PS5’s SSD Combined with Unreal Engine 5 Will Lead to “Big Changes” in Level Design, Developer Says

The PS5’s SSD has been one of the console’s biggest selling points, with Sony and various other developers having often talked about the ways it will aid and bolster game development. Another developer who’s excited about those prospects is Pete Bottomley of White Paper Games, game designer on the upcoming mystery adventure title Conway: Disappearance at Dahlia View.

Speaking in a recent interview with GamingBolt, Bottomley said that the PS5’s SSD, especially when combined with what Unreal Engine 5 will enable developers to do, will allow for some big changes in the future to level design in games in general.

“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,” Bottomley said. “When you’re creating the larger 3D games that we tend to design at White Paper, streaming the content for the player and knowing how to approach the design of the levels to get them to the most optimal performance takes a lot of time. With quicker loading times, you have less need to design features into loading screens along with the streaming of the content at runtime. Unreal Engine 5 removes the need for this side of development and instead ‘chunks’ the content under the hood. I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline.”

Of course, we’re still in the early days of this console generation, and it’s probably going to be a while before we see developers really beginning to get the best out of the new consoles. Even so, the potential is quite exciting, and spells some interesting things for the future.

Our full interview with the developers of Conway: Disappearance at Dalhia View will be live soon, so stay tuned for that. The game launches this Fall for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.