Ghost of Tsushima launches today and it's certain to be considered one of the most impressive technical achievements on the PlayStation 4. While the PS5 may pride itself on its short or even non-existent loading times, Ghost of Tsushima's managed to impressively cut things down this generation. In fact, the loading times were starting to get so low that developer Sucker Punch made a decision that may leave some players befuddled. Sucker Punch increased some of Ghost of Tsushima's loading times.
Speaking with Kotaku, lead engine programmer Adrian Bentley discussed Sucker Punch's impressive accomplishments with Ghost of Tsushima. He talks about how compact the art assets in the game are, enabling the game load data incredibly fast. He also describes some of the technical details behind how Ghost of Tsushima loads in-game content efficiently, saying users shouldn't see pop-in because the game correctly pre-loads important information ahead of its use around 99% of the time.
He also describes how Ghost of Tsushima's world-design is built to help decrease load times in its own way. "It also helps that large portions of Ghost are designed to be a peaceful, meditative environment," is how Bentley describes it. Where other games are often very "noisy," Ghost puts less pressure on the game moment to moment.
But Ghost of Tsushima does have loading times, especially after an in-game death. Like many other games, these loading times have tips to read that might help the player avoid future deaths. However, Sucker Punch discovered that loading was so efficient that these tip screens would often come and go so fast that players couldn't read the tips. Sucker Punch ultimately decided to "artificially extend downtime" just a small bit in situations where they'd otherwise just flash on the screen and disappear.
That's not to say that Ghost of Tsushima is perfect, however. It's still running on PS4 hardware and there are serious limitations that go along with that. Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch may have stretched the hardware as far as it can go, but only so much can be done. There are absolutely still some substantial loading times in Ghost of Tsushima, particularly when fast traveling.
It just gives Sucker Punch the opportunity to do another iteration on Ghost of Tsushima so that it performs even better on PS5.
Ghost of Tsushima is available now on PS4.
Source: Kotaku
