Coelacanth

The wildest thing is combining DLSS with DLDSR if you're running say a 1440p system like I am. Set your monitor to 1.78x DLDSR resolution, run your game at 3413x1920 and enable DLSS quality. In the end you render at 2275x1280 but end up with way better image quality than native, and the upscaling+downsampling ends up being a great anti-aliasing method since it sorts out a lot of the bad TAA blur.

I think preferring a lower-than-native resolution over DLSS as a blanket statement is a bit of a wild take, but there can definitely be problems like artifacts, especially in certain games. I'm playing RDR2 at the moment and the TAA (which is forced to High with DLSS) is poorly implemented and causes flickers which is definitely annoying, as an example. I played Alan Wake 2 on an older laptop that barely ran it and I definitely noticed artifacting from DLSS there, though in fairness I was demanding a lot from that machine by forcing it to play AW2.

Frame time will of course be impacted so if you're playing something really fast and twitchy you should stay away from DLSS probably. It's also less bad if you don't enable Frame Generation. Finally, both DLSS and Frame Generation input lag seems to scale with your baseline FPS. Using it to try to reach 60+ FPS will usually mean some input lag, using it when you're already at ~60 FPS to get 80-100 or whatever means less noticeable input lag.

It is definitely a smart move. But still, maybe we can retire the Asylum Demon?

It's definitely neat, and I think I'd be into it for a game like STALKER, but I think too much of CP2077's art direction and visual identity is lost with this. Cool to see, though, still.

In the long run it’s about the community. All the philosophical stuff people mega into Mastodon rant on about doesn’t matter to regular people if Mastodon doesn’t have the content they want.

In addition to content itself there is also ease of finding it and how it's presented. People on here tend to hate algorithms but honestly Mastodon never clicked for me because (when I checked it out) you were stuck with a chronological feed. I dabbled with it but like you I could never get it to serve me content I wanted the way I wanted. Algorithms can be dangerous yes and I don't condone Twitter's and Facebook's outrage baiting, but Mastodon currently just seems to demand too much work out of me.

I don't think it's as easy as just changing some names and moving on, mainly on a personal level. The attachment to this world has to be immense after all these years. I don't think Kurvitz and co. want to just make something set in a fantastical post-soviet setting, I think they want to work in Elysium specifically. At least that's how I would feel, were I in their shoes.

Second, there is so much detail in the world that both gives it character a and is most likely copywritable. They have to come up with new, legally distinct versions of the innocentic system, Dolores Dei, the Coalition, the >!pale!< and the isolas etc etc. I think it's much more likely they do something completely different than something akin to "legally distinct DE". Though if Kurvitz just ends up bitterly doing nothing but relapse on his alcoholism then that wouldn't surprise me either. Again, that's probably what I would do in his shoes.

I was under the impression that ZA/UM owns the rights for not just the game but the world of Elysium, though I am not a copyright lawyer or anything so I don't know what exactly is copywritable.

There were six writers, and dozens of other people, for most of the development of Disco Elysium. Why would it be any better for just three of them to get the rights?

As far as I know the world of Elysium was created and developed as a setting for a D&D game Kurvitz was DMing for his friend group starting from his teens. That group of people built it together over two decades. Kurvitz also wrote a novel set in that world, which released in 2013. The setting already existed and was pretty developed when work started on Disco Elysium the video game. If you want to get into the weeds I agree that people like Hindpere and Rostov have less of a claim on the IP than people like Martin Luiga and Argo Tuulik who were part of that campaign DMed by Kurvitz. Tuulik was the last writer who worked on DE remaining at ZA/UM, but he seems to have been fired the other day. The interview with him was a good read.

It's a sorry situation for everyone involved.

Kurvitz, his girlfriend, and his best friend all left together when no one else wanted to isn't really impressing me with how great of a person he is to work for.

I don't know what their personal relations has to do with their creative accomplishments, and it seems you are arguing a different point than I am so I'm confused. I'm not really concerned with how Kurvitz was as a boss and leader, I wasn't there so I couldn't possibly have anything to comment regarding the allegations (though from reading the interviews with the devs who were fired just the other day it seems the problems with the toxic work environment endured way past his exit so he can't have been the sole cause unlike what the corporate leaders claimed).

I do agree that it was lightning in a bottle and unlikely to happen again, but the state of affairs do change more than who gets to collect residual income from DE sales over the years: Kurvitz and co. are not allowed to do further work in the world of Elysium. Sure, if the allegations were true he would maybe not be able to hold another video game development team together, but perhaps he might write another novel?

Regardless of what you think of him and his friends, they together created the world of Elysium over the course of several decades, which is what makes it so rich and deep. What makes me most sad is that they're locked out of further exploring it, and subsequently so are we.

Sure, and many people forget Helen Hindpere (second lead writer) and Aleksandr Rostov (art director) also left with Kurvitz. And even then, despite Rostov being responsible for the overall visual style the Thought Cabinet was painted by Anton Vill, and I don't know for sure who made the portraits/skill depictions but it might also have been him (though they are more in the style of Rostov - see the 3 archetype paintings which were created by Rostov).

Look, I know it was a collaborative effort, but even disregarding the obvious centrality of these three people to the project the issue isn't really about that. Kurvitz has been working on this world together with his friends since they were teenagers. It's clearly his life's work. Just because he was allegedly a shitty boss doesn't mean he deserves to have the IP stolen from under him.

Even though I adore Remedy games, something makes me feel uneasy about hearing the CEO be so excited about finally having "two established franchises to grow". But I guess not every CEO can be Swen Vincke, and I am happy to hear Alan Wake 2 sold well.

Nothing in this article surprises me as someone who had followed this a while, but it was a good read all the same and it's always interesting to read first hand accounts.

What a deeply depressing state of affairs.

I'm personally not too keen on the playersexual approach, though this article does provide some interesting viewpoints from creators of a couple of games written that way. Still, this admission from one of those creators

“What ends up happening is it feels not only like everyone is a little bit pansexual, but also nobody even sees gender, which is not real. That’s not an authentic way to build the world. 

...and this from David Gaider

“We didn’t like how [playersexual] made the characters feel like they existed in service of the player; like they were there in the game to be a toy. [...] We felt like that wasn’t why those characters existed. That wasn’t the kind of game we were making. These characters were characters first, and they had their own stories, and the player could interact with them, but it wasn’t always about the player.”

pretty much summarize my feelings on the matter. And yes, I did feel this way about BG3 too.