S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

[None]

Hobbies require money. Ask your mom for a bigger allowance or develop better spending habits.

 

[ArchAngel]

what engine is this made on again?

If it's still based on their old engine it will "mod will fix it" no matter how bad the release is

UE5, so there's infinitely more chances of good mods, as devs can make tools in UE5 for everyone to use (though maintaining them must be a pain in the ass, so it could happen only when the game's updating cycle post release is done)

Devs said they are going to have extensive modding tools and even on console the game will be fully moddable even with complete overhaul mods like Gamma.

 

[Konjad]

Why are people bitching so much about raising system requirements in games? Are you all GenZ/millenial/whatever the fuck? You have your first computers? When was the last time you bought your PC and if it was low-end or more than 3 years ago why should new games work on it in 666 FPS 16k? You think you just buy computer once and play on it for eternity? This is kind of complains I can understand on Reddit or retardEra because average mental age of their users should be 15, but on a 'dex? Is it a 'dex Z now? And out of all fucking people in here it's Kang Crispy that provides a voice of reason? What the fuck, did I wake up in another dimension this morning?

Why do people not like having to pay more money? It's a mystery.

Why then did we advance from the first ping pong, it had good enough tech and we wouldn't have to buy new PCs!

Many 'dexers in this topic I see sperging i.e.:

You guys don't get it, UE5 is so advanced that we just don't have GPUs with features that it needs yet.

UE5 is way more advanced than UE4 and it won't have the same requirements.

To give an example, they actually worked on physics, which was dogshit up to (and including) UE4. UE games were almost static and had hilarious vehicle physics (which might have been okay for arcade games like Unreal Tournament 2004/3, but worked terrible in semi-realistic Red Orchestra), and now you can have something that actually can be somewhat believable:

 

[Ba'al]

In general, people complain because the increase in system requirements don't justify the "improved" graphical fidelity. That physics example is extremely retarded and on par with "raytracing enables mirror reflections! (pls don't look at older games doing reflections on ancient hardware)". What's happening is that the cost of games is being transferred to gamers - instead of devs taking the time to properly develop their games, they just use computationally expensive techniques to do their work for them. So the devs save time and money but now gamers have to buy strong enough hardware that supports those crutches.

 

[ferratilis]

The point is not the requirements, but their strange stance on what is essentially valid criticism. In an attempt to divert attention from optimization by banning that guy on Steam, they sure attracted a lot of bad publicity in the process,. UE5 already has bad reputation, even a hint that a game might be badly optimized riles people up, and rightly so.

And no, UE5 doesn't look impressive enough to warrant such requirements, especially at resolutions it renders at. Nor does it look impressive enough to make incessant stuttering tolerable. I'm yet to see a game that looks as mindblowing as Doom 3, Far Cry, F.E.A.R. Crysis, Witcher 3 etc. looked at their time.

 

[Turisas]

Alternate skins are whatever, but quests being locked behind higher tiers is always bullshit. As is some of the campfire songs being a preorder excl00sive.

 

[ArchAngel]

Alternate skins are whatever, but quests being locked behind higher tiers is always bullshit. As is some of the campfire songs being a preorder excl00sive.

Are these just skins for weapons and not weapons themselves?

 

[Turisas]

Are these just skins for weapons and not weapons themselves?

GSC have updated steam page. it now includes Edition bonuses. You will get unique weapons in singleplayer, that you will have to find in the world. Those that are makred as "Transferable to Multiplayer" means, that you will be able to use the skins of those weapons/gear in multiplayer - no advantage over other players.
All of this was confirmed by Mol1t on discord.

A unique variant of default weapons you'll find somewhere in the world, the way I read that.

 

[Necrensha]

To give an example, they actually worked on physics, which was dogshit up to (and including) UE4. UE games were almost static and had hilarious vehicle physics (which might have been okay for arcade games like Unreal Tournament 2004/3, but worked terrible in semi-realistic Red Orchestra), and now you can have something that actually can be somewhat believable:

Very impressive.
However, this is a game from a decade ago:

And while Stalker 2 certainly looks more detailed, the difference isn't anywhere near big enough to justify paying the 618,85€ that my nearest store is asking for a 4070, only to play on medium quality. Not even getting into how much power that thing eats.
And no, the fact that the original Stalker also had shit optimization doesn't mean that you should compensate the dev's laziness with your own wallet.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Why are people bitching so much about raising system requirements in games? Are you all GenZ/millenial/whatever the fuck? You have your first computers? When was the last time you bought your PC and if it was low-end or more than 3 years ago why should new games work on it in 666 FPS 16k? You think you just buy computer once and play on it for eternity? This is kind of complains I can understand on Reddit or retardEra because average mental age of their users should be 15, but on a 'dex? Is it a 'dex Z now? And out of all fucking people in here it's Kang Crispy that provides a voice of reason? What the fuck, did I wake up in another dimension this morning?

Graphics cards tripled, sometimes quadrupled, in price from 10 years ago with (generally) no visible increase whatsoever in what you get for your money. In fact, the quality of games has fallen off badly, including graphically.
Someone who isn’t retarded sees this and understands correctly that they are being taken for a ride, the same way you often are with so many other goods now.

 

[cvv]

However, this is a game from a decade ago:

Is that from the remaster (or whatever it was CDPR released a few years ago)?

Because honestly, you can see p. clearly the age. It's still fine but compared to even something like Kingdom Come (6 yo) it's night and day.

 

[Odoryuk]

Looked at this image without my reading glasses first and thought it was a photo

 

[Necrensha]

Is that from the remaster (or whatever it was CDPR released a few years ago)?

No, it's an image from the original release of Blood and Wine.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

"raytracing enables mirror reflections! (pls don't look at older games doing reflections on ancient hardware)"

This particular criticism isn't fair
Reflections back then weren't "real" (for a lack of a better word, don't @ me on this), they were mostly "achieved" through clever tricks - environmental mapping, pre-baked "static" reflections, advanced shader techniques and my favourite trick of all, just rendering the scene from a mirrored perspective and projecting it onto an object's surface (for example, the bathroom mirrors in Deus Ex)
The closest thing we had to Ray Tracing back then was Screen Space Reflections, but this isn't nearly as powerful as RT and was also limited by the player's viewable area (thus not capturing off-screen objects)
Ray Tracing actually simulates physical light in the entire loaded enviroment, including the taxing calculations needed to properly render the interaction between the light particles and physical properties of the materials it reflects and refracts through
We might meme about it, but RT really is impressive and demanding tech

 

[Turisas]

Blow it out your ass!

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Graphics cards tripled, sometimes quadrupled, in price from 10 years ago with (generally) no visible increase whatsoever in what you get for your money.

10 years ago, mid-range GPUs typically ranged from 150$ to 300$, while high-end GPUs could be priced between 500$ and 1200$
I would say GPUs today are 200$ to 400$ more expensive
Considerable sure, but tripled? C'mon man...

Now, as for the slowing down of graphical quality, that's normal
We've hit a kind of plateau a few years ago
Increases in graphical fidelity have become exponential lower over time
But games are still getting more graphically intensive because assets are still increasingly more detailed
Plus a newer gen of consoles has always been accompanied by an increase in system requeriments, because with it devs can cram more assets and waste computing resources with tech they couldn't in the previous gen
And only over the last year have AAA devs started to permanentely move away from the PS4

 

[DJOGamer PT]

It's still fine but compared to even something like Kingdom Come (6 yo) it's night and day.

Which is night and day compared to this:

 

[soulburner]

Developers got so good at emulating all kinds of lighting techniques in real time without the use of ray/path tracing we do not see the upgrade to true ray/path tracing as revolutionary. To this day I see comparison screenshots and videos showing the difference between software lighting and RT in recent games - and it's not always obvious which one is which.

Yes, there is no denying RT is impressive and very demanding. We aren't really there yet with the hardware when a $500 GPU can barely (meaning below 60 fps) run CP2077 with ray tracing and DLSS. Newer games will be even more demanding and GPUs aren't getting any cheaper.

PS - the mirrors in Duke or early 3D games were possible because those games used forward rendering. You saw exactly what was rendered. Modern games use all sorts of deferred rendering, where what you see is processed by so many shaders it's impossible to project a scene to a texture to create a pseudo-mirror. The mirror would not reflect the same thing you see on your display - furthermore, it would probably show something completely meaningless. Shadows, lighting, reflections, ambient occlusion and many other things are being applied after a frame was rendered. This is why screen space reflections suck so much when compared with a simple cubemaps. They're real-time but any object outside of the screen will disappear.

 

[Hace El Oso]

10 years ago, mid-range GPUs typically ranged from 150$ to 300$, while high-end GPUs could be priced between 500$ and 1200$
I would say GPUs today are 200$ to 400$ more expensive
Considerable sure, but tripled? C'mon man...

Right before The Witcher 3 released, I purchased the best card on the planet at the time, an EVGA 980 FTW, for 550-600 USD. How much for the very best 4080? EVGA don’t even bother pretending to make consumer graphics cards anymore.

Now, as for the slowing down of graphical quality, that's normal
We've hit a kind of plateau a few years ago

No, there is no plateau, there is (broadly speaking) a huge decline in workmanship. Why, with all this supposedly astounding technological horsepower, is Chaos Theory still superior in lighting and sound workmanship than almost anything made now? There is no good excuse for that.

 

[Yosharian]

Why are people bitching so much about raising system requirements in games? Are you all GenZ/millenial/whatever the fuck? You have your first computers? When was the last time you bought your PC and if it was low-end or more than 3 years ago why should new games work on it in 666 FPS 16k? You think you just buy computer once and play on it for eternity? This is kind of complains I can understand on Reddit or retardEra because average mental age of their users should be 15, but on a 'dex? Is it a 'dex Z now? And out of all fucking people in here it's Kang Crispy that provides a voice of reason? What the fuck, did I wake up in another dimension this morning?

Graphics cards tripled, sometimes quadrupled, in price from 10 years ago with (generally) no visible increase whatsoever in what you get for your money. In fact, the quality of games has fallen off badly, including graphically.
Someone who isn’t retarded sees this and understands correctly that they are being taken for a ride, the same way you often are with so many other goods now.

Fidelity has increased a fair bit but optimization and aesthetics dropped off a cliff

Like a tree now versus a tree then, the tree is much higher quality, but I don't necessarily stare at trees when I'm playing video games

Also power consumption on new Nvidia cards is getting out of control lol

 

[Parsimonious cook]

It's still fine but compared to even something like Kingdom Come (6 yo) it's night and day.

Which is night and day compared to this:

To be fair though, Unrecord is most likely a vapourware that will never come out.

 

[cvv]

It's still fine but compared to even something like Kingdom Come (6 yo) it's night and day.

Which is night and day compared to this:

It'd be an unfair stretch to compare an open-world RPG with a linear walking simulator like Senua's Saga. But a tech demo? C'mon, you know better.

 

[anvi]

I remember buying an 8800GTX about 20 years ago, I think it was the top card available at the time. It was about half the price of what a 4070 costs now. Since then they started making stupidly expensive shit. I remember the Titan and whatever else. 1 grand cards and more. Too many people don't understand that they are being played as chumps. It is horse armor for graphics cards. If people had zero tolerance for that shit then graphics cards would be cheap now. The fact that some idiot cashcows bought it means the entire industry is fucked forever. And the bitcoin farming shit was the final nail.

I'll never buy an Nvidia product again and if I ever upgrade my gfx card to a Radeon something, I will buy second hand because fuck them too.

 

[Gerrard]

Looked at this image without my reading glasses first and thought it was a photo

That's because it's a bullshot and not an actual screenshot from the game. This is either from the beta, which had much higher density of vegetation that was downgraded heavily in the final game, or just something made in the editor.

 

[Ryzer]

Alternate skins are whatever, but quests being locked behind higher tiers is always bullshit. As is some of the campfire songs being a preorder excl00sive.

Exclusive footage at GSC :