What's that about Blu-ray discs not being needed? According to Develop Magazine, Heavenly Sword has over 10 GB of sound FX, with three and a half hours of music, 4500 different lines of dialogue, and an hour and a half of cut scenes recorded in eleven (!) different languages. This means that without even counting the textures, art, models or anything else, the game couldn't fit on a normal DVD. It also means we're in for a hell of an aural treat when the game comes out next month.
Tom Covin, the audio lead for Ninja Theory, explains why they've put so much time and effort into their music and sound effects, "For me, sound is very 'immediate' to the player. Music has a well-established cultural language; sound is much less clearly delineated – but you can get straight to someone's emotional responses with it – there's little time for the brain to analyse. Sound is key in making this awesome weapon – the Heavenly Sword – come to life so you can sense its brooding power and almost hear it feeding off each kill."
The Develop article delves in deep into the sound theory and technology that was used in the development of Heavenly Sword and is a great read for those interested in some of the behind-the-scene machinations of one of the PS3's most anticipated titles. If only September would come a little quicker ...
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Heavenly Sword looks to be an amazing game graphically, but I'm very happy to see the developer put so much time into the sound also. If sound can make such a difference in a movie, then this level of sound will surely increase our ability to immerse ourselves into this game.
*drools* this game just looks so amazing. And my second post in a row to say how happy I am that the money spent is worth it when it comes to the PS3. I suppose it's not all about how a game looks, eh? The sounds a strong point too
. Damn you gft77... and you're threads constantly tempting me further and further into getting one of these consoles.
agreed, I think this game is going to be amazing, and the fact that so much work has been put into simply the sound just shows us what we can hope to see in the future. I think it's going to be some breath taking games.
wow, 10 gb is ALOT. I'll just rent this game though...
Im buying this one!
Seems a lot like God of War and I fll in love with that game so this is a must have for me!
I hate to be the nay-sayer, but isn't this just a case of them filling the space, just because they can.
They could easily compress it down using AAC, or Dolby HD. I'm assuming this is in PCM though.
The demo was in PCM 7.1 so I'm guessing the game will be the same way.
I agree that Assassin's Creed wil be an amazing game also. I just hope other developers start using the tools they've been givin and give us this type of sound quality. 7.1 PCM on any game is really quite amazing.
Let's bring this back on topic
I think along with Heavenly Sword, Assassin's Creed on the PS3 will support 7.1 PCM. If that is the case then we have another developer who's using the PS3's audio abilities to their fullest and that's only good for us gamers.
I think for far too long companies have focused on graphics and let sound take a back seat. Hopefully with games like Heavenly Sword having all this detail made to how the game comes to our ears is a good step in the right direction.
if developers continue to use this much space for stuff like audio, aren't they going to get to the point that they're going to need more than 1 blu-ray disc?
regardless, it looks like Blu-Ray is good for something. Looks like I'll be getting a PS3 after all...
As it stands right now 1 Blu Ray disc can hold upto 50 gb of information on it, so I don't think they'll be reaching a limit anytime soon.
right but what about they do something like
10GB on Sound
35 on the actual game
5 on video files
but yeah I really can't see them overloading a single Blu-Ray disc so soon.
I hate to be the nay-sayer, but isn't this just a case of them filling the space, just because they can.
They could easily compress it down using AAC, or Dolby HD. I'm assuming this is in PCM though.
thats what i was thinking. if it uses 10GB of audio, wouldnt it benefit them to compress it to make room for more gameplay, textures, or video files?
Unlike 360 games that are on either 4.7 or 8.5gb. the PS3 is working with 25 or 50gb disc. So compression might need to be used for 360, but far less if at all for PS3 games.
thanks for that obvious comparison even though i never brought up the 360.
compressing the audio files does make room for more graphical and gameplay assets. imagine if those 10GB can be compressed to half its size. now the developer has an extra 5GB to work with. personally, i just think theyre touting this for the publicity, and hey, i dont blame them.
I think your right GL, this is just for publicity, but let's hope the game stands up and is good overall, even if it does have lots of sound
thanks for that obvious comparison even though i never brought up the 360.
compressing the audio files does make room for more graphical and gameplay assets. imagine if those 10GB can be compressed to half its size. now the developer has an extra 5GB to work with. personally, i just think theyre touting this for the publicity, and hey, i dont blame them.
Not necessarily. If they're not using all 50 GB for games, and they have over 10GB left, why not make the audio PCM? Remember, most PS3 games only use about 13-18 GB of the BD-ROM, so there's probably plenty of space. I'm quite glad actually that I can use my 7.1 surround sound system with this game, and that I don't have to deal with quality issues when it comes to lossy compression codecs.
so reviews have been coming out and in ign's review, it says the game is 6 hours long. is it still worth $60?
i tried the demo and i just couldnt get into it. the textures are also lacking. it could be that they were downgraded for the demo, but i was disappointed.
This is a bit of a sore spot for me. Granted higher quality is great, but I don't want it to come at the expense of actual gameplay. RPG's have been doing it for years, and action games are starting to get into it, and that's watching more of a game than playing. They should have no more than a minute or so of video for an hour of play at normal pace (excluding the intro and ending, which should both be less than 5 minutes easily.).
