Ghost of Tsushima Dev Explains Why Japanese Lip Sync Is a PS5 Exclusive Feature in Director's Cut

It's all about the SSD.

 

 

Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut has lip sync for Japanese voices — but only on PlayStation 5. And, unsurprisingly, a lot of fans have been wondering why that is — including ourselves.

 

 

Fortunately, we were able to get an answer from Sucker Punch creative director Nate Fox, who was kind enough to explain how the new Japanese lip syncing works in our big Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut interview.

 

 

"We're capable of putting [Japanese lip sync] in because the PS5 SSD let us take some of our cutscenes that, on the original version of the game we had to pre-render, and now, we can do them live. And so the hardware makes a difference," Fox told us.

 

 

We then asked how it actually works, and Fox elaborated: "It's real-time rendering. On the PS4 version we would have to pre-render films that we would use to play while we were loading in new chunks of the background. And these films are very, very large. In fact, they're so large that we just barely got them on disc. But with PS5, because we can do them live rendered, we now can accommodate the extra lip sync."

 

 

So basically, Fox is saying that the PS5's lightning fast SSD allows Sucker Punch to render every cutscene live, within the game. Without it, Japanese lip sync would only be possible, presumably, by pre-rendering all the necessary cutscenes twice — one with English lip sync, and one with Japanese. And like Fox alludes, that probably wouldn't fit on a single disc.

 

 

Interesting stuff, isn't it?

 

 

 

 

Source: Pushsquare