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

[JEMC]

Friday gaming news, part two:

Stalker 2's first major story expansion is coming this summer with two new regions and 'dozens of hours of gameplay'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/stalker-2s-first-major-story-expansion-is-coming-this-summer-with-two-new-regions-and-dozens-of-hours-of-gameplay/
More than a year after the launch of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the first official story expansion has been revealed as Cost of Hope, "a new chapter of a well-known conflict" between Duty and Freedom, two of the Exclusion Zone's most powerful factions.

Pragmata's devs created human-made AI slop to mimic the 'uncanny feel' of LLM art
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/pragmatas-devs-created-human-made-ai-slop-to-mimic-the-uncanny-feel-of-llm-art/
The premise of Pragmata may seem utterly unfathomable right now so I'll try and break it down for you: an evil AI takes over a lunar research station, and being evil, it tries to eradicate our human protagonist Hugh and his android companion Diana. Ok, that's actually pretty fathomable right now.
Funnily enough, the hardest part of bringing an evil AI to life was mimicking what the world it inhabited would actually look like. "It mirrors reality, but its unique appeal comes from the setting errors and how they feel out of place, such as taxis sinking into floors, or buses sprouting from walls," producer Naoto Oyama says in an interview with 4Gamer (via Automaton). "Although the premise is that it generated by AI, actually, our human developers painstakingly worked to incorporate mechanisms that express this AI-like uncanny feel.”

Baldur's Gate 3 gets a new hotfix to fix the old hotfix that fixed corrupted saves but started causing crashes
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldurs-gate/baldurs-gate-3-gets-a-new-hotfix-to-fix-the-old-hotfix-that-fixed-corrupted-saves-but-started-causing-crashes/
Back in February, Larian rolled out a small update for Baldur's Gate 3 that aimed to fix a few crashes, technical issues, and in particular, corrupted saves. And it worked! Except, well, it apparently also broke a few things along the way. So you know what that means: A new hotfix to fix the old hotfix.

Extraction shooter Sand delayed from March as Ukrainian developer cites 'a difficult few months' with 'severe power outages and air alert disruptions'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/extraction-shooter-sand-delayed-from-march-as-ukrainian-developer-cites-a-difficult-few-months-with-severe-power-outages-and-air-alert-disruptions/
Sand: Raiders of Sophie, the PvPvE extraction shooter where you build and drive huge stompy mechanical bases around on a desert planet, "will not be releasing this March" as planned, developer Hologryph announced today.
"It’s been a difficult few months for us here in Ukraine," the developer wrote in a Steam post, "with frequent severe power outages and air alert disruptions causing some major complications and resulting in a lot of key features that we had hoped to have finalised and implemented at this stage being behind schedule."

There are two different Jesus sims launching within a week of each other
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/there-are-two-different-jesus-sims-launching-within-a-week-of-each-other/
We've seen it happen plenty in Hollywood: two movies released at almost the same time about the same thing. Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998, The Prestige and The Illusionist in 2006, Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down in 2013, just to name a few.
Games aren't immune to this trend either, I guess: a Jesus simulator called Jesus Simulator launched today, just a week before another Jesus simulator called I Am Jesus Christ launches next week on April 2. If you want to play a game where you're Jesus, you've been double-blessed just in time for Easter. Hallelujah!
>> Blasphemy!

Hades 2 trailer teases a new steamy scene that will be added with 'bonus content and quality-of-life improvements' in an update next month
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/hades-2-trailer-teases-a-new-steamy-scene-that-will-be-added-with-bonus-content-and-quality-of-life-improvements-in-an-update-next-month/
Supergiant isn't done with Hades 2 yet. In a surprisingly spicy new trailer for the action RPG's console release, eagle-eyed fans caught a glimpse of a scene they've never seen before.

V Rising studio is working on a new game, and it sounds like it's got teeth: 'The odyssey of the Vampire continues'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/v-rising-studio-is-working-on-a-new-game-and-it-sounds-like-its-got-teeth-the-odyssey-of-the-vampire-continues/
It's the end of the line for the excellent vampire survival game V Rising: Not quite two years after release, developer Stunlock Studios says "the journey to Dracula is a complete one as it stands," and no further content updates are planned. The good news is that it's working on something new instead, set in the same game world, that will be the studio's "most ambitious project yet."

In its first major visual overhaul ever, RPG Maker will soon let you make games in the style of Octopath Traveler
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/in-its-first-major-visual-overhaul-ever-rpg-maker-will-soon-let-you-make-games-in-the-style-of-octopath-traveler/
Browse through Steam's unfiltered list of new games and you'll encounter at least one or two games made in RPG Maker every week. Few of these projects reach the popularity of something like Yume Nikki or Omori, and I'm guessing many are never played at all. But I love that a relatively simple toolset is still in such active use.
(...)
The RPG Maker "look" is about to undergo a pretty seismic shift, though: 2.5D is on the way.
Gotcha Gotcha Games teased as much yesterday, and if you love the style popularised by Octopath Traveler, but also used in other modern Square Enix RPGs like Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake or Star Ocean: The Second Story R, then you may feel like a pig in shit once this drops at some unspecified date in the future.

'There are no leaks', says Stardew Valley creator, taking a hammer to the rumour mill
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/there-are-no-leaks-says-stardew-valley-creator-taking-a-hammer-to-the-rumour-mill/
Stardew Valley 1.7 is a hotly anticipated patch to a game, and for good reason—it's one of the biggest indie sensations of the past decade. Riling up the anticipation is the fact that it usually takes years for big updates like this to drop, with the last major version releasing in 2024.
As such, the inescapable tide of supposed leaks has swept through the internet—which the game's creator, Eric Barone, is very keen to put a blunt full stop to: "Any claims that there are "'leaks' of 1.7 content are fake. There are no leaks," he wrote on X. Welp, there you go then.

All Genshin Impact 6.5 livestream codes
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/genshin-impact-codes-6-5-livestream/
The Genshin Impact 6.5 livestream codes are here. This version, also known as Luna 6, is the sixth major update since we arrived in Nod-Krai—honestly, I thought this region would just be an interlude, but we've spent quite some time in this area of Snezhnaya. If you're new to all this, miHoYo likes to run a livestream for each of its games every six weeks.

'We want more for them': Arc Raiders' lead dev reassures players that balance and end-game content are a top priority
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/we-want-more-for-them-arc-raiders-lead-dev-reassures-players-that-balance-and-end-game-content-are-a-top-priority/
One of the biggest surprises of last year was the enormous success of the launch of Arc Raiders. It surpassed 12 million players by January, turned out to have Nexon's most successful launch ever, and enjoyed enough concurrent players to rival even the publisher's the biggest MMO's. It's been a spectacular ride so far. That is, with a few caveats.
(...)
"Balancing is always, not really a problem, but something we keep top of mind all the time," production director Caio Braga says in an interview with GamesRadar. "That is one thing. It's all new to us, the live environment with this amount of players. We've been trying to identify what are the most impactful updates we can give to players. There are a few things that we see that are more engaging and some others less engaging, and because we're not a huge team, optimizing for that impact is something that we are learning and trying to do better and better in every update."
>> And here’s an almost 20 minutes interview PCGamer did to the production director during GDC (link).