Off topic but goddamn we got folks from all over the internet talking about what's happening in this specific thread, from Wccftech articles to threads from ye old site.
I mean look at this:
The PlayStation 5 SSD Will Not Change Open World Games Dramatically
Digital Foundry Content Producer Alexander Battaglia recently commented on the PlayStation 5 SSD and on how it will not, by itself, change open-world gameswccftech.com
An entire article and a horde of comments generated all because of a few posts by Dictator
They better be giving Dictator some moolah for all the traffic and clicks they're getting from his posts lol.
I do think the quote about OW titles is completely misleading - there are many methods to making open world titles (caveat, I've worked on OW titles on the current and previous gen), and many rely on a lot of baked data - usually a wide variety of detailed meshes that popular the world. Especially if it's set in a man-made environment and not using terrain for much of its floor space.
The obvious benefit of SSDs for open worlds are more dense environments, with regular & seamless transitions between interiors and exteriors.
However, what's being overlooked is large amounts of dynamic information that can be stored for a long time. Imagine Shadow of Mordor's nemesis system, which describes rank within a hierarchy and relationships with the player and extrapolate that out across all the NPCs in the world & covering so many more events than just direct combat. Maybe a new gang forms dynamically and they have their own tag that propagates across the world. Or an off-duty cop recognises you from earlier in the game. Some of that stuff can be generated procedural, but then can be baked down at some point
Or how a world can physically evolve based on your actions - a construction company repairing a building that was damaged a few days earlier. Some initial seeding to generate data is useful, but again, some stuff will end up being stored as data until it's no longer needed.
doesn't change the fact that it's true. Or do you expect multiplatform open world games to be drastically different on PS5 compared to XSX and PC? If so, I have some bad news for you.
It depends on what you mean by "different". We've been able to render large, populated landscapes and urban environments for ages. The big thing is that they're usually pretty static, and the systems on top are simple.
The difference will be about detail - not visual, but sophistication of the simulations that run, leading to much more nuances in how the world acts and and reactions, hopefully leading to many more ways in which the player can interact with the world, and unique events that arise from those interactions.