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So how did they manage to make loading times this short in GoT?

TheAssist

Member
I finally gave in a bough Ghost of Tsushima and maaannn, what a nice looking landscape this is. Sure the character models arent GoW or Uncharted/Last of Us levels of good and some textures are a bit muddy, but the last time I had to admire the scenery every few steps was back in 2015 in the Witcher 3.

I'm playing on hard mode and I do die from time to time, apparently because I'm getting old or some such. Anyway, what stood out to me was how fast the loading is in this game. Its amazing. I have stated several times that the reason I'm looking forward to next gen the most is getting rid of loading times.
Its one of the main reasons I'm mostly playing on PC. Here it is at least somewhat manageable, but even then, after death loading times are outrageous. Especially if all the game has to do is put you in the very same room, with the exact same assets, enemies, geometry and everything.
I always thought there is a good reason for this and the only way to get rid of loading is to brute force it. But here comes GoT. A game that doesnt need a 3 minute loading time on boot (looking at you GTA), where fast travel takes about 5 or so seconds even across the whole map and respawn after dying is sometimes instantly or takes about 2 or 3 seconds.
And that is in an open world game that happens to look absolutely stunning.

Honorable mention to The Last of Us Part 2 which also had very short loading times. Its such a pitty that, whatever these studios are doing, seems to take of just before we get SSD's in consoles. That tech would have been such a blessing at the beginning of the generation. Or last generation if I'm being honest.

Is it just asset duplication on the hard drive, or is there more to it? Have they spoken about this? I am really curios, simply because I am somewhat amazed by this after sitting through literal minutes of loading screens in other games that also came out this year.
 

Oddspeak

Member
Really good compression.

“Our art teams did an amazing job pushing their assets to fit in our aggressive performance and memory budgets,” Bentley said. “They accomplished a huge amount especially considering the size of our team. As an example, one of our 200m x 200m terrain tiles only usually takes up around 2 MB (compressed) on disc, including all the terrain and foliage placements. It’s easier to load a lot of data when you keep it compact.”

It's crazy impressive how a game can look so good and have a decently large map yet load so fast and take up only about ~45 GB.

Sucker Punch optimized the hell out of this game.
 

Fart Knight

Al Pachinko, Konami President
tenor.gif
 

Vawn

Banned
I was wondering that same thing while playing Ghost of Tsushima. The loading times and overall performance was really impressive.

Between GoT and The Last of Us Part 2, it really was feeling less necessary for a new generation. These late two PS4 games were both really well done on a technical level.
 
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TheAssist

Member
I really hope that next gen improves the situation at least on that front of game development. Of course you are always limited by something, but I can only imagine it is to create a world like this with all these limitations in mind. Being able to imagine something and just put it in the game as is would be a huuuge improvement I think.

Thank you Oddspeak for linking that article!
 

RCU005

Member
I was wondering that same thing while playing Ghost of Tsushima. The loading times and overall performance was really impressive.

Between GoT and The Last of Us Part 2, it really was feeling less necessary for a new generation. These late two PS4 games were both really well done on a technical level.

Imagine the last two next-gen games. When we look back, we will say GoT and TLOU2 look so outdated.
 

Vawn

Banned
There are many, many games across the last few generations that have almost instant “load times” in parts of their games. It’s nothing new or special.

Like clockwork. You get you upset every time a PlayStation game gets praised. Lol.

Tell me what other huge open-world games that look as good as GoT and run as well.

Of course, you would have to have played the game to know what you were talking about.
 
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Really good compression.



It's crazy impressive how a game can look so good and have a decently large map yet load so fast and take up only about ~45 GB.

Sucker Punch optimized the hell out of this game.
Yeah but the flip side of this is, how did they find the resources to uncompress everything while still having a game look like that? I would think if the answer to load times on the PS4 is simply "compression" nearly every game would be doing it as aggressively.

edit: I mean the dev says "somewhat complex code" but come on, that's what I wanna know about lol.
 
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McCheese

Member
There are not many unique assets in the game world, and the ones they do have are always spaced apart by trees, grass, shrubs and rocks that never need to be reloaded. The setting alone makes it much easier bandwidth wise than say, a cityscape.
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
Like clockwork. You get you upset every time a PlayStation game gets praised. Lol.

Tell me what other huge open-world games that look as good as GoT and run as well.

Of course, you would have to have played the game to know what you were talking about.
The thread was asking a question. I pointed out that it’s not unique and games have been doing it for generations.
 
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LockeKappa

Neo Member
The load times were there, just hidden behind the opening cinematic.

Yeah TLOU2 does the same thing. If you watch all the cutscenes, there's not a single loading screen. If you skip them, they can get pretty bad. I think with current gen games and PS4s with HDDs its more about how well you disguise the loading screens than them not being there.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Thought the same about ghost. Tlou2 is 100% behind cutscenes, noticed on my second play thoigh.

Naughty Dog has been doing that since Jak & Daxter. I’m playing UC4 and being an old jaded boomer I can see where they slow things down just a bit to load up the next segment. They’re very clever at this point, it’s far beyond the Gears style “walk like a snail talking into a headset“ at this point... It works for a linear game.
 
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Vawn

Banned
The thread was asking a question. I pointed out that it’s not unique and games have been doing it for generations.

Tell me which open-world games that match the size, graphics, etc have as good of performance and loading times as GoT.

I'll wait for you to Google gameplay of GoT, as we all know you've never played it.
 

Yamisan

Member
GOT is amazing, can fast travel anywhere on the map instantly even on my launch ps4 with a cheap 2tb drive.
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
It would be helpful if you give us some examples.

Like The Witcher 3 for example.





See how easy that was MrFunSocks MrFunSocks ?

Ah yes, Witcher 3 is the only other game in the world. Forgot about that lol.

Jesus Christ, not everything about every Sony exclusive has to be made out to be magic and untouchable lol. Settle it down fellas.
 
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D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
It really is quite impressive. No fast travel stress.
 

Self

Member
I have no clue how they did this, but it's fantastic. Short load times in a open world setting? Never experienced this in the current or last generation.

TLoU2 loads so quick after death, that it almost feld like Celeste. I'm very, very pleased with this.
 

kikii

Member
game is just awsum :messenger_blowing_kiss: platted it sometime ago but trophylist is bugged atleast on OS 8.00 beta 4 and also 7.55
 

TheAssist

Member
Yeah TLOU2 does the same thing. If you watch all the cutscenes, there's not a single loading screen. If you skip them, they can get pretty bad. I think with current gen games and PS4s with HDDs its more about how well you disguise the loading screens than them not being there.

However, when you die and respawn its also almost instantly. Compare that to for example Control where you could kill yourself right at the spawn point and the game would go on to reload everything and you'd be stuck in a load screen no matter how often you die in the same place. So its clear these studios have done some programming work to make this work. Plus their art team probably put in some extra hours.

I just cant wait for this stuff to become the norm. Begone loading screens. You have no power here any longer.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Yeah TLOU2 does the same thing. If you watch all the cutscenes, there's not a single loading screen. If you skip them, they can get pretty bad. I think with current gen games and PS4s with HDDs its more about how well you disguise the loading screens than them not being there.

There is a rather lengthy initial load, which makes sense since the cinematics are real time. But yeah, after that it's smooth sailing.
 
He comes in every Sony topic to troll or downplay without repercussions. Check every recent topic to see his salty shenanigans.

Besides that the main big issue that I have with him is that he always brings in really silly arguments when he can't make good ones. Like once he called Cerny Jesus and with this one he says that people believe the PS5 is powered by magic. The next thing you know he will say that Warwick Davis is running the PS5 factory.

For the discussion we were having he could simply have provided examples of openworld games that handle their loading in a similar fashion as Ghost of Tsushima does.


"Our art teams did an amazing job pushing their assets to fit in our aggressive performance and memory budgets.They accomplished a huge amount especially considering the size of our team. As an example, one of our 200m x 200m terrain tiles only usually takes up around 2MB (compressed) on disc, including all the terrain and foliage placements. It's easier to load a lot of data when you keep it compact," Ghost of Tsushima's lead engine programmer Adrian Bentley told Kotaku.

This there is proof that the developers actually did something to make the fast loading possible. But when you have responses like this from him.

Ah yes, Witcher 3 is the only other game in the world. Forgot about that lol.

Jesus Christ, not everything about every Sony exclusive has to be made out to be magic and untouchable lol. Settle it down fellas.

It's really difficult to have a good discussion with him. He makes responses like this when he can't make a good argument.
 
Annoyed me if anything.

I used to be able to get up, take a piss, get a cup of water, maybe even roll a j, now I'm just constantly being loaded into the game before I can even open up a new tab for porn to skim through while I wait.

Life is hard :(
 
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