Ghost of Tsushima reloads so fast dev had to artificially lengthen the loading screen

Speaking to Kotaku, lead engine programmer Adrian Bentley explains what's happening to enable the game's speedy loading. It makes for interesting reading, but we'll spare you all the technobabble. Long story short: Sucker Punch's game engine is extremely efficient, keeping disc reads to a minimum by placing data very precisely....

.....Amazingly, loading after death was once so fast that it would've been impossible to read any of the tooltips that appear while you wait. Bentley says the team had to artificially extend this downtime to allow people to take in at least one of these tips. If Sucker Punch is able to make respawns almost instantaneous in an open world PS4 game, imagine what it'll be able to do with PS5 and its ultra-fast SSD.

Amazing work by dev, the game reloads so fast that dev had to lengthen the load time so users able to read the tips on the loading screens. Newbies.

3rd party devs unfortunately probably had to lengthen PS5 loading for parity with Xbox Series X poor SSD. Damn ubisoft.

Source: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/07/ghost_of_tsushimas_shockingly_short_load_times_were_originally_even_quicker

That's incredibly stupid.

@freedomfreak: Why?

@vfighter: Lengthening it because of tooltips is stupid. Gaming has never been more casual, and there's plenty of ways you can let the player now about tips and tutorials. Actually extending a loading screen because you wanna shove in a "press circle to crouch" tip, is ridiculous.

Yeah, that is incredibly stupid. Can't believe developers are so desperate to checkmark AAA boxes that they'd artificially lengthen loading tips.

If the whole point of loading tips is to utilize the loading time and your game is too fast for them, then don't use them. Teach it or make it available to the player some other way. Your game doesn't have to be like every other game.

@freedomfreak: Gotcha, and I do agree. There could have been in game prompts to teach you those things early on or other ways to get the info to the player.

Last of Us 2's retry times from death is relatively fast too and so is the game's save speed. Cutscenes and bootup are horrendous though.

Not sure about 3rd party PS5. Speed loads will probably only be slightly faster on the PS5 or non existent specially if it's cross-platform unless its just bootups or what not.

Loading so fast you actually go backwards in time.

lmao. games start playing in reverse.

If this were on PC, we could make a mod for it and get rid of this nonsense.

Master Race Elitism aside, maybe they should just get rid of the loading screen and/or tips entirely. But no...that makes way too much sense.

God forbid people learn and discover how to play the game themselves, or if it is difficult maybe developers could make some in-game tutorials. Remember those? Games like Splinter Cell used to have videos in-game explaining the mechanics.

If a load time is 30 seconds or 3 seconds would people really care?

If they are not long enough to become annoying I don't mind there being load times.

The most annoying load times are when you die and you have to sit there waiting for 5 minutes. That just sucks.

I think the goal should be for people to get back to their game as fast as possible. No need to impede gameplay to host dummy blurbs. Why would they even tell us this? Now I want them patched out.

Tips should be highlighted by an unintrusive prompt during gameplay, which you should always have the option of turning OFF.

Why not just add a press X to continue to allow the player to read the tool tips?

@pinkribbonscars: nahh that would make way to much sense!! This gotta be the stupidest shit I read this year!!

It reloads so fast you forget it’s a far cry clone,but only for a split second hah

Enjoying it up to now,but don’t slate Ubisoft games then praise GOT.

HaH

So they extended it on ps4 because it was too quick, and people weren't able to read tips. Now they ask us "imagine how quick it'll be on the ps5"? Well, BUDDY, i imagine that it'll be the same speed because nobody would be able to read the tips during leading screens, just like on the ps4, a console released in 2013? This is dumb af lol.

You know what would've been impressive? If they told us that the loading screens are improved by only 20%, but frames jump to 120fps and the visuals are on par with the first gameplay demo that was shown of this game. That is what i'd call an exciting announcement.

Yes, thank God for that. I also like how quickly TLOU2 loads when you wanna retry an encounter.

Yes, thank God for that. I also like how quickly TLOU2 loads when you wanna retry an encounter.

@bluestars: You probably mean Asscreed. Yes, this could be called Asscreed Japan, I'm digging it, we'll see how long it can keep my attention, good thing I like the subject and the fighting is quite good.

Sounds like complete and utter bullshit.

Why not just have you press a button when you're done with the loading screen, like Mankind Divided? I don't love tooltip/story recap screens, but I also hate it when I'm reading one and it ends "early". Happens a lot on my PC thanks to my SSD... non-issue if you just let the user choose when they are done

@Epak_:

far creed Japan

I’m enjoying the 4 or 5 hours I have played, this ain’t no groundbreaking game but the setting is right up my street!

@freedomfreak: That's funny because circle isn't the crouch button in the game. lol

Removing tips would diminish the accessibility of the game and, no, I don't think that's a good thing.

That being said, I'd be fine with the option to remove them if you feel inclined to do so.

Too much sense.

@xantufrog: That actually happens in Ghost of Tsushima. lol

It's a bit odd that they added the screen yet make it go away super fast at times. It feels like they have a limited number of contextual tips and just try to hide that fact.

But I thought fast loading was only possible on SSDs.😎

Buh standard HDD are holding gaming back 😂

fun ux fact: it's not uncommon for ecommerce sites to artificially lengthen the time between a user hitting the checkout button and them getting an order complete message, because if it processes too quickly some users are left suspicious of whether their purchase has really gone through

ok i lied that's not fun

Pretty much every Ubisoft game.

@uninspiredcup: ?

Really? I didn't even notice as while I was playing all this time. Not something I'm gonna care, I'm trying to live from these Mongols.

Interesting. I hope it's the first of many times we hear that loading times are too short to read tips. Wouldn't a better solution be to have an in-game place to read all the tips from the loading screens?

That could be one of the dumbest game design decisions I have heard recently. Put the tutorial in the game, not in a loading screen that does not need to exist. What will they do next gen when there are no loading screens necessary? Are they going to create one just to teach how to play the game and undermine Sony's whole pitch with the speed of the PS5?

I can't wait to play the game eventually though. It looks like good fun. Still holding off to play it on the PS5 since I am still on a base PS4.

There is a tutorial obviously, like duh. The reason for those tips is due to Ghost of Tsushima have so much mechanics like stances for various enemy types, various tools that "ghost" uses, gimmicks like sword cleaning to world events etc etc. Its a way for dev to remind players to take advantages of things and its not long, like the loading is 5 sec up to 20sec for distant instant travel location. But I do hope dev just provide options to just turn them off.

Bummer. They should add a skip button.

So instead of placing tips elsewhere, they artificially lengthen load times?

I don't think you people understand what a NVME is and what the speed represents.

That 5.5Gbps isn't going to be the speed it loads games, games are 10-80GB of small files... Not one large 8K movie file, that rated speed will drop to 1Gbps or less when loading a game.

Its why you don't see a difference between a 550Mbps SSD vs 3.5Gbps NVME... The difference between the two is at best 5-10% in load times.

A PS5 NVME, VS XSX VS a PCIE Gen 3 PC NVME vs PCIE GEN 4 PC NVME = is a lot closer than you think in real world performance in MANY benchmarks.

The difference between a PS5 loading a game in 3-5 seconds vs a Gen 3 NVME at even 2Gbps is going to be 1-3 seconds.

5 seconds vs 8 seconds is not life or death and now one will tell the difference.

@Pedro said:

@Grey_Eyed_Elf said:

I don't think you people understand what a NVME is and what the speed represents.

That 5.5Gbps isn't going to be the speed it loads games, games are 10-80GB of small files... Not one large 8K movie file, that rated speed will drop to 1Gbps or less when loading a game.

Its why you don't see a difference between a 550Mbps SSD vs 3.5Gbps NVME... The difference between the two is at best 5-10% in load times.

A PS5 NVME, VS XSX VS a PCIE Gen 3 PC NVME vs PCIE GEN 4 PC NVME = is a lot closer than you think in real world performance in MANY benchmarks.

The difference between a PS5 loading a game in 3-5 seconds vs a Gen 3 NVME at even 2Gbps is going to be 1-3 seconds.

5 seconds vs 8 seconds is not life or death and now one will tell the difference.

Just saying something PC gamers have known since NVME's came out.

That rated performance... You never see that unless you benchmark and then there is the whole developer side of things and how much performance a game actually needs. You might not even see a single difference in load times between a PS5 and a Sata SSD just like now.

I just recently got my self a Kingston A2000 NVME at 2.2Gbps and is going toe to toe in real world performance with a Samsung 970 Plus that is at 3.5Gbps.

Meh. These plebs will find out sooner or later that all Sony does during a console launch cycle is get developers to sell them their magic beans.

They made a shallow combat system. How much do you goobers need in tips anyway?

I don't think it's shallow, especially if you're using everything. I think it's better than the Witcher 3.

Nioh felt too complicated in the beginning, just a lot of stuff thrown at you all at once.

And if they patched it to make load screens longer, it didn't work, I'm lucky if I get to read 1 tip after a death

@Grey_Eyed_Elf said:

Just saying something PC gamers have known since NVME's came out.

That rated performance... You never see that unless you benchmark and then there is the whole developer side of things and how much performance a game actually needs. You might not even see a single difference in load times between a PS5 and a Sata SSD just like now.

I just recently got my self a Kingston A2000 NVME at 2.2Gbps and is going toe to toe in real world performance with a Samsung 970 Plus that is at 3.5Gbps.

Meh. These plebs will find out sooner or later that all Sony does during a console launch cycle is get developers to sell them their magic beans.

The Dual Sense reveal already showed loading of 8 seconds. So, the reality is sinking in a bit.

im doing the same. waiting to play it on the ps5.

@Pedro said:

@Grey_Eyed_Elf said:

Just saying something PC gamers have known since NVME's came out.

That rated performance... You never see that unless you benchmark and then there is the whole developer side of things and how much performance a game actually needs. You might not even see a single difference in load times between a PS5 and a Sata SSD just like now.

I just recently got my self a Kingston A2000 NVME at 2.2Gbps and is going toe to toe in real world performance with a Samsung 970 Plus that is at 3.5Gbps.

Meh. These plebs will find out sooner or later that all Sony does during a console launch cycle is get developers to sell them their magic beans.

The Dual Sense reveal already showed loading of 8 seconds. So, the reality is sinking in a bit.

i counted 6 seconds but this is a game that shows off the dualsense controller so im sure they made the controller go nuts. what if it was just a affect to show you how much you can feel if all of the hyper feed back is going off at once and to show you that you entered a new level. who says it was loading when that happen. non of the other levels they showed had it.

The game is set up like different components of a computer, with a CPU lobby area and a cooling station area. so it could of been the affect like your going thru the computer.

also ratchet and clank has a higher graphical look and more things going on the screen and it only took 2 seconds to load those worlds.

Its 8 seconds and you are damage controlling. Not only that, you are also doing a poor job. Based on all of the babble you have spat on the forums in that 8 seconds it loaded 44GBs in memory because its transfer rate is 5.5GB/s right?😎

The PS5'S SSD is so powerful that acts retroactively.

Witcher 3 isn't a high bar, that game is shallow too.

Nioh is lit.

lol, that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard.