Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

[JEMC]

And why the hell not, here's a third part of the news:

Warren Spector says his major contribution to System Shock was to stop 'it many times from getting killed'
https://www.pcgamer.com/warren-spector-says-his-major-contribution-to-system-shock-was-to-stop-it-many-times-from-getting-killed/
PC Gamer's all-singing all-dancing all-action 30th anniversary issue is on-sale today, and includes a slew of major interviews with the creatives that have shaped our industry and some of the most important games in history. PCG's editor Robert Jones sat down with Warren Spector and Paul Neurath, key members of the original System Shock team, which is generally considered the first game you could call an immersive sim, with its influence is still prevalent in the contemporary industry across the likes of Arkane's various titles and 2K's Bioshock series.

Nightdive thought it was 'going to get grilled' about the lack of hand-holding in System Shock remake, but players loved it
https://www.pcgamer.com/nightdive-thought-it-was-going-to-get-grilled-about-the-lack-of-hand-holding-in-system-shock-but-players-loved-it/
PC Gamer's 30th anniversary issue is on-sale today, and includes a slew of major interviews with some of the creatives that have shaped our industry and some of its most important games in history. One of those is System Shock, and Warren Spector told PCG's editor Robert Jones his major contribution was to stop "it many times from getting killed." The same roundtable also included Larry Kuperman and Stephen Kick of Nightdive Studios, which developed the recent (excellent) remake, who had an interesting observation to make about that game's reception.

Baldur's Gate 3 dev shows off the level of optimization achieved for the Xbox Series S port, which bodes well for future PC updates
https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-dev-shows-off-the-level-of-optimization-achieved-for-the-xbox-series-s-port-which-bodes-well-for-future-pc-updates/
Little things can often matter a lot and when it comes to streamlining a game's memory usage, every gigabyte counts. One of the developers at Larian, makers of Baldur's Gate 3, has shown that the team's recent hard work has resulted in a 34% reduction in VRAM usage for the forthcoming Xbox Series S version.
(...)
Larian has consistently worked on improving the performance of its game. The recent patch, for example, pruned a few milliseconds off the render time just by having the process to generate the UI (user interface) run in parallel with other tasks.
The worst frame rates are typically experienced during Act III and given the dedication shown in getting the game to run on the lowliest of the current-next-gen consoles, I'm confident that PC gamers will be treated to more performance enhancements in that area, with future patches.

Amelia Tyler, Baldur's Gate 3's narrator, talks putting a voice to the Dark Urge's 'feral, visceral, animalistic, want to tear the world apart with [its] teeth'
https://www.pcgamer.com/amelia-tyler-baldurs-gate-3s-narrator-talks-putting-a-voice-to-the-dark-urges-feral-visceral-animalistic-want-to-tear-the-world-apart-with-its-teeth/
Baldur's Gate 3 has voiced narration—a lot of it, as I've personally confirmed by playing the dang thing while having the sound turned on. I recently had the pleasure of speaking to the voice behind the game's reams and reams of narration, Amelia Tyler, earlier this week.
>> And here you'll find her favorite lines.

IO got the 007 license because it wants to make 'multiple Bond games' in the same way it handled Hitman
https://www.pcgamer.com/io-got-the-007-license-because-it-wants-to-make-multiple-bond-games-in-the-same-way-it-handled-hitman/
The latest issue of Edge Magazine includes an extensive interview with IO Interactive co-owners Hakan Abrak and Christian Elverdam about the studio's first 25 years and, of course, its future. A huge part of that is a new James Bond game, which IO announced in 2020 as an origin story with its own version of Bond: despite there being decades of 007 games, this is the first to ever take such an approach, with the others tying in to particular movies or actors.
Edge suggests the tone will be "closer to Daniel Craig than Roger Moore", which is hardly a surprise, and that this may be a more scripted experience than the relatively freeform Hitman games. But details remain scant, other than that IO had a tough time pitching EON on a Bond game: largely because of how the industry has treated the character in the past.

CRPG renaissance on hold as one of our most anticipated games gets a last-minute delay to next year
https://www.pcgamer.com/crpg-renaissance-on-hold-as-one-of-our-most-anticipated-games-gets-a-last-minute-delay-to-next-year/
Pour out a, uh, Fosters? Because this arvo has been proper buggered by the surprise delay of Broken Roads, the upcoming Ozzie CRPG that was one of our most anticipated games of November until it suddenly became one of our most anticipated games of 2024, and that's, um, fair dinkum. Or maybe it's not. God, I wish one of our Australian writers was online.

For just $45 BioWare will now sell you a poster of their teaser for a Mass Effect game they haven't even confirmed the name of yet
https://www.pcgamer.com/for-just-dollar45-bioware-will-now-sell-you-a-poster-of-their-teaser-for-a-mass-effect-game-they-havent-even-confirmed-the-name-of-yet/
I was already riled up enough when yesterday I wrote about my frustrations with BioWare's endless cryptic teasing of its upcoming games, so it's probably a good thing for my blood pressure that it wasn't until today that I realised the studio is monetising them too.
For the pretty steep price of $45 / £37.25 plus shipping, you can get a lithograph (basically a fancy poster) depicting the teaser image revealed this past N7 Day. That is, a character we don't know anything about yet, wearing a futuristic coat that blends into an image of a location we don't know anything about yet, from a game we don't know anything about yet, that doesn't even have a name yet. And they don't even throw in a frame!
>> Or, you know, you can send them to hell and buy anything else, like one of the hundreds of good games currently on sale, and still save money.