The animation compression system really stood out to me as well. It seems back when hardware was the limitation, people had to be literal geniuses to develop games. Now with so much middleware and so many pre-cooked engines available, people are left less with the challenge of accomplishing the technicals and more on creating an enveloping story and challenging gameplay mechanics.

I love to feel SONY recognized that.

"How things worked" ended up being two sheets of paper slid across a table... The SONY engineers:

"We have to tell this guy..." while thinking about seeing their hardware shine, perhaps brighter than intended.