Our feeling is that while Naughty Dog could have probably fit everything on the Blu-ray without compression, the system employed lightens the load on the drive. There is no mandatory install with Uncharted 3, everything is being streamed in and unpacked in the background, with an enviable level of efficiency - you can even skip cut-scene movies and the next level is always there waiting for you. All of this is driven by executable code just 18MB in size. There are some "luxuries" in that allocation - 3.24GB of behind-the-scenes movies, 7GB of foreign language audio, and 10GB of 3D movies (pre-rendered cut-scenes are stored both in 2D and 3D versions) but by our reckoning there's at least 16GB of core game data being used in this game - and even then, Naughty Dog is employing compression on top of that, so the real size of these assets easily moves north of 20GB - not including pre-rendered movies.
As Microsoft gears up in offering developers up to 7.9GB of space on its DVD format, Naughty Dog has taken full advantage of the Blu-ray delivery mechanism and utilises a colossal 46.3GB of space. Other interesting elements of Uncharted 3's technical make-up can be found by taking a look at the make-up of the disc itself. The 3D mode is by no means a "must", but we found it compelling enough to start a second playthrough of the single-player mode in 3D - for the lucky few, it adds to the replay factor. Aside from some extra input lag when the engine is being taxed, the overall experience in single-player is quite remarkable - and most of the issues we had with the 3D mode (most notably clipping) from the multiplayer beta appear to have been resolved.
Environmental detail is pared back in places, LODs are a touch more intrusive and heavy scenes can see a 4-5FPS drop in frame-rate.
There are compromises - we're fairly sure that the 896x504 per eye resolution from the beta is retained, though pre-rendered movies for the single-player mode get a boost to 1024x576. Amazingly, however, Naughty Dog has done it. The stereoscopic option is intriguing: the Uncharted engine - especially in its latest iteration - pushes PlayStation 3 hardware to the limit so the notion of that same technology producing two discrete views (one per eye) on the same platform sounds too good to be true. The former allows for two players to team up and play online with others, and is also useful for taking on the co-op levels without the need for an internet connection. Elsewhere, the developer has made some extensive changes to the core rendering with the introduction of split-screen and support for 3D.
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