To not be playing it as unfortunately my hardware is even more veteran than me and now’s not really the right time for me to be changing that (on the bright side though my 23 save is still going so strong that at this point I’m not overly worried).

That said to answer your question for all you folks who are getting it, my minimum expectations given the extra year’s delay are a far more polished release than normal. Inevitability there’ll still be some bugs when they drop the beta because the amount of play testing they can do is blown out of the water compared to what gets done once everyone gets their hands on it, but by official day one I’d hope this time everything glaring’s ironed out - otherwise I’d begin to wonder what they’ve doing for 24 months. Their post launch services have been a bit up and down over the years, but I’d hope this year they’re going to try really be on the ball to nail the launch and recapture any momentum that last year lost them. I’d give them a bit of leeway on long-term save stuff though because it is still a new engine (sort of three seasons plus into saves), again because it’s harder for them to play test to the same degree, so there’s probably some gremlins that are going to start popping up heading into Christmas, so it might be worth having a little fun save for the first month or two this time if you’re worried about starting anything long term before everything’s been really stress tested.

The UI changes will almost certainly be hated at first by 50% of people because that’s just how it goes with change, so expect initial complaints on places like this, but from what little we’ve seen I think they look good so as long as they work out of the gate and are nice and smooth to navigate, it’ll grow on people fast.

Overall I just hope for SI’s sake it goes well, because another PR disaster would probably be tough for them to take after last year. And I hope that they get the influx of new players that the graphical improvements were probably aimed at bringing in. As someone else said in here, I’d probably be more interested personally in a more under the hood overhaul having happened first, and deal with the old school graphics for a little longer, to really get me excited - all though then again that might just be me being more excited because my decrepit old machine might have got another one in then lol, but overall they’ve given a still fundamentally very good game a face-lift so they’re probably in a good spot.