Ghost of Tsushimalaunches 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 ofGhost of Tsushima’s loading times.
Speaking with Kotaku, lead engine programmer Adrian Bentley discussed Sucker Punch’s impressive accomplishments withGhost 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 behindhowGhost of Tsushimaloads 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.
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He also describes howGhost of Tsushima’s world-designis built to help decrease load times in its own way. “It also helps that large portions ofGhostare designed to be a peaceful, meditative environment,” is how Bentley describes it. Where other games are often very “noisy,“Ghostputs less pressure on the game moment to moment.
ButGhost of Tsushimadoes 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 Punchdiscovered 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 thatGhost of Tsushimais 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 inGhost of Tsushima, particularly whenfast traveling.
It just gives Sucker Punch the opportunity to do another iteration onGhost of Tsushimaso that it performs even better on PS5.
