ELEX ELEX II - Jax is back

[Goblino]

I hate to say this, and it's not a terrible game, but I find Elex 2 is just lacking something. The combat seems like it's significantly worse than the first which is sad because elex wasnt bad. Maybe I just know the drill too well, but i remember a little more of a slow power curve in elex 1. I spent a good long while at the bottom of the food chain there, but it seems like elex 2 is a little easier to get past the scrub phase and into a faction. Not sure if i rushed it but i just remember slower going and kinda stewing in the setting previously. The jetpack changes are nice but the world feels less diverse. some places the exploration feels better and other times worse. I liked the old biomes forest, desert, volcanic, ice, and slightly more fantastical forest. Now it's just kinda forest ice and blown out shithole/alien. Still has that PB charm. Still love it.

I cant help but wonder if the pandemic really fucked their development cycle. I remember the air of joy and childlike optimism when elex was being developed. PB was free from the shackles of their previous publisher and you could tell that they were finally able to make the game they wanted to make. The entire premise of elex is a barely unified jumble of childish male power fantasy, the kind of thing you might make after being pigeonholed and dishonored for a decade. I remember this infectious joy when it was released. Perhaps the pandemic took the wind from their sails, and completing this led to some tough compromises. I still like it a lot, and I'll probably buy anything PB puts out if they keep it up, but there's some rough edges and questionable changes here and there. Still remember that cover of Hier Kommt Alex he did. Hopefully that glee is still there.

 

[JDR13]

I'm about 25 hours in and really liking it now. Once you get past the terrible introduction, it's pretty great.

Also, the writing isn't nearly as bad as my first impression. The inititial conversations with Adam and Caja made me think it was going to be complete shit. I've spent the last few hours doing quests around the Berserker fort though, and the writing isn't bad at all for the most part.

 

[JDR13]

I think there is just something very deeply wrong about the game, tech-wise, possibly on multiple fronts. As soulburner said, there are many things that just seem straight up wrong/weird (shadows, lighting, vegetation), and none of it looks good enough to be as ridiculously taxing on the hardware as it is. And that's without even speaking about my favourite problem of having to keep restarting the game to reset shadows or else the shit will run at negative FPS.

I wonder if the answer isn't that they simply pushed this old-ass engine way over its limit, perhaps even recklessly so.

I haven't experienced any of those issues except for the reduced performance in settlements. As for those areas, I wonder if they're CPU bound or if it's a GPU thing. I'm guessing the former.

 

[coldcrow]

It's GPU-bound, although it is pretty taxing on my 12-core, too. In the fort, GPU goes to 100% and all cores go up to 30-50% (and higher for the primary loop), which is pretty insane for a game.
I can see why, though: There are just too many detailed textures to draw, even if PB didn't manage to make them look very good. Maybe the insane amount of foliage? But as said before it seems the engine draws way too much stuff for too little effect. There should be a fix for that and they should deliver it fast.

 

[soulburner]

I've been experimenting with the level of detail settings and stuff and I've noticed a peculiar thing. I was bringing shadow quality up and down to see how the fps and image quality changes and after setting them to ultra and exiting the menu, the game ran at fluid 60fps for about 5 seconds before dropping to 49-52 in the Clerics base. I also improved changed the gamma setting in the game - moved the slider way up to "barely see the logo" ap nd the overall graphics 'feel' improved a lot, the shadows are less pitch black and I can actually see shit. This is the first time I used the gamma setting to achieve anything in any game. Unfortunately, I find the Clerics base to be designed in a way in which I have no idea where I'm going and I'm constantly lost. Didn't have such a problem in Elex 1, so maybe it's bad design or I'm too high on Elex, trying to play this immediately after finishing the first game.

 

[coldcrow]

Their older games had problems, too. For example Risen 2: without the Anti-Warp mod, plants and foliage just "grow" when you get near. They never fixed this. It's probably that the Genome Engine has too few tricks available to increase fps at negligible cost in quality.

 

[soulburner]

It's GPU-bound, although it is pretty taxing on my 12-core, too. In the fort, GPU goes to 100% and all cores go up to 30-50% (and higher for the primary loop), which is pretty insane for a game.
I can see why, though: There are just too many detailed textures to draw, even if PB didn't manage to make them look very good. Maybe the insane amount of foliage? But as said before it seems the engine draws way too much stuff for too little effect. There should be a fix for that and they should deliver it fast.

I wonder if it's the case of DirectX 11 being the bottleneck here. The amount of objects being drawn on screen at the same time might be reaching the upper limit of the amount of draw calls DX11 can perform. DX12 and Vulkan were born to solve exactly this by packaging many draw calls in a single list, which is better suited to the parallel nature of GPUs, while DX11 issues those commands in a more linear manner and using many CPU cycles for each call. Maybe this is the reason for high GPU usage but low temperatures? The GPU is stuck parsing through the draw calls, but the actual hardware has very little to do with so little data flowing to it.

Porting the renderer to DX12 is not an easy task, though, because it moves the control of the GPU from DX11 and the driver to the hands of the programmers in a very significant way (removing several software layers is the reason why these new renderers can perform so much better, but the programmer has to know a lot more about how to do things on a lower level) - it's not like clicking on a checkbox and it's ready to go. As with anything, you can very much fuck up a DX12 renderer and make it perform like shit.

 

[Zarniwoop]

the game is allocating more than 8 GB of video memory,

Nigga what?

That is completely inexcusable.

I don't notice any of these "performance issues" (but maybe I'm just too used to the piece of shit CyberJank 2077 which is far worse), but that is just unreal. It's not like this game has some amazing texture detail or anything.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I hate to say this, and it's not a terrible game, but I find Elex 2 is just lacking something. The combat seems like it's significantly worse than the first which is sad because elex wasnt bad. Maybe I just know the drill too well, but i remember a little more of a slow power curve in elex 1. I spent a good long while at the bottom of the food chain there, but it seems like elex 2 is a little easier to get past the scrub phase and into a faction. Not sure if i rushed it but i just remember slower going and kinda stewing in the setting previously. The jetpack changes are nice but the world feels less diverse. some places the exploration feels better and other times worse. I liked the old biomes forest, desert, volcanic, ice, and slightly more fantastical forest. Now it's just kinda forest ice and blown out shithole/alien. Still has that PB charm. Still love it.

I cant help but wonder if the pandemic really fucked their development cycle. I remember the air of joy and childlike optimism when elex was being developed. PB was free from the shackles of their previous publisher and you could tell that they were finally able to make the game they wanted to make. The entire premise of elex is a barely unified jumble of childish male power fantasy, the kind of thing you might make after being pigeonholed and dishonored for a decade. I remember this infectious joy when it was released. Perhaps the pandemic took the wind from their sails, and completing this led to some tough compromises. I still like it a lot, and I'll probably buy anything PB puts out if they keep it up, but there's some rough edges and questionable changes here and there. Still remember that cover of Hier Kommt Alex he did. Hopefully that glee is still there.

Looked up that song. And guess what, they pronounce ELEX as ELEX.

Why in the fuck do the characters in-game say EELIX?

 

[Cryomancer]

Seems like Albs moved from full Bolshevism to full Nazism in one game to another. In the first game, trade is prohibited, everyone is a salve to the "hybrid" which doesn't care about human lives, the will of the great leader(hybrid) is above everyone and now, they are all about eugenics and other stuff like that.

 

[Joyvankek]

Seems like Albs moved from full Bolshevism to full Nazism in one game to another. In the first game, trade is prohibited, everyone is a salve to the "hybrid" which doesn't care about human lives, the will of the great leader(hybrid) is above everyone and now, they are all about eugenics and other stuff like that.

From the first Elex the only people that did make some sense were Clerics, their religion focused on science, with some psionic brainwashing for non-believers, Albs were almost mindless automatons, Berserks were hippie vibes connected with autocracy based in caste system, with some idiotic code to which all were equal, but some were more equal than the others.
And if you were low in the food chain, any small transgression yeeted you out into exile, or you got outright killed for treason.
Outlaws... well, at least you won't be having a problem with stagnation there, and they have drugs and hookers, hence outlaws had what all the other factions didn't, which is fun.

 

[Grotesque]

Can I join a faction after the quest "A common path" is canceled?

After I visited all the major factions and report to Adam, the quest "Tough negociations" is completed but the "A common path" quest (which involved joining a faction) is canceled.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Dear diary,

Today I killed a burrower kind of munster by circle strafing around it and whacking it to death with LMB.

I thought I just got lucky because its legs got stuck in the snowy ground and it couldn't even move, but then I killed another one by circle strafing around it and whacking it to death with LMB.

This is to remind you that this combat is total shit.

In other news, the technical marvels of this game keep amazing me all the time.

Note the shadow line up front:

aaaand a few steps forward...

Yep, this line travels together with Jax and you can bounce it back and forth as you please.

Also in today's episode of "weird shit that affects performance", I was trying to shoop a snow wolfmonkey thing from the roof of a nearby house. The wolfmonkey thing began running around like stupid since it couldn't retaliate, and then it ran behind a wrecked car... and my performance went down to negative FPS. I had to take a step aside to shift view or wait for it to move away from there by itself before it went back to acceptable levels. And it happened a number of times, too. WTF is wrong with this fucking game.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Your pics remind me of another gripe with this game: ridiculously oversized weeb 2-hnd weapons.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

I cant help but wonder if the pandemic really fucked their development cycle.

Björn and Jenny said in one of their videos that they've adapted rather quickly to working from home and it has turned out to be practical, because they are a small team. Not to mention that ELEX 2 was well over 2 years into development before Covid-19 hit. So I am not buying that ELEX 2 was in the oven for 4 1/2 years only due to Covid, especially since 75 percent of the game is pretty much an asset flip.

Either they are not as passionate about their games anymore, because THQ Nordic now owns Piranha Bytes, or, what I think is more likely, the ELEX series was demoted to a side project to make room for something else.

That said, THQ Nordic does appear to be rather enthusiastic about the Gothic series.

I remember the air of joy and childlike optimism when elex was being developed. PB was free from the shackles of their previous publisher and you could tell that they were finally able to make the game they wanted to make.

The Risen series and ELEX were all published by Deep Silver. THQ Nordic bought Deep Silver in 2018.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

In other news, the technical marvels of this game keep amazing me all the time.

Note the shadow line up front:

aaaand a few steps forward...

Yep, this line travels together with Jax and you can bounce it back and forth as you please.

I just went to the exact same spot and couldn't reproduce it.

Maybe it is because you have shadows and ambient occlusion set to potato mode.

 

[lukaszek]

that troll got a nice weapon showed in his body. afaik only such cool enemy in whole game

 

[Mikeal]

 

[Infinitron]

Björn and Jenny said in one of their videos that they've adapted rather quickly to working from home and it has turned out to be practical, because they are a small team. Not to mention that ELEX 2 was well over 2 years into development before Covid-19 hit. So I am not buying that ELEX 2 was in the oven for 4 1/2 years only due to Covid, especially since 75 percent of the game is pretty much an asset flip.

Either they are not as passionate about their games anymore, because THQ Nordic now owns Piranha Bytes, or, what I think is more likely, the ELEX series was demoted to a side project to make room for something else.

I have a different theory about Piranha Bytes - that they're not really a "professional" studio anymore and are functioning more like an indie outfit. A bunch of folks working on games in their own time in between doing other things.

 

[Ismaul]

I have a different theory about Piranha Bytes. That they're not really a "professional" studio anymore but basically a bunch of folks working on games in their own time when they feel like it.

Still doesn't explain why they didn't just reuse the better models of ELEX 1, for example Jax's face. His eyes aren't even the same color lol

 

[HoboForEternity]

I have a different theory about Piranha Bytes. That they're not really a "professional" studio anymore but basically a bunch of folks working on games in their own time when they feel like it.

Still doesn't explain why they didn't just reuse the better models of ELEX 1, for example Jax's face. His eyes aren't even the same color lol

This is mainly because of the lip sync program they use. Iirc its incompatible with the old models skeleton.


Although, the lip sync are technically impressive, the tradeoff it cost us is not worth it, you just have weird model with really good lipsync that drill into the uncanny valley

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the lip sync might be decent, but the facial animations are really bad, so bad it becomes funny

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

ELEX 2 uses FaceWare middleware for lip syncing and facial animations.

Apparently they had to redo all of the face models, but something went terribly wrong during the process. Particularly the eyes are peak uncanny valley.

 

[vota DC]

Seems like Albs moved from full Bolshevism to full Nazism in one game to another. In the first game, trade is prohibited, everyone is a salve to the "hybrid" which doesn't care about human lives, the will of the great leader(hybrid) is above everyone and now, they are all about eugenics and other stuff like that.

From the first Elex the only people that did make some sense were Clerics, their religion focused on science, with some psionic brainwashing for non-believers, Albs were almost mindless automatons, Berserks were hippie vibes connected with autocracy based in caste system, with some idiotic code to which all were equal, but some were more equal than the others.
And if you were low in the food chain, any small transgression yeeted you out into exile, or you got outright killed for treason.
Outlaws... well, at least you won't be having a problem with stagnation there, and they have drugs and hookers, hence outlaws had what all the other factions didn't, which is fun.

Unlike non futurustic piranha bytes games here all factions seems to give in the skill tree different magics except outlaws that give better buff when you take drugs. In Risen 1 you could have swamp bandit for fighter path without using mana or choose inquisition monastery, in Risen 2 you had inquisition with the gunpowder or the voodoo path.
It Is feasible to ignore faction upgrades and do only the regular one?

 

[Peachcurl]

Seems like Albs moved from full Bolshevism to full Nazism in one game to another. In the first game, trade is prohibited, everyone is a salve to the "hybrid" which doesn't care about human lives, the will of the great leader(hybrid) is above everyone and now, they are all about eugenics and other stuff like that.

From the first Elex the only people that did make some sense were Clerics, their religion focused on science, with some psionic brainwashing for non-believers, Albs were almost mindless automatons, Berserks were hippie vibes connected with autocracy based in caste system, with some idiotic code to which all were equal, but some were more equal than the others.
And if you were low in the food chain, any small transgression yeeted you out into exile, or you got outright killed for treason.
Outlaws... well, at least you won't be having a problem with stagnation there, and they have drugs and hookers, hence outlaws had what all the other factions didn't, which is fun.

Unlike non futurustic piranha bytes games here all factions seems to give in the skill tree different magics except outlaws that give better buff when you take drugs. In Risen 1 you could have swamp bandit for fighter path without using mana or choose inquisition monastery, in Risen 2 you had inquisition with the gunpowder or the voodoo path.
It Is feasible to ignore faction upgrades and do only the regular one?

Yes, that should be feasible, considering you can go through the game without joining a faction.