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Middle Earth: Shadow of War has a ~60GB download on PC

K

KarmaCow

Member
The worst part is that if it's anything like Shadow of Mordor, the cutscenes wont up end up looking significantly better (or even worse) than the game running in real time. I wish developers would offer separate downloads prerendered like they do with texture packs. It still annoys me that Sega decided include higher resolution but still worse than real time prerendered videos in the Bayo and Vanquish ports. It made the games balloon up almost three times the size of the last gen versions for the fucking awful cutscenes in those games.
 
J

Jangowuzhere

Banned
Crossing Eden said:
"Artists, just make less good impressive work!"
Click to expand...

Unless they're pulling out CG visuals, there's nothing impressive about putting the ingame models and effects on a video file. Real time cutscene visuals will always look better and be more immersive.

One of the criticisms popping up about this game is that the loot and costume wear you collect does not appear in the game's cutscenes. That's because, well, it can't. Video files are pretty restrictive that way. The player trigger's a cutscene and will see their main character looking completely different from the one they're currently playing with. That's just lame.
 
S

sleepwalkcapsules

Member
I hope in the near future the console's OS and steam gives us options for download. And make games more modular.

If you only want the multiplayer, you can install and download only that. That kind of thing.
 
G

Gitaroo

Member
Jangowuzhere said:
Unless they're pulling out CG visuals, there's nothing impressive about putting the ingame models and effects on a video file. Real time cutscene visuals will always look better and be more immersive.

One of the criticisms popping up about this game is that the loot and costume wear you collect does not appear in the game's cutscenes. That's because, well, it can't. Video files are pretty restrictive that way. The player trigger's a cutscene and will see their main character looking completely different from the one they're playing with. That's just lame.
Click to expand...

This and done.
 
P

PhaZZe

Banned
I think, steam should offer options about what to download, uncompressed videos or normal, more options. In my case i can download that without problems (no caps in Chile).
 
A

Aters

Member
The industry is making me play indie games exclusively. Fuck me if I use 20% of my entire space for one game.
 
V

Verder

Member
you got me fucked up.

DooM 2016 was alrready a fuckton but i cant do another heavy file like that.


what the fuck is making THIS game 95gb


edit-lol watch like 50gb be hidden files for actually pay to win orcs and gear ;)
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Jangowuzhere said:
Unless they're pulling out CG visuals, there's nothing impressive about putting the ingame models and effects on a video file. Real time cutscene visuals will always look better and be more immersive.
One of the criticisms popping up about this game is that the loot and costume wear you collect does not appear in the game's cutscenes. That's because, well, it can't. Video files are pretty restrictive that way. The player trigger's a cutscene and will see their main character looking completely different from the one they're currently playing with. That's just lame.
Click to expand...
Look is subjective, pre-rendered visuals can (and usually do) look better than what the engine is capable of running in realtime. The lighting in Mafia 3 for instance was completely borked in-game so with pre-rendered they could have polished scenes that weren't full of little glitches. I mean just look at the new Star Wars Battlefront cutscene they showed off recently that absolutely would not be possible in realtime with so many bells and whistles. It's more immersive that you see the costume that you're wearing in a cutscene, but there are a whole lot of valid reasons why a studio would rather go with pre-rendered in-engine video files over real time rendering. Like performance could be really bad with the higher quality models, lighting, effects and post processing, while simultaneously needing time to load the game in the background. Currently not finding anything about the specific version of the engine they're using for this so it's up in the air. The way they edit cutscenes probably has a lot to do with it:
0yD2ANF.gif
 
Y

Yarbskoo

Member
In-game cutscenes are definitely preferable, especially if you're just using in-game assets anyway. Doubly so on PC where the image quality of the rest of the game tends to get better over time as hardware advances.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
guybrushfreeman said:
Steam could build in a picker when you go to install. They already have different depots for different languages (ie only the languages you need is installed if the developer sets it that way). Perhaps going forward developers could compartmentalise high and low quality assets (for video files this should be fairly easy at least).

Then, when the user clicks install they can get a choice of which assets to download and an idea of the files size of each.

Any extra work is extra testing though (it's simple but things go wrong with simple things all the time).

However, at this point it does seem like download sizes are so large many customers would likely never purchase the game. In fact I'm kind of surprised publishers would want to turn away customers like this and didn't just force the file size down out of fear of losing sales.
Click to expand...

Steam already does something like this with DLC (you can choose which DLC packs you want to install) so developers could probably do something like this right now if they include certain content as free DLC.
 
C

Conkerkid11

Member
Oh, well at least that made it easy not to buy that this month. I was on the fence, but I'm not eating through 1/10th of my data limit this month for one game when Destiny 2, Super Mario Odyssey, The Evil Within 2, Assassin's Creed, and Wolfenstein 2 are coming out.

Krakn3Dfx said:
1/10th of my Comcast monthly allotment for a $60 game that hard pushes loot boxes on you for the true ending?
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Exactly
 
G

guybrushfreeman

Unconfirmed Member
Bluth54 said:
Steam already does something like this with DLC (you can choose which DLC packs you want to install) so developers could probably do something like this right now if they include certain content as free DLC.
Click to expand...

Exactly, the infrastructure is there. I don't think it would be that hard to implement (for video files at least). It's genuinely quite surprising they aren't using it. Install size seem like a very bad reason to turn a customer away.
 
C

Conkerkid11

Member
Crossing Eden said:
Look is subjective, pre-rendered visuals can (and usually do) look better than what the engine is capable of running in realtime. The lighting in Mafia 3 for instance was completely borked in-game so with pre-rendered they could have polished scenes that weren't full of little glitches. I mean just look at the new Star Wars Battlefront cutscene they showed off recently that absolutely would not be possible in realtime with so many bells and whistles. It's more immersive that you see the costume that you're wearing in a cutscene, but there are a whole lot of valid reasons why a studio would rather go with pre-rendered in-engine video files over real time rendering. Like performance could be really bad with the higher quality models, lighting, effects and post processing, while simultaneously needing time to load the game in the background. Currently not finding anything about the specific version of the engine they're using for this so it's up in the air.
Click to expand...
Doesn't matter how good the cutscenes look when they're only 1080p or less and aren't future-proofing at all.
 
balgajo

balgajo

Member
Wtf... Didn't know that pre-rendered cutscene was still a thing. Most of games I play have real time cutscenes.
 
Husky

Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
I hope it has the best kind of prerendered cutscene--recorded footage of something originally done in-engine!
Why do any games do this? Do they think that playing it in realtime is going to kill my PC?
 
V

Vital Tundra

Member
Like, I understand modern AAA games with large assets are going to be big. But most Americans alone have shit internet and data caps out the ass. Im lucky with 200-300mbs, but before that I had a 10gb data cap at like 60mbs. Its just a little ridiculous.
 
S

Skux

Member
Sure the game is big, but people blaming this on "lazy devs should just render in-engine" shows a lack of understanding.

There are many times when you just can't render in-engine, for example if you have multiple scene changes that would eat up all your VRAM trying to render.
 
Dargor

Dargor

Member
Well, I don't have data caps, but my internet is 15mb, so I don't think I'll be downloading it in 17 minutes like our privileged OP here :(
;P
 
T

takriel

Member
gogosox82 said:
Another bad decision by WB and Monolith. This game just has nothing but bad press and negativity surrounding it.
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... on GAF. As always, GAF is but a tiny percentage of the whole gaming community and is not representative. Which is kind of a shame, because in a lot of things and barring some corporate apologists here and there, GAF takes the pro-consumer stance.
 
J

Jangowuzhere

Banned
Crossing Eden said:
Look is subjective, pre-rendered visuals can (and usually do) look better than what the engine is capable of running in realtime. The lighting in Mafia 3 for instance was completely borked in-game so with pre-rendered they could have polished scenes that weren't full of little glitches. I mean just look at the new Star Wars Battlefront cutscene they showed off recently that absolutely would not be possible in realtime with so many bells and whistles. It's more immersive that you see the costume that you're wearing in a cutscene, but there are a whole lot of valid reasons why a studio would rather go with pre-rendered in-engine video files over real time rendering. Like performance could be really bad with the higher quality models, lighting, effects and post processing, while simultaneously needing time to load the game in the background. Currently not finding anything about the specific version of the engine they're using for this so it's up in the air. The way they edit cutscenes probably has a lot to do with it:
0yD2ANF.gif
Click to expand...

I understand that there are technical limitations for engines and stuff, but I still don't find it all that impressive. Real time cutscenes will always look better in the end. Video files are limited by framerate and rendering quality, while the opposite method is not. I'm going to be playing SoW on PC at 60 FPS, so seeing the entire game slow down to 30 FPS for a cutscene will definitely take me out of the experience.

Not really buying that example with the editing in SoW. Mass Effect 2 is pretty much 95% real time cutscenes, but it managed to blend pre-rendered and real-time rendered cinematics together quite seamlessly. It used pre-rendered material sparingly to disguise load times and improve the pacing. You can show quick cuts to other far locations with pre-rendered stuff, but not everything has to be a video as a result.
 
C

Cipherr

Member
xRaizen said:
We’ve got stupidly large file sizes defenders now? Holy shit
Click to expand...

mah content. Or something.

The FMV shit is a scourge. It was 10x as bad during the Ps1 era with all the multidisc games that had no business being multi disc except to force shitty movies on you. Didnt get much better the following gen either, but its sort of surprising to see it pop back up these days.

Use better compression, and ditch the FMV please.
 
2

2blackcats

Member
Is Steam like PS4 where you can start playing when just a bit of it is downloaded yet or do you have wait for the whole thing?
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Jangowuzhere said:
I understand that there are technical limitations for engines and stuff, but I still don't find it all that impressive. Real time cutscenes will always look better in the end. Video files are limited by framerate and rendering quality, while the opposite method is not. I'm going to be playing SoW on PC at 60 FPS, so seeing the entire game slow down to 30 FPS for a cutscene will definitely take me out of the experience.

Not really buying that example with the editing in SoW. Mass Effect 2 is pretty much 95% real time cutscenes, but it managed to blend pre-rendered and real-time rendered cinematics together quite seamlessly. It used pre-rendered material sparingly to disguise load times and improve the pacing. You can show quick cuts to other far locations with pre-rendered stuff, but not everything has to be a video as a result.
Click to expand...
The scale of those scenes is absolutely impressive, including the effects used and the lighting the problem is that it's likely no possible to switch between such large scale scenes in real-time without huge performance tanks. Again we don't know what the tools are like so it's impossible to make more than an informed guess as to why they're pre-rendered.
 
B

big_z

Member
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo should require compression. Sure download speeds are faster and disc space is much larger but that doesn’t mean there’s no need for compression if the game fits.

There is no noticeable difference in quality between uncompressed and optimized assets and optimizing can reduce file size to by 30-60% on average. For those that want to go digital or have download caps/slower speed (and that’s a lot of people) it makes a huge difference.
 
K

Kintaro

Worships the porcelain goddess
Tweet says: "Shadow of War might be the single biggest download (at launch) I've ever seen. A lot is 4K video, plus a TON of uruk voice acting."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4K assets and a ton of sound probably take up a good amount of space. Xbox One X assets on 11/7 will probably push it near PC levels.

Eh, I don't have a problem with this.
 
P

Prophet Steve

Member
Crossing Eden said:
You don't see how ridiculous that sounds? If anything, I bet this game has the standard 1 hr and 30 minute give or take cutscene run time. So it's not like they're making too many cutscenes. It's the lack of compression.
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Well yes, I think they do make toovmany because judging by the impressions and last game the cutscenes convey a pretty bad story.
 
G

gogosox82

Member
takriel said:
... on GAF. As always, GAF is but a tiny percentage of the whole gaming community and is not representative. Which is kind of a shame, because in a lot of things and barring some corporate apologists here and there, GAF takes the pro-consumer stance.
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True. I more speaking about my perspective on the game. Everything surrounding this game has just been nothing but negative and a turn off to me and what I have seen on the game hasn't looked all that impressive at least not for all the bs that is coming with it. Most people outside of gaf don't care and will just say I won't buy them or like them and buy them. Even here on gaf their are people defending the lootboxes. Just go into the BF2 thread. I saw a bunch of people in there saying it was no big deal.
 
N

NormalFish

Banned
Crossing Eden said:
The scale of those scenes is absolutely impressive, including the effects used and the lighting the problem is that it's likely no possible to switch between such large scale scenes in real-time without huge performance tanks. Again we don't know what the tools are like so it's impossible to make more than an informed guess as to why they're pre-rendered.
Click to expand...
I'm sure those impressive cutscenes will serve their primary purpose as piss breaks perfectly well regardless of compression.
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Prophet Steve said:
Well yes, I think they do make toovmany because judging by the impressions and last game the cutscenes convey a pretty bad story.
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Regardless of story quality for a triple A game there's always a lot of talent, time, money and effort put into the cutscenes....The post above says the game's cutscenes are in 4K, (again, even 2 minutes in 4K is an incredibly large file). On top of that is the metric fuckton of unique voice files. I hadn't even considered that factor truth be told. File size makes completely sense in this scenario.
 
S

SeanTSC

Member
Alexander DeLarge said:
Render cutscenes in engine. Stop bloating games unnecessarily. Also, we don't need our sound files in FLAC. Just saying.
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Speak for yourself.~ I think we should have the option to have the highest quality option audio possible that's within reason.

But, I think developers need to start giving us options to only install the audio of the language of our choosing. We don't need a dozen different audio language packs taking up drive space and bandwidth.
 
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