Naughty Dog has often said that only the PlayStation 3 is capable of producing their virtual visions, but did you know that Uncharted 2 almost didn't "fit" on Sony's machine?
We're talking about a super ambitious team that wants to get the most out of themselves and as a direct result, the most out of the equipment they utilize. They're shooting for the stars again with Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception , and as Naughty Dog boss Christophe Balestra told Edge , they actually "have to be uncomfortable."
"If anyone on the team makes a face like, 'Oh, we're f*cked', then we know we're good. We have to be uncomfortable. Three weeks before shipping Uncharted 2, we couldn't even fit the game in memory. The day we have no solution to that, that's going to be a real problem."
So how to fix the problem? Simple. Make it fit. Balestra says the team "will always go beyond what we have at our disposal," and he referenced the newly released burning Chateau scene shown in Uncharted 3 . But wait…if the game's predecessor already maxed out memory, how the hell is the third installment going to fit? Balestra uses the "six-lane freeway" analogy that refers to the PS3's SPUs: the first Uncharted used two; the second used all six, but at "street car" level of performance. The third still uses those six lanes…but at Formula One performance.
"We're at full speed, optimising code specifically for the SPUs. It's a great resource because [SPUs] are extremely fast, and if you optimise they get faster than you ever thought they could be. That's where the quality of our images comes from."
If we could give them a medal, we would. Maybe somebody should .
Related Game(s): Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
