Monday news, part two:

Mass Effect director talks up original trilogy devs returning for the new game
https://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-director-talks-up-original-trilogy-devs-returning-for-the-new-game/
The Mass Effect teaser that dropped at last night's Game Awards was a big moment, even though it really didn't tell us much at all. (...)
After the show was over, Mass Effect project director Michael Gamble fired off a few tweets about some of the people working on the game, and like the teaser, they also put emphasize the pre-Andromeda trilogy.

World of Warcraft's pacifist panda just hit level 60 by picking millions of flowers
https://www.pcgamer.com/world-of-warcrafts-pacifist-panda-just-hit-level-60-by-picking-millions-of-flowers/
World of Warcraft is all about killing stuff—heck, it's in the name—but one player has been defying that mandatory violence for years. His name is Doubleagent, and he's a pacifist pandaren monk who just reached the new level cap of 60 by picking millions of flowers. What's even more impressive is that he's done it all without ever leaving the Wandering Isle, a start zone only meant for players below level 10.

Genshin Impact's 1.2 update adds first new map expansion and two playable characters
https://www.pcgamer.com/genshin-impacts-12-update-adds-first-new-map-expansion-and-two-playable-characters/
Genshin Impact's 1.2 update, The Chalk Prince and the Dragon, arrives on Dec 23rd and feature's the game's first new map expansion, Dragonspine.
Dragonspine's a frozen mountain range located south of Mondstadt, which adds a new mechanic in the form of a 'Sheer Cold' bar: the weather extremes will force players to keep their characters warm in both combat and exploration. It also contains "unique creatures, a lost ancient civilization, bountiful ingredients, rare artifacts, and recipes for multiple 4-star weapons."

Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO likely coming in 2022
https://www.pcgamer.com/amazons-lord-of-the-rings-mmo-likely-coming-in-2022/
The free-to-play Lord of the Rings MMO co-developed by Athlon Games and Amazon, to be published by Amazon outside of China, looks to be coming in 2022. Athlon Games is a subsidiary of Leyou, which was recently acquired by Tencent, and disclosure documents filed as part of that acquisition have revealed the game—among others from Leyou—is "expected to be launched from Q4 2021 to Q1 2023. In short, expect the new Lord of the Rings MMO in 2022 on PC. It's supposedly set long before the book trilogy. My money's on Angmar.

A sequel to classic roguelike ADOM is coming next year
https://www.pcgamer.com/a-sequel-to-classic-roguelike-adom-is-coming-next-year/
A sequel to ADOM: Ancient Domains of Mystery is on the way next year, with developers Team ADOM planning to release into Early Access on February 11th, 2021. Ultimate ADOM - Caverns of Chaos will be a proper sequel to the roguelike, which is famous for being in continual development for 25 years. The sequel is by the original developers, who have in recent years built an upgraded version of ADOM on Steam.

Cyberpunk 2077 developers will be paid bonuses regardless of review average, according to leaked email
https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-developers-will-be-paid-bonuses-regardless-of-review-average-according-to-leaked-email/
Bloomberg reports that a leaked email from executives at CD Projekt informed developers they would receive full bonuses for their work on Cyberpunk 2077. Prior to that, the bonuses apparently required Cyberpunk 2077 achieve specific goals in terms of both its critical reception and release date.

CDPR apologises for some of Cyberpunk 2077's launch woes, promises regular updates and improvements
https://www.pcgamer.com/cdpr-apologises-for-some-of-cyberpunk-2077s-launch-woes-promises-regular-updates-and-improvements/
Cyberpunk 2077's launch is not going smoothly, and one of the most unpleasant surprises is how badly it's been running on the last generation of console hardware. Essentially the game was promoted with high-end PC graphics and, look, to our console cousins: we're here for you. Hard to think of a more quintessentially PC experience than a badly optimised and buggy launch title, but now everyone gets to share in the joy.

The Hitman 3 opening cinematic shows why IO Interactive were a great choice for a Bond game
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-hitman-3-opening-cinematic-shows-why-io-interactive-were-a-great-choice-for-a-bond-game/
The Hitman 3 opening cinematic, which was released today via IGN's Youtube channel, doesn't really give much away. You watch Agent 47 and a stranger travel through Saudi-Arabia, through cities and deserts, by car and by plane. The unknown man presumably narrates the reason for the trip: "A kind of company, known as Providence. To it, we were just assets, to use and throw away, to do the unthinkable, the unforgivable. And it never gave us a second thought, until now."

Hopefully, that will change once AMD finally ditches Vega in favor of Navi for its APUs.

World of Warcraft's pacifist panda just hit level 60 by picking millions of flowers
https://www.pcgamer.com/world-of-warcrafts-pacifist-panda-just-hit-level-60-by-picking-millions-of-flowers/
World of Warcraft is all about killing stuff—heck, it's in the name—but one player has been defying that mandatory violence for years. His name is Doubleagent, and he's a pacifist pandaren monk who just reached the new level cap of 60 by picking millions of flowers. What's even more impressive is that he's done it all without ever leaving the Wandering Isle, a start zone only meant for players below level 10.

Hero we need but don't deserve.

BioShock 4 may be an open world RPG according to Cloud Chamber’s recent job listings
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/bioshock-4-may-be-an-open-world-rpg-according-to-cloud-chambers-recent-job-listings/
Back in December 2019, 2K Games officially confirmed that a new Bioshock game was under development. (...)
Now, several new job listings suggest that the next BioShock game may take place in an open-world environment with emergent systems, and advanced AI. Cloud Chamber has listed a set of new job descriptions implying the new sequel is going to be an open world role-playing game.

Why is everything open world, sigh.

Because everything should be open world. And everything that's not should be a Rogue Lite.

or rogue-like for those who want an actual challenge

As long as it has a Rogue Lite mode for people who don't like to work for their fun.

I am not sure where you are getting the "visual upgrade is small" when you have plenty of people including hardware unboxed themselves saying the visual upgrade is noticeable. If you think this is a small visual upgrade:

Then idk what to tell you other than to get your eyes checked. SSAA isn't even in the same league as to the type of visual upgrade that Ray Tracing offers even back then. Even if you have something like Ray Tracing reflections on and rest of the affects off, it offers a noticeable visual upgrade. And with DLSS which you keep ignoring, lessens the performance hit by quite a bit. The idea that very few games use RT and therefore it shouldn't matter is nonsense because not only will that number increase significantly now that the consoles have it but number of the major titles that released this holiday season have some form of Ray Tracing on both Console and PC.

The reason why people are "Using Raytracing right now as main value to define how good a GPU is" is because in Raster Performance, both Nvidia and AMD gpus are within single digit % of each other in majority of the games in which they trade blows. And when they are that close but then you have AMD gpus having a worse Ray Tracing implementation that even the 2000 series, it 110% matters a lot. Because when you are spending money on a GPU where the Raster performance is so close but AMD has potato RT performance, it would make sense for a lot of people to go with Nvidia and be on the cutting edge of technology. The Intel comparison that you made is nonsense.

PC is about options. If you want to not have options, play on a console... Consumers should be able to choose on which games they want to prioritize frame rate like Call of Duty or which games they want to prioritize Visuals like Minecraft RTX. It shouldn't be up to the reviewer to decide for them. Ray Tracing is a feature that is available now on a growing number of titles. It's an Option. And when people are spending $600+ on a GPU, they should have the Option to experience cutting edge visuals even if there's a performance hit.

The irony of using Intel in this comparison is that AMD's reliance on Raster is Similar to Intel's reliance on 14nm. They are both old technologies... The other funny part is that Intel is downplaying new technologies like AMD's Chiplet approach similar to how AMD is downplaying new technologies like Nvidia's Ray Tracing/DLSS.

If anything, AMD's GPU division is more like Intel than anyone else.

Well, I'm actually hopeful that both AMD and Intel keep fighting with their integrated graphics. For one, it would make dedicated GPUs in Ultrathins/Ultrabooks obsolete and extend battery life without making it impossible and could allow for some decent retro computer in a NUC or almost raspberry-Pi-like format.

I didn't say it's small, I said it's too small compared to the performance hit. That doesn't make the visual gains small, it just means it totally tanks your framerate when doing so.

Since you came with Minecraft RTX, let's have a look at it, shall we?

With a 2080 Super without RTX enabled you can load 96 chunks at 180 fps on average. Turn on RTX and you're down to only 8 chunks and 43 fps. Even with DLSS, which raises the fps to 71 with 8 chunks, we're still way lower and with a much much shorter draw distance. A 3080 does certainly a bit better, but will still be lightyears behind the framerates and draw distances achieved without raytracing. And I simply can't agree that the visual upgrade is worth losing over 80% of performance with DLSS turned on with RTX (otherwise it would be over 90% performance hit). And Minecraft is the only game so far where I consideer the raytracing really meaningful (maybe control also, but haven't checked that one yet tbf).

I do agree it looks beautiful. But just check the beginning of your DF video when he shows off the house, and look at the tree behind it: It's already partly in the mist from the short draw distance. It seriously reminded me to the N64 version of Turok in that regard. I simply can't agree that Raytracing is worth this massive tradeoff. Hence why I compared it to 8x SSAA, which also wasn't worth the tradeoff despite looking really good at the time.