List of songs in Guitar Hero Live
"Guitar Hero Live" is a 2015 music video game that's developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision. It is the first title in the "Guitar Hero" series since it went on hiatus after 2011, and the first game in the series available for 8th generation video game consoles (PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One). The game was released worldwide on 20 October 2015 for these systems as well as the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and iOS devices including the Apple TV.
Guitar Hero Live
Though FreeStyleGames experimented with other options including a controller-less game, camera and motion detection, and social-based games, but recognized quickly that the guitar controller was a key part of the series' success. The developers recognized they wanted to have a guitar controller that players would not be embarrassed to have in their living rooms and spent time getting the look of the controller accurate to a real guitar. The design of the game's guitar controller was overhauled, using rapid prototyping to test potential guitar designs. The final design of the controller for "Live" utilizes a new design with six buttons arranged into two rows of three frets, designated by black and white-colored notes in-game, instead of using the traditional row of five colored frets used by previous "Guitar Hero" games. Jackson explained that the new layout was meant to make the game easier for new players, as the three-button layout avoids the need to use one's pinkie finger, a difficulty they recognized new players had on the traditional five-button controller. The layout was also designed to provide a new challenge to experienced players, including more realistic simulations of chords. The choice to use only three buttons also came from statistical analysis of past games, where about 80% of the players would never play harder than the Medium difficulty level which typically only required the use of three fingers with the previous five-button controllers. The initial controller iterations, presented both in-studio and to Activision, were met with skepticism but they found that players quickly adapted to the new scheme as an improvement over the older controllers. The "note highways" for the songs were created by both programmers and musicians using MIDI software as to map to each of the six controller buttons and the open strum bar. Note highways were developed first for the Expert difficulty level, essentially recreating the guitar part of the song note for note, while highways for lower difficulty levels were then constructed by removing notes while assuring the core rhythm of the song remained.
The game itself is presented in a more realistic and immersive style; the rendered stages and characters of previous games are replaced by full motion video, shot from the first-person perspective of the lead guitarist, simulating real-world concert settings. The video footage is dynamic, and can transition between versions featuring positive or negative reactions by the crowd and band members based upon the player's performance. The first-person footage utilizes session musicians as actors playing the remaining members of the band, and is filmed using a Bolt robotic camera system, programmed to simulate the motions of a guitarist on stage. The Bolt ran along a track, and was able to move and turn quickly, mimicking the speed of a musician's movements. Prior to filming with the Bolt, an actor outfitted with motion and position detectors acted out the song with the other band actors; these movements were recorded and then used to direct the Bolt as it replaced the actor in subsequent takes. To avoid injury to the other actors from the motions of the camera, the routines were all choreographed based on the camera's motions and used as cues for the other actors. To enable smoother transitions between positive and negative versions of the band footage, multiple takes were performed for each song using the same camera motions. Groups of 200 to 400 actors were filmed using a green screen to construct crowds; using varying takes and other editing techniques, the groups of actors could be made to cover much larger areas. To simulate larger crowds, these shots were superimposed on a combination of live footage from actual rock concerts and 3D models constructed by FreeStyleGames. The effects studio Framestore helped with editing and assembling the digital live-action footage. Positional audio effects are also used as part of the footage, varying the volume of certain instruments depending on how close the player is to them on-screen in the footage.