the PAL versions of the game. The statement, shown here in part, pointed to the difficulty in maintaining the deadline for the release of GoW II while trying to produce the HD PAL counterpart at the same time.
"Development of the PAL version ran extremely closely alongside the NTSC version, and to have asked the team to develop a similar bonus mode for the PAL version would have distracted from their efforts to get it into the best shape possible. In addition, it would have required additional QA testing that would have a resulted in substantial delays to the game’s release."
But in spite of this bit of bad news for God of War fans in Europe, Sony offered some good news for those who owned PS3s. "It should also be noted that when playing the game on a PS3 via a component or HDMI lead, it runs in true 576p and not just an upscaled version of 576i. The Enhanced Definition (ED) output is forced from the PS2 graphics chip which is why a lot of PS2 games – not just GoWII – will look a lot better."
[via Pro-G]
