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The Crew will limit players to a particular area of the game world while it installs the rest of the environment in the background, Ivory Tower has explained.
Discussing the game’s “play-while-you-install” process with VideoGamer.com last week, lead designer Serkan Hassan revealed that the developer’s goal is to have “an area of the landscape which is available within that first disc activation and then the rest comes along on installation.
“At the start of the game the player has a lot be getting on with,” says Hassan, “and we’re just handling stuff behind the scenes so that by the time the game is introduced to the player and the door is opened, that’s it, everything is installed and you’re free to go.”
Hassan is also confident that The Crew won’t suffer from data streaming issues faced by games like GTA 5 when streamed purely off the hard drive, saying that the studio “know(s) what our streaming system is capable of.
“We are able to stream in a very, very large amount of terrain,” he continues, “so there are no issues with the player seeing terrain pop or the level of detail morph as you drive, and we have great draw distances. The streaming is sound on hard drive at the moment.”
The Crew is set across the entirety of the US, with multiple major cities recreated in the game world. But despite the game relying heavily on data-streaming, Xbox One’s slower RAM may not be an issue for The Crew either, with Hassan stating that he has not spotted any “instantly noticeable differences in terms of the experience on PC compared to Xbox One”.
All Xbox One and PlayStation 4 games are expected to take advantage of background installation, which will allow players to play the game without having to endure lengthy installation processes.
The Crew is due to launch on Xbox One, PS4 and PC in early 2014.
