Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2019 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

Localization is a word for a number of processes all to do with ensuring a game is ready for a specific local market. This includes everything from creating a translation that stays faithful to the originally intended meaning, to cutting and amending content in line with different countries’ laws. The Yakuza series’ great localization is an important factor in its success, and so I asked localization producer Scott Strichart about the pitfalls of his job. In order to localize a game correctly you need to have two things: Text and context. As with any big creative project on a schedule, you unfortunately don’t necessarily get both at the same time. “Until recently, we’d never started localization prior to the game being done in Japan, which was amazing, because we could just boot…

BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT Arkham Knight begins with the cremation of Rocksteady’s iconic Joker, setting the tone for the rest of the campaign. In your second playthrough, Joker still burns—until his corpse begins laughing in a final surprise. BASTION One of the narrator’s final statements in a Bastion ending is “Maybe I’ll see you in the next one.” The first words in its NG+ are “…I’ll see you in the next one”, echoing from your previous playthrough. DARK SOULS II: SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN The Duke’s Dear Freja is a spider-summoning abomination. In NG+ she appears earlier in Brightstone Cove Tseldora, springing over the cliff when you expected to find a bonfire. THE QUIET MAN A patch released a week after the game’s initial release added sound and dialogue to…

PLAYED IT Ancestors is the first game from Panache, a Montreal-based developer co-founded by Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Désilets. It features a historical setting and climbing large, vertical environments, but the twist here is that the game is set 10,000,000 years in the distant past. You don’t play an assassin, you play as an ape. And you aren’t climbing buildings in ancient cities, you’re climbing vast prehistoric trees. “It all started from the need to build up a toolbox for a brand new studio,” says Désilets, who worked on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the first two Assassin’s Creed games with Ubisoft. “People say I’m the historical open world guy, right? But, really, what I do is create characters who interact with 3D worlds. “The Prince in…

1 Using the landscaping tool you can place grass, sand, rocks, and other types of terrain in habitats, but you can’t just do what looks nice. You have to consider what kind of environment each animal likes. 2 Paths are important, because not only do your guests need to actually see your animals, but the keepers need a clear, efficient route between the habitats to keep them clean and the animals fed. 3 You’ll need other forms of entertainment to keep your guests happy, including places for them to spend money: Restaurants, gift shops, and so on. Better make sure you have plenty of toilets too. 4 This water is filthy, which means you either don’t have a nearby water purifier, or it’s broken down. While some animals don’t mind…

Dark Souls bosses are a beautiful marriage of fiction and encounter design. By the time you find Knight Artorias in Dark Souls ’ expansion his background has already been well established in item descriptions and scraps of conversation. You know he’s one of Lord Gwyn’s four most trusted knights. He’s an unparalleled master of the greatsword. He is known as the “Abysswalker”. Gradually you piece together the story of a loyal warrior doomed by his own unwavering determination and sense of duty. It’s also a sad story about a man and his dog. There’s a chance you’ve already seen Artorias in cover art or imagery surrounding Dark Souls. It’s a strong look. He hunches over and balances his greatsword across his stooped shoulders. His face is lost in a blue hood. His shattered left…

I am an asshole. Yes! Wallow in my lake of apathy, noobs. Why am I such a bad man? It’s simple—I’ve mastered cheap Dark Souls kills. I’m not talking about nonsense. I’m not a forest ganker (though I did build an anti-gank sorceror glass cannon, but that’s another story). What I am… is a bit of a clown. One of the aspects of Dark Souls that, to my mind, never gets enough credit is the humor. Yes, you die over and over, but sometimes, isn’t it just a pratfall? I’m not the only player that’s seen “YOU DIED” and responded with a chuckle. And I took that attitude into PvP. Initially it was all about winning and then… I realized you could do much more interesting things. One of the brilliances of…

Tropico 6 is a great game for people watching. It’s a satirical city builder in which every one of the citizens of your banana republic is simulated. You place a mine. You watch as a construction crew makes their way over to the building site. You watch as the newly constructed mine’s employees start digging for gold or coal or uranium or whatever. And you watch as teamsters come to take the raw materials to a factory for processing. When it’s all going well, there’s a calming rhythm to the bustle of your island. When it’s not, you find yourself scouring around the map, trying to diagnose problems. Why hasn’t the mine been built? Why haven’t the goods been transported? Why is the processing plant out of raw materials? Why…

Resolution and FPS A pixel is the most basic unit of a digital image—a tiny dot of color—and resolution is the number of pixel columns and pixel rows in an image or on your display. The most common display resolutions today are: 1280x720 (720p), 1920x1080 (1080p), 2560x1440 (1440p), and 3840 x 2160 (4K or ‘ultra-HD’). Those are 16x9 resolutions—if you have a display with a 16x10 aspect ratio, they’ll be slightly different: 1920×1200, 2560x1600, and so on, while newer ultrawide displays can be 2560x1080, 3440x1440, etc. Frames per second The FPS is the number of images generated each second. It’s not the same as the refresh rate—the number of times your display updates per second, measured in hertz (Hz). 1 Hz is one cycle per second, so the two measurements…

Anti-aliasing settings almost always include a series of values: 2x, 4x, 8x, and so on. The numbers refer to the number of color samples being taken, and in general, the higher the number, the more accurate (and computationally expensive) the anti-aliasing will be. Then there’s the special case of the ‘Q’. CSAA attempts to achieve a quality better than or equal to MSAA with fewer color samples, so 8xCSAA actually only takes four color samples. The other four are coverage samples. 8QxCSAA, however, bumps the number of color samples back up to eight for increased accuracy. You’ll rarely encounter CSAA these days, so let’s call that a fun fact.…

DIALOGUE FOR DUBBING Dubbed dialogue in games isn’t always identical with written text. To make it natural, words are changed or omitted. GORE To ensure games receives a certain content rating, gore may be removed or turned into an optional component. SYMBOLS Certain symbols may be forbidden. The ban on swastikas in Germany is a good example that also applies to games. OFFENSIVE MATERIAL Insensitive material or slurs may be removed. Future Yakuza remakes will, for example, cut transphobic content.…

FIRST LOOK Once upon a time, lavish martial arts adventure Shenmue was the most expensive videogame ever made. So expensive that when it failed to live up to sales expectations it contributed to the demise of the Dreamcast. A sequel was released in the west on the original Xbox, but it couldn’t stop the inevitable—Shenmue was, essentially, dead. Which makes the existence of a third game something of a miracle. Almost 20 years later, after tireless campaigning from the game’s vocal and dedicated fanbase, Ryo Hazuki’s story will continue. Creator Yu Suzuki is back at the helm, and the story picks up where it left off in Shenmue II. Ryo finds himself in rural China, on the trail of Lan Di, the man who murdered his father. Shenmue III raised…

“WE HAVE TO MAKE SURE PLANET ZOO ABIDES BY THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PLANET FRANCHISE” The next game from Frontier, the creator of Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster , is a zoo simulator. It makes sense, really. The developer has created zoo management games in the past, and it feels like a natural extension of the Planet series. But Planet Zoo it’s a very different game from Planet Coaster , with a focus on caring for animals, ecology, and preservation over the immediate, gut-churning thrills of a theme park. “They both have a lot in common,” explains Piers Jackson, Planet Zoo’s game director. “They’re both part of the same Planet franchise, of course, but we have a very different focus here. Planet Coaster has a heavy engineering focus, on rides. But here we have a heavy welfare focus on the…

WHEN CHRIS WILSON WAS CALLED A NOOB IN HIS OWN GAME, PATH OF EXILE, HE KNEW IT WAS GOING PLACES. BEFORE THE GRINDING GEAR GAMES CO-FOUNDER HAD GONE TO BED, ON THE FIRST NIGHT OF PATH OF EXILE’S CLOSED ALPHA TEST, HE WAS RUNNING THE HIGHEST LEVEL CHARACTER IN THE GAME. WHEN HE WOKE UP, HE HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF BEING INSULTED BY THE PLAYER WHO DEPOSED HIM. The thing we were worried about with our closed alpha was whether or not people would actually keep playing overnight,” Wilson recalls. “This was basically us inviting our friends and family to play, and they’d play for a few hours to humor us. But if this person was willing to call in sick the next day and not go to work because…

Welcome back to Kamurocho. Things are different here now. The Tojo Clan is in disarray after the events of Yakuza Kiwami , Majima has started a construction company, and there’s Virtua Fighter 2 in the arcades. But more dramatic than any of these small developments is Yakuza Kiwami 2 ’s big change—the series’ new Dragon engine, and the many improvements and tweaks that it brings. Yakuza is an economical series that rarely reinvents the wheel. It often reuses assets and animations, because the focus is always on the same handful of districts, and the small ways they change over the course of decades. Kiwami 2 is still a Yakuza game, which means it’s still a crime drama interspersed by fights, exploration, minigames, and substories full of slice-of-life character moments that help humanize protagonist Kiryu—making him more…

Before I became familiar with Japanese media, I associated courtroom dramas with the no-nonsense rulings of Judge Judy or the uber-serious suspense of A Few Good Men. Meanwhile, in Japan’s fictional courtrooms, the silly and the dramatic is found in equal measure, making it a hugely popular genre. This is especially true of Ace Attorney , which imbues its trials with all the visual and stylistic trappings of an engaging anime serial. Ace Attorney is the latest in a line of HD remasters of Capcom’s previously console-only games. Prior to Ace Attorney, hardly any visual novels were officially localized, and even now it’s still a niche that more commonly brings to mind dating games over adventure. Ace Attorney’s courtroom setting and goofy humor still set it apart, both from visual novels and…

MALINDY HETFELD THIS MONTH Found that some people are too sick for sick grinds. ALSO PLAYED Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Slay the Spire There are games that turn the people around me all gooey with warm nostalgia. Jet Set Radio is one of them. Playing it, I immediately see why. It has so much style—like Katamari Damacy from the same era—and feels effortlessly silly in the way that most modern games by big publishers simply aren’t allowed to be. Where I grew up, we didn’t have youth culture or counterculture, or really much of any culture. On Friday evenings we had pints at Petra’s Pancake House. When it got warmer outside we took six-packs of beer down to the pastures by the river. In those days I imagined the cool teens looked like the…

Because it determines the number of pixels your GPU needs to render, resolution has the greatest effect on performance. This is why console games which run at 1080p often upscale from a lower rendering resolution—that way, they can handle fancy graphics effects while maintaining a smooth framerate. I benchmarked the Shadow of Mordor resolutions to the left (all settings on maximum) on the Large Pixel Collider with two of its four GTX Titans active, to show how much resolution affects performance. Shadow of Mordor resolution benchmarks (2x Nvidia GTX Titan SLI)…

I used Batman: Arkham City’s benchmarking tool to test a few older anti-aliasing methods: MSAA, FXAA, and TXAA. The results show, as expected, that FXAA is the least resource intensive, while MSAA and TXAA cause a significant drop in average framerate over no anti-aliasing. Some more modern games don’t give you much of a choice. Battlefield 5, for example, offers me two TAA quality options. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey offers low, medium, high, and adaptive options. Batman: Arkham City AA benchmarks (2x Nvidia GTX Titan SLI)…

BioShock Infinite texture quality benchmarks (2x Nvidia GTX Titan SLI) Quality settings What quality settings actually do will vary between games. In general, they raise and lower the complexity of game assets and effects, but going from ‘low’ to ‘high’ can change a bunch of variables. Increasing the shadow quality, for instance, might increase the shadow resolution, enable soft shadows as well as hard shadows, increase the distance at which shadows are visible, and so on. It can have a significant effect on performance. Texture quality, which lowers and raises the resolution of textures, tends to affect performance and visual quality a lot. I benchmarked BioShock Infinite with all settings set to high, changing only the texture quality, to get a sense of how expensive it is. That’s an average…

For years, every tweet by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has had variations of the same reply under it, “What about Borderlands 3 ?” And at this year’s PAX East, those fans’ prayers were answered. Borderlands 3 is due for release on September 13, 2019 and will feature a loot system that will, if Gearbox is to be believed, generate a billion guns. A suitably chaotic trailer, opening with the words “MAYHEM IS COMING”, shows a refinement of the series’ trademark comic book art style. It’s mostly business as usual: Mad Max-style car chases in the desert, masked bandits, shanty towns, and big, silly guns. But there are a few enticing glimpses of new environments, including a neon-lit futuristic city and a green, swampy biome. Oh, and Claptrap is back, because of course he is. Borderlands 3…

PLAYED IT Music is an essential part of any game, and its role has grown from mere background accompaniment thanks to advances in adaptive music and the popularity of rhythm games. With No Straight Roads, Metronomik wants to deepen the relationship between games and music further. “WE REALLY WANT TO TEACH PLAYERS THAT THEY’RE MORE MUSICAL THAN THEY THINK” I’ve no sooner shaken Wan Hazmer’s hand than we start exchanging our favorite rhythm games. Yet as much as he loves them, the Metronomik co-founder reckons that we too often conflate games about music with rhythm games—a genre players who don’t think themselves musical tend to shy away from. No Straight Roads is an action game first and foremost. You take control of Mayday and Zuk who together form a rock…

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Dark Souls lore is its ambiguity. Cutscenes are scant, and your main source of story signposting comes from item descriptions and vague backstories drip-fed by its NPCs. Everything is open to interpretation, then, and in a circular world that’s doomed to repeat itself, crossover between series instalments is inevitable. With all of that in mind, here’s a collection of easily overlooked Souls lore stories, away from its mandatory bosses and central nomads. GRIGGS OF VINHEIM AND HIS SEARCH FOR BIG HAT LOGAN Griggs of Vinheim marks our first insight into the complicated relationship Souls has with magic. He is searching for Big Hat Logan, a sorcerer he claims is his master. Griggs will teach you about Soul Arts for the right price. Once you’ve learned what…

The enemy samurai fires a bolt from his enormous bow. I tap the parry button and slice the arrow out of the air. I know the shot is just cover for a sliding charging slash with his blade. It’s two quick strikes, but I’m expecting it. I tap the block button twice to deflect both with a loud ringing sound and a flash of sparks. A glowing red symbol tells me that an unblockable attack is coming, an attack that has killed me three or four times before. The samurai lunges forwards with a thrusting stab. I press B at the last second, and—this never gets old—my shinobi effortlessly steps on the blade and brings it harmlessly to the ground. My counter is rewarded by a loud boom noise. If…

Running a nation is dirty work. It necessitates bribery, blackmail, and occasionally spreading fear. You’re a parent, essentially. Imperator: Rome is Paradox’s latest grand strategy game, this time serving as a window into antiquity. You can pick a nation from the classical era and then paint the world one color: Yours. Supporting all that lovely global conquest, however, is one of the best internal politics systems the studio has designed, and one driven by characters. Assholes, every one of them. Imperator is a follow-up to Europa Universalis: Rome, Paradox’s attempt to shake up the series’ broad grand strategy formula with some features from the original Crusader Kings and Victoria. The concept is largely the same, this time uniting systems from the most recent games, yet Imperator is more evolution than spin-off, and…

Remember the last episode of Lost? Where several seasons’ worth of narrative groundwork was abandoned in favor of a series of nostalgic flashbacks and weepy reunions? You can see the sense in it—having written themselves into a corner, the show’s creators decided to tug at heartstrings. The Walking Dead: The Final Season attempts to pull off a similar trick. Unlike Lost, it’s a missed opportunity to connect more fully with its past. Whether this is close to the send-off that was originally planned for Clementine is hard to divine—but surely her story wasn’t set to wrap up quite like this. It hardly needs repeating that the team that finished this season isn’t the same as the one that started it (they’re credited as the “still not bitten” team, which feels like a…

EMMA DAVIES THIS MONTH Decided not to run for re-election ALSO PLAYED The Sims 4 I’m sick of real-life politics. Right now it all feels so high-stakes and important that I can’t bring myself to look away from rolling news coverage, but I can’t be the only one who sees the headlines and thinks they could do a much improved job. I have neither education nor work experience, but I do have a genuine conviction that I could make a better fist of things than current world leaders. Firing up SimCity , I put my money where my mouth is. Optimistically, I name my nascent tangle of streets SNAFUville. This, it transpires, is an act of foresight. As soon as citizens have moved here they start complaining. Case in point—electricity. They’re all…

Nvdia and AMD both offer tools to select the optimal graphics settings for the games you own, and both do a fine job balancing quality and performance. They really work pretty well, but I just like doing things myself. It’s the PC gamer way, right? We tinker on our own terms. If you’re new to graphics tuning, this guide will explain the major settings you need to know about, and without getting too technical, what they’re doing. Understanding how it all works can help with troubleshooting, setting up the most gorgeous screenshots possible, or playing with tools like Durante’s GeDoSaTo. We start with the fundamental concepts over the page. For the sections on anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, and post-processing that follow, I consulted with Nicholas Vining, Gaslamp Games’ technical director and…

If you draw a diagonal line with square pixels, their hard edges create a jagged ‘staircase’ effect. This ugliness (among other artefacts) is called aliasing. If resolutions were much higher, it wouldn’t be a problem, but until display technology advances, we have to compensate with anti-aliasing. There are many techniques for anti-aliasing, but supersampling (SSAA) is useful to explain the process. It works by rendering frames at a higher resolution than the display resolution, then squeezing them back down to size. On the previous page, you can see the anti-aliasing effect of downsampling SoM from 5120x2880 to 1440p. Consider a pixel on a tile roof. It’s orange, and next to it is a pixel representing a cloudy sky, which is light and blueish. Next to each other, they create a…

Bilinear and trilinear filtering Texture filtering deals with how a texture—a 2D image (and other data)—is displayed on a 3D model. A pixel on a 3D model won’t necessarily correspond directly to one pixel on its texture (called a ‘texel’ for clarity), because you can view the model at any distance and angle. So, when we want to know the color of a pixel, we find the point on the texture it corresponds to, take a few samples from nearby texels, and average them. The simplest method of texture filtering is bilinear filtering, and that’s all it does: When a pixel falls between texels, it samples the four nearest texels to find its color. Introduce mipmapping, and you have a new problem. Say the ground you’re standing on is made…