The benefits of the higher storage capacity of Sony's Blu-Ray discs have once again been pulled into the spotlight as Heavenly Sword chief development 'Ninja', Nina Kristensen, tells CVG that the game would simply not be possible on DVD.
"We have jam-packed the Blu-Ray disc absolutely full," declared Kristensen, as she confirmed rumours that the audio alone was allocated 10GB of space on the 25GB Blu-Ray discs.
That's more than an entire dual-layer DVD game, which holds a total of 8.5GB.
We wondered if this meant compression methods usually used to squeeze content onto normal DVDs had not been used, but Kristensen insisted otherwise: "We used compression all over the place. We had to be really judicious at the end with what was going on the disc and what wasn't.
"I think it's one of those things - if you give us the space we're going to fill it with stuff. It means the audio can be of a higher quality and stuff like that. It all adds to the quality of the package," she told CVG.
Check out the full interview right here, in which she also talks about the rights and wrongs of motion control, and a (highly likely) sequel to Heavenly Sword.
This is a beautiful looking game (especially the cut-scenes) it is a shame though that the disk is crammed full of pretty graphics, instead of levels and gameplay.
The IGN review (7.0 out of 10):-
"it adds up to maybe three to four hours of decent combat in a game which takes a rather embarrassing, and distinctly un-epic, six or seven hours to beat."
I understand the whole *quality* aspect Nina is talking about, but I thought the recent demo had visions of grandieur but played like a 2 legged dog. Maybe they've ironed out the choppyness..
I think larger storage mediums just promote laziness. - I remember back in the Amiga days when our scene demos used to occupy 32k or less. There are some PC scene demos from even 5 years back which are less than a meg and still look good.
I assume the vast majority of that is pointless and annoying cut scenes. I bet they could've halved the space required by using the in-game engine to do all of the scenes. Unless they're not confident enough in their engines ability to render high detail...
At 48khz (studio quality), compressed stereo audio apparently clocks in at 0.7Gb/hour. That's over 10 hours. Heavenly Sword has 3.5 hours worth of music, so that leaves us 7 hours of speech and sound effects. Even with all of the dialogue in 11 different languages that's not necessary. Even including 5.1 or 7.1 channels it's excessive.
My bet is they left the audio uncompressed simply because they had the space to do it.
they're just saying this so people will think there's a great game in there somewhere. i do not beleive all of a sudden games just start taking up this much space. it's full no doubt of boring fmv that will also have no skip button and all ps3 owners will be tapping away at the x button to get rid of the endless fmv...yawn. also i agree with post saying this is lazyness from the producers. it's just like the pc graphic cards that have to be produced to allow lazy programmers to enhance their graphics without too much fiddling about with old cards.
Oh man ,i want to say it ,but i really can't this time [b] A one button wonder,music that 99% of people can't even listen to,and employing smeegol to be motion captured,which is then only used in cutscenes,oh and no button to block attacks
Waste waste waste
Bluray ftw
And i think i read that ,all the unlockables in the game can just be downloaded,instead of giving you a few more minutes worth of play time for your money.
People would parbably say you cant fit full PS1 games on XBLAs restricted amount of memory but Castlevania SOTN showed it can be done & it was in HD meaning more memory. With todays advanced compression techniques and skilled programmers, space can be utalised much better.
I remember one of my mates (when i was at school a long time ago!) judging how good value a CD was by how long it was! Obviously this was ridiculous, and the same goes for gaming... Quality of gaming is more important than loads of 1080p cut scenes
Blue Dragon is three discs. Why can't they do that?
Nobody likes swapping game discs around.
Well, I liked it when it was commonplace, but only when the story was long enough to actually pull off a cliff-hanger 2 or 3 times during the story.
With this game, that would mean a cliff-hanger every 1.5-2 hours...that's why they "couldn't" put it on DVD, because then disc switching becomes a problem for players.
I don't understand this problem people have with disc swapping... It's not like you have to get up to do it every few minutes. You swap discs anyway when you go to play another game. Also you are highly unlikely to finish the first disc in one sitting, and if you did, it'd be about bloody time you got your bottom up off the couch anyway. Blue Dragon for example requires one disc swap for every 15 to 20-odd hours... I don't know what the issue is. Personally I'd rather have a 50+ hour game on 3 discs than a 6 hour game on one disc. (Not saying I necessarily prefer Blue Dragon to Heavenly Sword... just drawing a general comparison)
I dont get all the fuss around disc swapping either. Off the top of my head - FFVII, Resi 4 (GC), Killer 7 (GC), MGS (PS1) etc. all classics. Would any of you say they are any worse due to disc swapping? Are the PS2 versions of RE4 and Killer 7 counted as better than GC versions because they dont require you to swap a disc? NO.
You should'nt judge a game by 1 review! I remember Blue Dragon getting a 6/10 in EGM where other magazines have given it 9/10! Heavenly Sword is the same - some like it, others don't. If you like fighting games with a good story then I'm sure you will like it - the same as if you like massive japanese rpg's then you will enjoy Blue Dragon.
Relying on somebody else's opinion is short sighted and shallow.
It's just another "only possible on PS3" story. I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone fills 20+gb on a game and it's utterly amazing gameplay-wise too.
I don't understand this problem people have with disc swapping... It's not like you have to get up to do it every few minutes. You swap discs anyway when you go to play another game. Also you are highly unlikely to finish the first disc in one sitting, and if you did, it'd be about bloody time you got your bottom up off the couch anyway. Blue Dragon for example requires one disc swap for every 15 to 20-odd hours... I don't know what the issue is. Personally I'd rather have a 50+ hour game on 3 discs than a 6 hour game on one disc. (Not saying I necessarily prefer Blue Dragon to Heavenly Sword... just drawing a general comparison)
I don't understand this either, I mean do people have withdrawal symptoms for the 20 - 30 seconds that it takes to swap a disc.
Let's try and be realistic here. It's obvious Sony has propaganda involved here to promote PS3, a child could reason that much. But it's also obvious that the extra storage space is a positive thing - like every other extra resource available.
You can try say additional space / CPU / graphical performance is a bad thing because it makes sloppy coding but that is nothing but twisted reverse psychology usually heard from people trying to explain their own locked point of view. With that senseless logic people would rather support old hardware instead of new.
My problem with disc swapping (and I bet most others too) is that I'm lazy. My consoles are the other side of the room and I sit comfortably on the sofa while I'm playing them. If I'm getting into a game and "INSERT DISC 2" appears on the screen, I'd have to get up, walk over, eject the disc, put it away and insert the new disc. I just can't be bottomd with that in the middle of a game. Not only is it effort, it takes away from the immersion. And that seems to be the keyword of the moment.
Gamers are getting more demanding, there's no question. They want better graphics, they want it HD, they want surround sound, they want spoken dialogue instead of text. Eventually all of this is going to reach beyond 8Gb even without all the bloating. And if MS keeps saying that HD DVD is not suitable for gaming (which I still don't believe) then they will lose the format war.
We managed to survive the CD>DVD transition, I'm sure we'll survive the DVD>HD/BR transition too.
My problem with disc swapping (and I bet most others too) is that I'm lazy. My consoles are the other side of the room and I sit comfortably on the sofa while I'm playing them. If I'm getting into a game and "INSERT DISC 2" appears on the screen, I'd have to get up, walk over, eject the disc, put it away and insert the new disc. I just can't be bottomd with that in the middle of a game.
That has gotta be the laziest ass thing I have ever read.
My problem with disc swapping (and I bet most others too) is that I'm lazy. My consoles are the other side of the room and I sit comfortably on the sofa while I'm playing them. If I'm getting into a game and "INSERT DISC 2" appears on the screen, I'd have to get up, walk over, eject the disc, put it away and insert the new disc. I just can't be bottomd with that in the middle of a game. Not only is it effort, it takes away from the immersion. And that seems to be the keyword of the moment.
Not all the way to the other side of the room? Dear god, that must take some effort. Most disk swaps would take place after hours of gameplay. Are you saying you will sit and play through a whole game, hours of play without one break (do you go to the toilet?) It's hardly going to break immersion when games still have loading screens, cut scenes etc. A disk swap takes no time, If it was constant disk swapping, fair enough.
All that space... and they couldn't prevent frame tearing with a bit of nifty coding?
I haven't noticed a single instance of it on Bioshock, plus it looks brilliant, plays brilliantly and isn't too short (although it won't last long the way I'm playing it) so what's the deal?
The problem isnt that disc swapping ruins games, it's that developers dont want to force the player to swap discs. Preffering instead to limit their games to fit 1 dvd. I dont want smaller games and i dont want to disc swap, simple as that really. I expect most people dont want to swap discs, especially in a fighting game, driving game, sports game or fps.
well I don't buy into that crap about compression. PS3 developers have no idea how it works on the PS3. Call or Duty 3 was 22GB, but yet on the 360 is was 7.2GB and overall a better game on Microsoft's console. another one is Need for Speed Carbon, 24GB on a Bluray, but yet only 6.4 on the Xbox 360. and again the better version reviewed was on the 360.
so when I hear things like this, I just have to laugh. let alone the game isn't that good in the first place. i think these guys need to find a new line of work.
Imagine if rockstar had made a humongus game world with several cities and loads of cut scenes on 3 dvds in GTA4. Everytime you drive to a different city you have to swap discs everytime there is a cut scene you insert the cut scene disc etc. Hardly next gen is it?
this isn't even out yet but there are no end of people saying it's rubbish. And if you just play a game to see how quick it can be done then your sad. Your meant to enjoy playing the games not sit there with a stopwatch timing the thing. Also does every one work in these companies cause you all seam to think you can do a better job? Either buy the game or don't. Taking the opinion of some website who wants to rush a game simply to get a review out before everyone else is stupid.
Wow, I was really expecting this to divide everyone, a la most of these type of comments, but I've been surprised by the fact that most people agree that this is just Sony c**k sucking bulls**t. No doubt one day size issues will plague DVD based games, but I can't see it happening for a long time. PCs started using DVDs commonly once CDs started taking up 3 discs, I predict a similar situation before HD-DVD or Blu Ray really need to replace DVD.
Imagine if rockstar had made a humongus game world with several cities and loads of cut scenes on 3 dvds in GTA4. Everytime you drive to a different city you have to swap discs everytime there is a cut scene you insert the cut scene disc etc. Hardly next gen is it?
hey Starvinbull, do you know anything about programming? do you have any idea how many years it would take to make a game of that magnitude?. so far the games with the biggest levels have been in the Xbox. with Halo 3, Crackdown and GRAW having the biggest levels of all. and Ubisoft (GRAW, Rainbow 6, Naruto) has come out and officially said that naruto could not be done on the PS3, because of the limited use of memory, and the Cell processor's inability to work as the Xbox'x 3 triple core matrix for game A.I.
so in fact, if you knew anything about programming, and how chipsets work, its the PS3 that has the most problems with huge levels in games. as I pointed out above with the Bluray disc space being wasted, when other ames have far less data on the Xbox 360 discs, its all about the developers. and how the console has been set up.
its common knowledge that the 360 is better suited to make games easier than the PS3 is. the PS3 might be a nice looking piece of kit, but underneath the covers, its a pig to make games for. that why you don't see developers flocking to that format like we did with the PS2. this isn't a war Sony can win on this set-up. and Sony are losing their market share, as fast as they gained it. and it won't get any better for Sony. how many killer titles have they got this summer? or even this year?. there's basically nothing there!. and unlike the success of the PS2, which was boosted by DVD sales, Bluray isn't even a factor in this console war. its like Laserdisc and Betamaz, its a better idea and superior to everything out there, but it comes at too much of a higher cost which companies cannot take on board. thats why many movie companys will settle for the cheaper option. sony's mistake was they though they could dictate the market like they did with Memory cards. and charge what they wanted. but its not going to happen. how many PS3 owners are rushingout there to fill there homes with Ł29.99 Bluray Movies?. in fact HMV are starting to give away Bluray movies with the console now to get rid of them.
More propaganda! Heavenly Sword was Sony's only real hope this year and it sounds like it isn't finished. Irrespective of how much space it takes up on the disc, an 8 hour games just isn't worth it. The downloadable demo was quite good, but with only 8 hours to play through it I'm not going to bother.
When am I going to get something to play on my PS3? Back to the old 360 it would seem. Just glad I got my PS3 free through a works deal.
Wow! now all of a sudden "ONLY" six hours of gameplay is rubbish. funny how no one was saying that about the "infallible" Gears of War. sure, ign scored Heavenly Sword low, but they also scored GRAW 2 for the PS3 way lower than the 360 version, while in the same review saying how the two were virtually identical. their PS3 reviews have become very shody lately. in any event, no, i will not solely rely on any ONE site's review to determine my game purchases. i don't care what Ninja Theory filled an entire Blu-ray disc with, but if it makes for a better game (be it better graphics, better sound, more cut-scenes, whatever) then i'll all good for it.
P.S nothing was said about it not being possible on 360. I believe it was about DVD but cvg bought up the format war. Last time i checked PS2 used dvd so if it helps you sleep better think of it that way
So since they filled a BR disc I guess they expect us to buy the game even though reviews have been less than stellar? It's like giving me a car with a tank full of gas but it doesn't run. This "my disc holds more worthless junk than your disc" crap is getting old. Isn't this just some lame button mashing hack and slash anyway? If so i can get that kind of lame gameplay from several XBLA games from the 80s for about $5.
The GamePro gave the game 4.5 out of 5. Judging it from one IGN UK review is a bad thing to do...Personally I'll be renting it and judging it myself.
Also, with multi disk, everything has to be copied over. The game engine, the sound effects all of it on each disk - along with that it costs the company more to publish.
You should'nt judge a game by 1 review! I remember Blue Dragon getting a 6/10 in EGM where other magazines have given it 9/10! Heavenly Sword is the same - some like it, others don't. If you like fighting games with a good story then I'm sure you will like it - the same as if you like massive japanese rpg's then you will enjoy Blue Dragon.
Relying on somebody else's opinion is short sighted and shallow.
Dude... It's 6 hours long at the most. How good can it be?
Imagine if rockstar had made a humongus game world with several cities and loads of cut scenes on 3 dvds in GTA4. Everytime you drive to a different city you have to swap discs everytime there is a cut scene you insert the cut scene disc etc. Hardly next gen is it?
Lol... that'll never happen.
6 hours of game play? Now that's hardly next gen, my friend.
Imagine if rockstar had made a humongus game world with several cities and loads of cut scenes on 3 dvds in GTA4. Everytime you drive to a different city you have to swap discs everytime there is a cut scene you insert the cut scene disc etc. Hardly next gen is it?
Lol... that'll never happen.
6 hours of game play? Now that's hardly next gen, my friend.
so, by that rationale Gears of War and GRAW 2 aren't next-gen.
I assume the vast majority of that is pointless and annoying cut scenes. I bet they could've halved the space required by using the in-game engine to do all of the scenes. Unless they're not confident enough in their engines ability to render high detail...
At 48khz (studio quality), compressed stereo audio apparently clocks in at 0.7Gb/hour. That's over 10 hours. Heavenly Sword has 3.5 hours worth of music, so that leaves us 7 hours of speech and sound effects. Even with all of the dialogue in 11 different languages that's not necessary. Even including 5.1 or 7.1 channels it's excessive.
My bet is they left the audio uncompressed simply because they had the space to do it.
48kHz (please get the capitals right) is not "studio quality".....
your bet about leaving it uncompressed, cos they had the space, is probably right. i think the key thing is that they DID have the space, and don't need to compress it!
plus, voice sample will be in mono, and would only be turned into 5.1 or 7.1 by the audio engine, adding reverbs, and doppler effects, etc. your post is pointless and full of errors.
which i suppose ironically puts my post into an almost as pointless state (except mine isn't filled with guess work and conjecture)
People would parbably say you cant fit full PS1 games on XBLAs restricted amount of memory but Castlevania SOTN showed it can be done & it was in HD meaning more memory. With todays advanced compression techniques and skilled programmers, space can be utalised much better.
geez, how thick can you be?!
HD = more memory?! - WRONG!
if you play bioshock on the pc in 1600*1200, it doesnt *magically* take more room than at 640*480.
the games textures and assets make up the games disk space requirements, not the resolution they run in.
Imagine if rockstar had made a humongus game world with several cities and loads of cut scenes on 3 dvds in GTA4. Everytime you drive to a different city you have to swap discs everytime there is a cut scene you insert the cut scene disc etc. Hardly next gen is it?
Lol... that'll never happen.
6 hours of game play? Now that's hardly next gen, my friend.
so, by that rationale Gears of War and GRAW 2 aren't next-gen.
The difference with gears and GRAW is that they also have multiplayer modes (gears having Co-op and deathmatch) along with the single player, which can make the experience last for months, if not years. Heavenly sword is single player only and by the looks of it, it'll only deserve one play through.
YAY another day another fanboy b*tch fight! PEOPLE really what is the point. If the devs say this game can only be done on BR then so be it. Did any of you help make the game or know any better? Nah didn't think so. Who really gives a s*it if they can fill a BR disc!
Since when was 7/10 a bad thing? Since when did fitting everything on to one disc suddenly become bad thing? Six hours of gameplay? So what? These reviewers play games all day long for living. Every game is easy to them. The average active gamer would probably take a few days to complete it - if they actually complete a game at all. Big deal.
I agree that the DVD may be becoming too small storage-wise but the fact is that PC, 360 and the Wii for that matter all use DVD format so I'd be amazed if multi-format games will ever make full use of the Blu-Ray thing without the developers considering alternatives (using a hard drive to cache stuff, or downloadable extras).
Yes it's true that a larger storage capacity is a good thing - obvious when you think about it - but let's be honest here, most developers are going multi-format now so apart from the odd exclusive I doubt it'll make much difference how much a BR disc holds.
Sadly one thing's for sure, whenever the PS3 exclusives do come along, or added extras are thrown in, it'll always drag up this boring subject.
All I can say is, I'd rather have a 1GB quality game (the limit on the Dreamcast: home to some of the best games ever) instead of 10GB of average same old same old action game padded out with another 30GB of FMV or whatever.
Imagine if rockstar had made a humongus game world with several cities and loads of cut scenes on 3 dvds in GTA4. Everytime you drive to a different city you have to swap discs everytime there is a cut scene you insert the cut scene disc etc. Hardly next gen is it?
Lol... that'll never happen.
6 hours of game play? Now that's hardly next gen, my friend.
so, by that rationale Gears of War and GRAW 2 aren't next-gen.
1. To say you can beat Gears of War OR Graw2 first time through in 6 hours would be an exaggeration. 8 hours would be flying through either one of them.
2. Both offer Multiplayer Modes that many people still play to this day, months after release.
I agree that the DVD may be becoming too small storage-wise but the fact is that PC, 360 and the Wii for that matter all use DVD format so I'd be amazed if multi-format games will ever make full use of the Blu-Ray thing without the developers considering alternatives (using a hard drive to cache stuff, or downloadable extras).
Yes it's true that a larger storage capacity is a good thing - obvious when you think about it - but let's be honest here, most developers are going multi-format now so apart from the odd exclusive I doubt it'll make much difference how much a BR disc holds.
Sadly one thing's for sure, whenever the PS3 exclusives do come along, or added extras are thrown in, it'll always drag up this boring subject.
All I can say is, I'd rather have a 1GB quality game (the limit on the Dreamcast: home to some of the best games ever) instead of 10GB of average same old same old action game padded out with another 30GB of FMV or whatever.
PC is different all together. Files can be greatly compressed on the disk that need to be installed on the system. Also, many PC games come with more than one disk...
Heavenly Sword not possible on DVD "We have jam-packed the Blu-Ray disc absolutely full," says developer
What a load of s**te.
Please don't try and justify / explain the games exclusivity as being down to media capacity.
Are you selling a game or a proprietary property?
So you think it's a bad thing that they've reported their disc usage? You have to email the developer and tell them that disc usage must not be included anymore since it disturbs you.
Don't be redicilous! Like some comment stated they had the space they used it, they didn't have to compress stuff so they didn't. What's your point? Or did you just take it personally because your toy has smaller drive?
So mature I just dont get it, what drives these fanboys?
This is all down to lazy and poor programming.... END OF STORY!!!
I don't care what the supporters of Blu-ray say. If Oblivion could be fit on a single dvd and its been said countless times about how large and detailed the game world within it is, how many hundreds of hours of game-play is in it and all of this on a 8 gig disc, then the fact that a bloated game of 25 gigs has (by all accounts so far) only 6 to 8 hours of game-play in it should make the developer of that game be utterly ashamed at their level of ineptitude.
And to ANYONE that that says disc swapping leads to lack of immersion in the world etc etc when you have to get up halfway though, what do you do when need the toilet?!!! Pee in your chair?
The only thing lazier than filling 25gig of storage space with FMV is not being willing to get off your large un-exercised lard bucket of an bottom to spend no more than 30 seconds to change a disc over.
The only good thing about it is those people will soon die off due to lack of exercise and excessive pie eating and I'll have less idiots to deal with on a daily basis!
they're just saying this so people will think there's a great game in there somewhere. i do not beleive all of a sudden games just start taking up this much space. it's full no doubt of boring fmv that will also have no skip button and all ps3 owners will be tapping away at the x button to get rid of the endless fmv...yawn. also i agree with post saying this is lazyness from the producers. it's just like the pc graphic cards that have to be produced to allow lazy programmers to enhance their graphics without too much fiddling about with old cards.
you sir are a c**k of massive proportions (including your equally lacklustre comment below)
Heavenly Sword not possible on DVD "We have jam-packed the Blu-Ray disc absolutely full," says developer
What a load of s**te.
Please don't try and justify / explain the games exclusivity as being down to media capacity.
Are you selling a game or a proprietary property?
So you think it's a bad thing that they've reported their disc usage? You have to email the developer and tell them that disc usage must not be included anymore since it disturbs you.
Don't be redicilous! Like some comment stated they had the space they used it, they didn't have to compress stuff so they didn't. What's your point? Or did you just take it personally because your toy has smaller drive?
So mature I just dont get it, what drives these fanboys?
So you read the easy words in my post, totally failed to understand my point and assumed I'm a fanboy then?
When did they stop teaching comprehension in school?
Read it again slowly and try to understand, or get an adult to explain it to you.
Have more space on the disk can only be a good thing. And if the space is there so that you don't have to compress the data means you get better quality then all the better. I think people forget that this game has been a major effort to push the boundaries of technologies in games. And also don't forget this game was being created before PS3 was even built. the problem with this kind of project is the developers can get tied up with the tech and loose site of the main thing game console player want...and that’s to play games. Heavenly Sword is a nice piece of work there no denying that. I just the developers got their focus wrong. They said they wanted the make a martial arts movie that the water can take part in. Instead they should have and a game that felt like a martial arts film. File or game, I know I'll be getting it and will be enjoy playing it.
Also look on the bright side. A lot of developers worked on this project. that’s a good thing for the future for PS3 as there will be a lot of new experienced programmers looking for new projects.
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