Open world games need two types of fast travel. The first is your standard type, which is pretty much a teleportation ability. That should be greatly limited. At most, just for cases where you need to travel across the entire map, and should be hidden behind some kind of in-game explanation like "you're taking a boat/plane/subway" or whatever.
The other one should be some way of moving really fast across the map so previously explored areas aren't a chore to move across. Literally fast travel, and not teleportation. And no, conventional solutions like horses or cars is still not fast enough. It's still minutes of mindlessly moving from point A to B in most cases. It needs to be truly fast. Spiderman 2 actually did explore this concept pretty well, with ideas like catapulting yourself or using a wingsuit to glide long distances. Other games need to come up with someway of allow players to cross huge distances in in a few seconds.
100% agree, lots of open world games these days make the only reason to explore so that you can find the fast travel beacon so you never have to explore the “open world” again.
It hides shitty and half assed world building though so I guess devs got that going for them.
I think it is more of a gameplay issue than a world building issue.
Fast travel solves a problem the developers create, needing to be in specific locations regularly to accomplish specific tasks. If you don't need to be anywhere in particular to offload collected items or to craft stuff, or return to someone to turn in quests to level, then you can just spend the time exploring at whatever pace you want.
Game design that makes repetitive travel necessary is when fast travel becomes necessary to avoid tedium.
I don’t NEED fast travel, but I would prefer if games still had an in-universe method of traversing from, say, the Easternmost region and the Westernmost region (i.e. a train, boat, horse carriage, etc.). I just don’t like spending significant amounts of time running back and forth through areas I’ve already discovered all the content in.
I appreciate fast travel in games like Kingdom Come Deliverance, where the fast travel still accounts for the time and resources spent.
Reminder that even if AMD’s ray tracing isn’t as advanced, alternative, cross-platform solutions such as RTGL1 do could work very well on both Nvidia and AMD cards.
Edit: Clarified, these things do work well, but only where they work. Point meant to be, if anyone but NVidia was doing this, it wouldn’t have to fracture PC gaming so badly.
Searching for that the only thing that comes up is a repo with half life / doom / quake branches. There’s no documentation on how to use the library for other games and most github issues seem to be about those games instead of the library. Am I looking at the right thing?
Yeah, that’s it. Unfortunately, AMD isn’t being well developed for. It’s just that, Nvidia doesn’t have to be the only viable option for RT, but because they have the funding and initiative, it’s been allowed to become so. RTGL1 is just an example for how it can work for AMD as well, assuming the renderer supports AMD-equivalent functions.
Worse, the release of an Nvidia-only toolkit like this is gonna cause a lot of pain with this in the future.
“AMD’s cards have faster and better ray tracing than Nvidia now? Man, that’s cool, but I’ve got, like, ten games running on RTX Remix, and they don’t support things like FSR.”
Whilst I like more tools for people to be creative with, the promises in these rtx tools look less like they are enabling creativity and more like trying to lock mods to their cards and having the human input be more technical busywork than artistic endevour.
The article talks about that actually and I do agree, HD textures just kinda suck. Better lighting and effects could look good though, if done properly.
You might think the failure of Embracer would maybe make regulators start acting on the mass conglomerization of media companies instead of hand waving everything through assuming the free market will provide.
Most of the companies’ Embracer is closing aren’t even unprofitable. They were/are doing fine even if their games weren’t big hits. Embracer just can’t pay its bills.
Unfortunately, I doubt it'll have much of an impact. Most of the properties/studios Embracer owns aren't popular enough to get people to make noise about it. And people don't tend to see the bigger picture - especially when these stories about studio closures are trickling out rather than all happening at once. I'm sure there'll be a lot of talk about it if something happens to do with Gearbox/Borderlands or The Lord Of The Rings, or if multiple studios all get shuttered at once, but other than that, I expect it'll just be small stories that continue to fly under the radar.
And regulators don't seem to care about video games unless people make noise. They get involved in things like loot box regulations or Microsoft acquiring Activision because those are big deals that almost everyone in the gaming sphere has an opinion on. But unfortunately, I don't see Piranha Bytes having issues or being closed getting enough attention for anything to change.
Aw man… I know that Elex has problems and stuff but it is and always will be one of my all-time favorite open world games. It’s probably the insane mix of science fiction stuff mixed with Mad Max style stuff mixed with fantasy stuff. It’s definitely a game done by people who really cared! And if they have to shut down, the gaming landscape will lose a unique voice!
Holy shit, Troy Baker is doing an incredible Harrison Ford impression...
I'm dubious on the first person stuff, especially since they seem to have put a lot of work into recreating Ford's likeness. But I was dubious about Cyberpunk too, and that turned out OK, so what do I know?
Maybe it’s a strong case of nostalgia but a first person Indiana Jones game doesn’t feel right. But on the flip side, if it was a true third person game, people would complain that it’s a clone of Uncharted and Tomb Raider despite Indy being the original.
I have mixed feelings which make me happy as I don’t have an Xbox. 😁
Exact same reaction. First person feels so inappropriate for this property that I immediately assumed comparisons to Uncharted and Tomb Raider must have been a, if not the, major contributing factor to going first person.
First person perspective blurs the line between player and character for a specific type of immersion (when done well). An Indiana Jones game should be all about playing as motherfucking Indiana Jones, no blurred lines necessary. His stature and costume is integral to the formula that makes him iconic, and without them, the gameplay segments of this trailer make it look like Far Cry: The 80s Adventure Serial.
The fact the Nazis are involved is obviously very cool considering it’s Indiana Jones but you can’t help (well me anyway) thinking that it is quite Wolfenstein-y.
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