Killzone Shadow Fall’s on disc file size is a mammoth 39 GB. In a recent interview, Guerilla Games technical director Michael Van Der Leeuw explained why.
“I think we’re probably a lot larger than the other cross-generation games, because we have no assets that have been made to a lower spec.” He also spoke to the larger in game environment relative to other Killzone games. “The surface area, I’m just guessing here, must be five to 10 times bigger than Killzone 3 was.”
He also confirmed that at one point the disc image was around 180GBs and if they would have went ahead and put all the levels it was coming around to a jaw dropping 290GB.
“I think at some point the disc image that we were generating was around 180 gigs,” said van der Leeuw. “And if we would have put all the levels in, which we didn’t, because then the disc image generator broke, it would have been around 290 gigs of data.
“So we had to completely re-architect how we deal with data. And we did a lot of work – this is actually something I’m extremely proud of – to optimise our disc access pattern. Sony made special libraries for us because we were the first ones hitting these sort of problems. I think it’s something that a lot of people will need to be doing in future.”
However the game will be using Sony’s new PlayGo system, which will allow players to get into the game once they have downloaded 7.5GB.
“Realistically, I think a lot of people can do this… It’s just that the initial chunk of 7.5GB is quite big. I think if we would have known exactly how everything would work… I think next time around we’ll try to see if we can design something that doesn’t jeopardise the game which will make it even friendlier. But I think all things considered, this being launch and we’ve got like 2 minutes 44 from disc to the first level and no installs, I think it’s already a massive improvement over previous generations.”
Killzone Shadow Fall will launch alongside the PlayStation 4 this November.
Source: Eurogamer