It was not long ago when Infinity Ward released the confirmed set of specifications for Call of Duty: Ghosts, where it was specifically mentioned that the game needs at least 40GB to run. Now it seems like Killzone: Shadow Fall is also walking the same route as the developer has confirmed that a minimum of 39GB is essential for the game.
As Guerrilla's Technical Director, Michiel van der Leeuw, revealed to Eurogamer at an event at Guerrilla's Amsterdam offices, most of this space requirement for the game is down to the requirements related to the in-game textures.
“The bulk of it is textures. 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."
On a similar note, van der Leeuw also pointed to the larger and more open design of the game's levels compared to previous Killzone games. "The surface area, I'm just guessing here, must be five to 10 times bigger than Killzone 3 was," he stated.
However, while the game does require this much space to run, the director did assure that the studio had worked hard to optimize the file size and get players into the game as quickly as possible.
It was also revealed that at one point during development that the disc image for Killzone: Shadow Fall was around 180GB, and that had the team moved ahead with it and introduce all the intended levels, the game could have easily finished around a preposterous 290GB.
"I think at some point the disc image that we were generating was around 180 gigs. 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,” van der Leeuw added.
"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."
Killzone: Shadow Fall will launch exclusively for PlayStation 4 on Nov. 15, when the console launches.
