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

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Wednesday news, part two:

Grand Theft Auto 5 actor 'shot some stuff' with Rockstar for a 'James Bond Trevor' expansion that never happened
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/grand-theft-auto/grand-theft-auto-5-actor-shot-some-stuff-with-rockstar-for-a-james-bond-trevor-expansion-that-never-happened/
Grand Theft Auto 5 first released in 2013 (coming to PC in 2015), and from the vantage point of 2024 we can see it was a live game in disguise. The singleplayer side of the game, which for the first time featured three protagonists players could switch between on-the-fly, acted as Trojan horse for Rockstar's second swing at GTA Online, the multiplayer mode that would come to dominate the studio's time and attention and generate unfathomable levels of cash.
This meant that some plans went by the wayside. Originally GTA 5 had post-launch plans that were more in-line with GTA 4, which received two excellent singleplayer expansions: The Lost and the Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony. Rockstar was planning three singleplayer expansions for GTA 5, each themed around one of the game's protagonists, but after the launch itself re-focused on creating expansions for GTA Online (the studio first mentioned singleplayer DLC in 2013, but it would take until 2017 for its cancellation to be confirmed).
Thanks to dataminers, we know that the first expansion was named Agent Trevor, while the latter two had the working titles of "Zombie Apocalypse" and "Alien Invasion." (...)

Gloomhaven studio releases a demo for a new game and lays off more than half its employees on the same day
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/gloomhaven-studio-releases-a-demo-for-a-new-game-and-lays-off-more-than-half-its-employees-on-the-same-day/
In a strange and unfortunate turn, indie developer Flaming Fowl Studios, known for past games including Fable Fortune and Gloomhaven, has released a demo for a new game on Steam while simultaneously laying off more than half its employees.
"Today we are releasing a demo of Ironmarked, a new game we have been working on recently," Flaming Fowl said. "Unfortunately, due to the current lack of funding in the games industry, we are putting production on hold and have had to downsize the studio, letting go of some amazing people. 

Blizzard admits WoW is rough for new players and plans to fix that: 'We know that we have a lot of work to do'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/blizzard-admits-wow-is-rough-for-new-players-and-plans-to-fix-that-we-know-that-we-have-a-lot-of-work-to-do/
If I didn't have years of prior experience playing World of Warcraft, I imagine my first hour in The War Within alpha would've gone much worse. WoW immediately buries you in buckets of spells and items and quests that even had me gasping for air trying to make sense of it all. The new and returning player experience is rough, and Blizzard is willing to admit as much, according to a recent interview with Windows Central.

German government wants games like Baldur's Gate 3 to 'also go on to be developed in Germany'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/german-game-awards-baldurs-gate-3/
Last year, we were slightly surprised to learn that not only does the German government sponsor a videogame award ceremony, it gives serious cash prizes to most of the winners. At the 2023 German Computer Game Awards—aka the Deutscher Computerspielpreis (DCP)—retro RPG Chained Echoes won Best German Game and a €100,000 endowment, and at this year's ceremony on April 18, the same honor and cash prize went to Everspace 2 and Hamburg-based developer Rockfish Games.
(...)
The point of the cash prizes is of course to support and encourage German game development, and Michael Kellner, Parliamentary State Secretary at Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, says he wants to ensure that German studios produce games like Baldur's Gate 3 in the future. (And also do some climate action, I assume.)

Homeworld 3's latest system requirements won't fill up your SSD but you'll need all the CPU and GPU you can throw at it
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/homeworld-3s-latest-system-requirements-wont-fill-up-your-ssd-but-youll-need-all-the-cpu-and-gpu-you-can-throw-at-it/
With Homeworld 3 just weeks away from launch, Blackbird Interactive has done what surprisingly few developers do these days: updated and released a comprehensive system requirements chart. For gamers using a modest PC, it looks very promising, but if you're hoping to play it at 4K with maximum graphics, you're going to need the very best gaming hardware.

FF14 and FF16 senior translator Koji Fox says 'you can kinda tell' game director Naoki Yoshida is 'like: I'm done with dark fantasy, I want to do something light again'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/final-fantasy/ff14-and-ff16-senior-translator-koji-fox-says-you-can-kinda-tell-game-director-naoki-yoshida-is-like-im-done-with-dark-fantasy-i-want-to-do-something-light-again/
Naoki Yoshida, also known as Yoshi-P, is the producer of both the (critically-acclaimed) MMORPG Final Fantasy 14 as well as Final Fantasy 16, which is still yet to come to PC. 
In terms of tone, FF14 is a celebratory grab-bag of Final Fantasy stories, whereas 16 (from what I've seen) hangs its hat far more upon Game of Thrones-style dark fantasy. Of course there's still a side of giant kaiju battles with primals, but still—it's a more sombre affair at first glance.
That's an opinion shared by Square Enix senior translator Michael-Christopher Koji Fox, who has worked on both games, in a recent interview with MinnMax (thanks, GamesRadar): "I went from something very light like Final Fantasy 14 where it's craziness, it's all over the place—you have the weirdness of Hildebrand … then you go to [FF16 and] it's this game about slavery, and the end of the world, and humans losing their wills, and it's so heavy."

Embracer's CEO says 'I'm sure I deserve a lot of criticism' as he reflects on a company split three ways—but maintains that every 'key entrepreneur and CEO' believed in its 'mission'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/embracers-ceo-says-im-sure-i-deserve-a-lot-of-criticism-as-he-reflects-on-a-company-split-three-waysbut-maintains-that-every-key-entrepreneur-and-ceo-believed-in-its-mission/
If you've not been following the journey of Embracer, let me speedrun an explanation real quick: Over the course of seven years, Embracer snapped up a bunch of companies, hit an iceberg of a sunken $2 billion dollar deal, subsequently laid off 1,400 people in six months, and scrapped a bunch of projects while selling off studios to bail water.
Recently, the hull has split three ways. Embracer will break off into Asmodee Corp, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-Earth Enterprises & Friends. This is something Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors called "the start of a new chapter". Going forward, he'll be a shareholder in all three companies.
Looking back on the rest of the book, though, Wingefors does seem to admit that he might have messed up. Just a bit. 

'We are going home': PUBG's original Erangel map from Early Access is 'making a triumphant return to the battlegrounds'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/battle-royale/we-are-going-home-pubgs-original-erangel-map-from-early-access-is-making-a-triumphant-return-to-the-battlegrounds/
PlayerUnkown's Battlegrounds is scrapping the new and going back to the old so players can revisit the classic Erangel map, which was the battle royale's first-ever battleground. It will be available on PC from May 14 and is "designed to evoke nostalgia for players who remember the early days," according to an official blog post.