Sven_

Dunno about TOW2 yet, but the original game was rather light on this. Like baby's first Fallout-Like. Even if you didn't specialize or cared much, you wouldn't face that many a hurdle. The same would apply to the game in general, like ressources being plenty and all over the place, also completely contradicting the game's lore and fiction of a struggling economy. They've announced they wanted to go a bit deeper with part 2. Which naturally may alienate those introduced fresh with the original. That said, respec remains the single most bizarre "mandatory" feature ever introduced into single-player RPGs. Still waiting for the racing game that lets you change car, gear and tires on the fly. That Life Is Strange-Like that simply lets you reset all your choices, all the way to the start of Episode 1. And of course the first Command&Conquer that lets you switch sides in the final battle -- Brotherhood of NOD has been cooler than boring GDI all along! If a game makes you think it'd NEED respec, it's poorly designed, not because of the missing respec. FOMO doesn't apply though -- the entire point of character choice and specialization is offering a unique path that (in theory) only your character could experience this way. Whilst another player may have a completely different road to the ending credits. The three traditional archetypes targeted have been Combat, Evasion/Stealth and Diplomacy (see OG Fallout, Deus Ex. etc.). Naturally, with more nuances comes more options... Seeing this as a case of "missing out" is completely missing the point. The endgame is offering your specific character build his/her unique adventure. I once build a New Vegas character that was basically all brains, sweet talk and luck. He had to "sneak" his way into Vegas, but in there, he broke the bank.

'tis just "in" and uploaded most recent: Have you heard about this game? And man? Can you tell me something about them?

Tried that too, only demo so far though. Seems really interesting, also with time being a bit of a factor. That makes it so you have to plan a bit ahead, as the place has an actual schedule with events taking place. It also gives off an illusion of a world with characters carrying their own agenda, rather than being frozen in time. Reminds me of The Last Express and Sierra's Colonel's Bequest (Laura Bow). Great mood also. Raw Fury seems really good in finding such games. On related note, I'd always wanted to check out the murder mystery DLC for The Outer Worlds. But I struggle to see how that would even work, given that the base game, to put it mildly, doesn't quite trust in your cognitive abilities. There's never any thinking or deduction or being "available" involved whatsoever. It's a completely AFK experience, like follow the dotted line (and pick up the ammo/ressources available in abundance), and you're done. Often times it doesn't make sense that you'd immediately know exactly where to go and what to do next, but it is what it is. Good idea for a DLC though, which can always be a bit more experimental/risky than the base games (see also NWN2)... Speaking about AFK games... there's an auto-battler I tried that sort of has the potential to nail the Lt. Gorman Simulator experience. If you're asking who the hell Lt. Gorman is, maybe the rather unsubtle trailer makes it clear -- this is not an official Aliens licensed game at all, mind. Seems a bit minimalist so far, the final release is said to get a story campaign tho... @BruceVC The Bunker is one of my recent favs also. Really quite the rollercoaster. I think in some ways it even improves upon Alien Isolation with the "lonely stalker" in that in particular later on, you may not see the beast for minutes on end (provided you're keeping it low). Overexposure leads to familiarity -- and that's always hurtful when it comes to being scared. The moments of tension always are in the build-up, you KNOWING (and oft hearing) that there's something out there. But if it pops up over and over, eventually you're getting used to it. After experiencing the ending, the main menu music has a completely different feel to it too... A similar game in low-poly PSX aesthetics is Stay Out Of THe House. It's basically the same core idea, except that you're trapped inside of a house rather than inside of a bunker. And the thing out to get you is a cannibal serial killer. However, you can even lay and prepare traps... which your enemy may do also though. Also multiple ways to solve situations, and (I think) 2 endings. The goal is basically a low budget slasher sandbox.

When this popped up in my recommendations, I thought it was a fan trailer. But damn... it's real. And the Pathologic guys are involved. Still gotta get into Pathologic (tried once), but a few WTFs seem guaranteed. ALSO: Project Shadowglass is a love letter to classic immersive FPS stealth sims such as Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock, built with unique 3D pixel ar..... SHUT UP AND TAKE MY FIRST BORN!!!!1 Project Shadowglass bei Steam

Luckily I'm a bit the vice versa. Don't care much about pixel perfection or ever bigger screens anymore (even the insanely pretty Kingdom Come 2 oft gets flak due to its lack of HW raytracing and thus less than "pixel perfect" lighting, shadows and reflections). Even pop-ins, I don't care about. Also, the best game I've played last year, and that's no joking: I think the only way I'd put more focus on all that again would be the widespread adoption of VR. After all, the promise of VR is that you're "forgetting you're just playing a stupid video game". But unlike Looking Glass (Thief!), most games are moving into the opposite direction, with cluttered HUDs, tons of arrows, tourist guides, etc. Making it IMPOSSIBLE to mask that you are, indeed, just playing a "stupid" video game. Speaking of which: Are "dummy" markers making you sleep walk and never mentally engage with the game world, quests and characters in TOW 2 optional this time? Or is it all similar to Bloodlines 2, where the next fetch quest is giving you, the elite eldritch vampire spawn, a mandatory in-game GPS system: "Deliver this package to the location 239 metres away, PRESTO, Mr. Bloody Heffernan."

That said, I'm afraid you're not gonna "survive" the UE5 era if you're set against AI / upscaling, DLSS or otherwise. It's been a thing since forever on consoles. And it's come to PCs too and is going to stay anyway. No less as "brute forcing" performance gains is reaching its limits in the meantime. Even after 7 years and 3 generations of graphics cards later, the 2080Ti would still rank as a ~top20 GPU for reason, being roughly onpar to a 3070 (without being limited by just 8GB VRAM though where the 8GB limitation applies). Consoles, running on hardware roughly equal to a RX 6700 (non-XT) and RX 9060 XT respectively, have their issues with TOW2 as well. At least both PS5 versions have. See also how a stable 60fps is still the optimimum here, rather than the bare minimum. Whilst Nvidia are already pushing the 1,000Hz screens for PC, as clearly: The more you fps, the more you buy!

DF take (2080Ti is still a stronger card than the 4060, seems heavy on the CPU though): Re STALKER: The indie-Likes are coming here too. One is with furrys! The other has a demo still up. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1963610/Road_to_Vostok/

Stygian: Outer Gods. Still Early Access, with a final release scheduled first half of 2026 or so. But as I'm playing highest difficulty and really take my time, I've already clocked ten hours into it according to the in-game clock. Still not finished. Stygian's got Cthulhu, Lovecraft's Kingsport as a sort of hub world gradually unlocking, some RPG elements (including a skill that lets you talk with 'em dead), a bit of stealth -- plus Raphael Colantonio (Arkane's founder, former CEO and gaming's Last Action Hero) as the voice of THE SEER. Had to have it. The mood is already pretty damn spot on. Positive that this can be a better game than the ancient Dark Corners Of The Earth.

At some point the system may change anyhow. The console generation cycle has always relied on experiences that were fundamentally unachievable with prior hardware. If there's no novelty involved, any new console generation becomes a bit of a hard sell. Graphics advancement has significantly slowed down. Whilst actual photo realism is still a good few years away -- not every game may sell on realism as is already. This is also a part of the triple-A crisis: "Decent graphics" are pretty much everywhere. Much like special effects in Hollywood, it's all dime a dozen. It's hard to truly "WOW" anybody anymore. For decades, studios could rely on that Police Academy 25, er, Assassin's Creed 15 would sell anyhow, as it looked so much more realistic than the one before it. No more. And one day games may be consumed the same way as movies -- or similar. It's when people don't at all care how old a game is. For as long as it's not from the stone ages of video gaming, where hardware limitations proved still a severe challenge. They aren't really anymore. Haven't been for a few years already. Outside of ultra realistic graphics and literally building the holodeck, game makers could make anything they wanted to make today. Only that, they rarely do. They are afraid to do it. Or aren't allowed to make it. As with rising budgets comes rising risk. Even THE NEXT BIG THING this industry is waiting for is another sequel to a franchise now entering its third decade. Meanwhile Warren Spector's once dream project idea is far more likely to be tackeled by 'em indies -- naturally, with a more focused scope, rather than GOING ALL IN WITH EM MILLIONS OF CA$H.

It's OUT. And it's not 100% what you think it is (another typical Boomer Shooter / Blood clone). What sold chapter 1 to me back then was the end of the demo, where suddenly the music stopped, you were crawling through a tight space with but your lighter showing the way. And the thing opened up into a genuine survival horror-ish setpiece... Apparently chapter 2 goes even more into that direction.

Dev advice: Don't go fully-on Nanite+Lumen if it doesn't hugely benefit your project. E.g. a comic book-style game that has been "nailed" with technology a couple years ago already. Placing a tenner that if you'd ask 100 people on the streets which is the more recent game in between Borderlands 3 and 4, the hit ratio would be pretty mixed. Unless it's 100 tech enthusiasts, maybe. ALSO: Dishonored (UE3) still remains a more beautiful game than any Borderlands anyway. EVERY FRAME A PAINTING. Sue me, Pitchford!

Who needs Unreal Engine 5 if you've got true artists? #Dishonored #UnrealEngine3 #RipViktorAntonov

Thirteen years and two Unreal Engine iterations later, still the most beautiful game in Dunwall. Pixelated textures and a few low poly counts will never destroy great art. #Dishonored By the way: This is the Metal Gear 3 Remake on lowest settings -- no shadows, no lighting, no effort. Still brings entry level machines close to the burnout. This is Dishonored. This is Dunwall. I Dunwall.

Tiberian Sun was the first truly "mass hype" I experienced. If you discount the school yard nerd excitement over Zak McKracken as the "not quite sequel" to Maniac Mansion, but that was contained to that, school yard 1980s Commodore nerds. Tiberian Sun though? Was all over the gaming press, the WWW was also a thing already. Germany's PC Games ran specials months before release. Tiberian Sun turned out a pretty alright game (no Starcraft / Warcraft 3 though). But it's also the first that didn't quite live up to all the hype for me. In the end, it was merely another C&C. Even the pre-release screenshots were faked. Some backlash was naturally inevitable. Still, it's..... ok! As to be expected, that commercial is far more "original" and the bolder take tho.

The 3060 only had 12gigs because at the time, the alternative would have been 6gigs (memory interface limitations). And that apparently Nvidia didn't want. So you had this weird line-up where the 60 card had more VRAM than even the 3080 (a model with 12GB launched much later in 2022). Now that 3GB GDDR7 chips are a thing, it may be easier to release 12, 18, 24 GB cards. But yeah, custom models would be actually useful now, if they were allowed to also go with custom memory configurations. Like back then, a 8400GS variant optionally going with more VRAM than the 8800 Ultra (kidding, that was a complete waste, naturally). With a 3070, I'd also try to sit it all out until the PS6, at least the official spec announcement (and build from there). In terms of raw performance, you're still better off than a base PS5 (ca. RX 6700 non-XT, as said) and close enough even to the Pro (ca. 5060Ti). 8GB may mean reduced settings (textures and the like). But they're still officially supported by any game. (Until the PS5 launched, 2+3GB were still supported, even in MS Flight 2020, Red Dead 2, etc.) "Fake" anything has been a thing on consoles since forever. I think with UE5 and the like (and diminishing returns in terms of raw performance), it's here to stay. Actually, Nvidia's CEO proclaimed as such back in 2022ish on a keynote: Raytracing et all is really demanding, so they needed another "breakthrough": DLSS (upscaling, Frame Gen). I'm going to DLSS4 upscale the heck out of the 3060 if needed, as thankfully, even from 720p as the internal base to upscale from (1440 Performance mode / 1080p Quality mode) it's useful now. And Nvidia actually provided the DLSS4 upscaler even for legacy models, including RTX 2.... Nvidia, of all things!

My first encounter with him was in a movie where he popped up alongside Tim Curry, Catherine O'Hara and Joe Pesci. The first cut is the deepest!

Closest estimate I could find. On Youtube, you always find people uploading stuff, I typed "Avowed + i7 8750H". Both of your parts are newer and a tad better. By the way, some devs may consider renaming "low" settings to "efficient". Back on Crysis, picking low was an off-button for shadows, lighting, geometry detail, whatever you picked. Devs in general got a lot better with scaling, so that even on lower settings, the desired image is usually still there. Plus: Digital Foundry often run the comparisons. Sometimes, a medium setting is above console image quality, sometimes below. And occasionally, like in Indiana Jones, the RT lighting on Series X is more simple than on PC even when the setting is put to "low". The only setting on low that would annoy me here on Avowed would be the flickering shadows. But putting them to medium, even high, barely costs performance (see optimization guide). I'm glad that in the past ~15 years, I was mostly using lower end-ish hardware (CRPGs et all rarely release as blockbuster games). Even when I upgraded to the 1050 Ti for Dishonored 2, it immediately tanked to sub 40 fps in the most demanding scenes on med settings (Machine House Entry, A Crack In The Slab with its time travel and multiple levels being rendered simultaneously). Actually, I'm currently trying an FPS lock in the driver settings to check how low I could go and still find fun. Why? I want to keep the 3060 and build a new machine only once the PS6 and its specs are out -- the PS6 is gonna be the base platform for AAAA games until at least the mid 2030s. Plus, 60 to 40 fps is a difference of 50% in extra performance needed for instance -- and that's way more than a generational upgrade brings today. Your 3070 was released in 2020. It's taken half a decade for the **60/Ti series to get (slightly) ahead. By the way, 5060Ti/9060XT levels of performance are what's roughly build inside the PS5 Pro. Base PS5 experience is closer to a ~RX 6700 (non-XT). And Monster Hunter Wilds ain't that stable even on consoles as well. Seems like Resident Evil's RE Engine was never built with vast open spaces in mind, and brute forcing it is rather not ideal (see also Dragon's Dogma 2). All Resident Evil games since 7 themselves have been rather very light on the hardware...

It's funny that Dark Ages is seen as a demanding game. Historically, much like any Doom since the reboot, it's an imposter. I mean, it's released on a Series S! Even my 3060 would still perform hugely better than Carmack era Dooms with much more recent hardware then. And the CPU requirements are low anyway. As for Avowed, this is basically one of the minimum spec GPUs release six years ago. Looks fairly decent. Grounded 2 still seems in a rough shape. But if TOW2's anything like Avowed, I'm personally not even wondering whether I could run Outer Worlds 2, despite running entry hardware released 2021 (Ryzen 5600 / RTX 3060). It may not be a stable 60 fps without upscaling. But then I didn't play TOW with more than 45-50fpsish either on my prior Ryzen 3 / 1050 Ti setup. As said, 30/40 are absolutely still a thing on "affordable" consoles at least on dedicated quality/balanced modes -- plus (dynamic) upscaling. On PC, your pocket's the limit, and Nvidia are pushing the demands for 1,000fps already. Frame Generation or not, that is a THOUSAND frames rendered in every single second. And each of those frames is still getting more complex. Let that sink in for a, well, second. 5,000 Dollars GeForce 6090 GTI Super Mega Hyper Ultra -- when are you gonna release it, Jensen?

I've seen the usual crowd is all over it for all the wrong reasons. To me, it's a bit like a bunch of characters that may happen if you hit the "randomize" button in a Bethesda-style character editor and then take the first decently legit rather than funny option. The trailer also doesn't feature much of any dialogue or interaction, and it's supposed to be a companion trailer. Falls fairly flat to me. Then again, TOW1 overall was kind of a bit "flat" and never risking much. Baby's first Boyarsky/Cain-Like RPG. Pentiment had a lot more spice and flavor. RE: Bad optimization? Do you mean Grounded 2 (saw somebody mention it would be quite demanding, but then it's still Beta)? I think we're partly in a weird transition stage now. For many years, there weren't much leaps made in technological terms. On consoles, you (usually) don't have to worry anyway -- 30/40 frames per second are still a thing here, at least in dedicated quality or balanced modes if available (like in Mafia currently). And on PC, there weren't really any PC showcases. It's all "multiplatform games", FPS unleashed on PC -- and the sky (and your pockets) are the limit. Nvidia seem to have realized this, they aren't promoting 1,000Hz/1,000fps screens for fun, they see business opportunity. Now there's a bit of raytracing (the mandatory bits of it not really demanding, see Indiana Jones or Doom). Oh, and UE5 with its Lumen. But it seems both inexperienced developers as well as Epic are still not quite there. That's the tradeoff when always using the latest tech: It's inevitably also the least tested. There also seems a confusion on PC: Whilst consoles have used (dynamic) upscaling for years, on PC too it was always meant to be mandatory for now, if going by Jensen's words. Still, all recent titles are still running on hardware 5, 6 occasionally 7, 8 years old. Personally, I'm curious as to when whether games are going to be consumed the same way as movies. The point at which a critical mass doesn't care about how much older a release is than what's currently out (few would skip on Alien/Aliens in favor of some vanilla Hollywood flavor of the week monster ride just because those are "old" movies). In a way, it's already happening. As outside of games pushing actual photo realism, there's diminishing returns. Grounded ain't such a game pushing for the realism. Much like the upcoming Borderlands 4. And to an extent, also The Outer Worlds 2...

Then again, recently taken a look at pricing in the "good old times" over the longer term, e.g. loss of value over time. If you'd bought a 8800 GTX Ultra at the peak of the price and tech advancement wars, but a couple months later you could have purchased it new for like half of whatever you bought it for, no kidding. You can take a guess what that means when you decided to sell again and to upgrade... The same goes for any card during those years. My 3060? Is still sitting less than -30% off its MSRP in shops despite being released in early 2021. 3080s still sell for decent money on used markets as well. And the real pros more recent sold their years used 4090s with a net profit, despite no Covid nor Crypto craze in sight. Thus, a historical first in the history of PC hardware: people coming out richer some time after buying enthusiast hardware than before doing it. Plus, there's an entire generation now that doesn't even know how actually demanding real PC show cases used to be. Even trying to run those things on hardware released two, let alone six years earlier would have seen you laughed out of the room. Ok, this is Borderlands and no Crysis. But still. Where was I? AH: That new Outer Worlds 2 companion trailer seems fairly vanilla, in particular in terms of character designs and traits. One is a robot, I guess... and that's it what sticks for now. But then, the RPG inside the RPG is what counts!

Gaming's Last Action Hero chimes in. Arkane Studios Founder Brands Game Pass 'Unsustainable' and 'Damaging' - Insider Gaming I think Gamepass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by MS’s “infinite money”, but at some point reality has to hit. I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models, they’ll either kill everyone else, or give up.

Watching your opinions getting reaffirmed on Youtube is one helluva drug.

Still Arcanum... The dungeons here are really bad, they make even Owlcat's look almost lovingly handcrafted pieces of tunnel crawling art. But yeah, one does not simply play Arcanum for the combats. It's for the setting, the concepts (both in systems and world design) and that unique soundtrack, though it gets a bit repetitive due to its lack in tracks.

“Not every game is for every single person. Sometimes you have to pick a lane” - The Outer Worlds 2’s director on meaningful role-playing consequence and banning respec https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/1...ctor-interview-respec-rpg-choice-consequences# https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rp...e-can-stealth-properly-through-each-location/ Obsidian learning a lesson here? What's omitted of course is that respecing et all wasn't necessary in the first game either way. It was too Vanilla RPG: Can't Do No Harm (or Interesting) Edition for that. And it was certainly one of those games that tried to please (almost) every single person. Aka being scared of chosing a lane and committing to that. However, with even big IPs such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Age underperforming by going that "scared cat" kinda route of not committing to anything (including their respective IP's legacy), there may be a shift in strategy. One even approved of by upper management. May be wishful thinking on my part, of course.

This just in: How Warhorse tricked the system -- the full story of how Czech Mates managed to successfully pitch Dungeons&No Dragons to them releasing KCD2... In a digital space of following trends and chasing larger audiences at ANY cost, Kingdom Come is the kind of project that is giving me gaming hope.