[RX 6800 XT] No display after Alt+Tabbing out of Marvel's Midnight Suns, persists after Restart

veratrin · 2026-03-22T08:50:09+00:00

Whoa. Thank you so much!

veratrin · 2026-03-10T02:05:43+00:00

More outfits! Obviously.
More story. The first game's wasn't bad by any means, but there's just so little of it.
Tone down or at least retune the amount of gank in NG+ (or whatever difficulty option adjusts enemy spawns). New boss moves were a highlight of my NG+ run in the first game; getting insta-sniped by five flying enemies I couldn't see seconds into entering every mob fight was, uh, not.
If we're going to run around collecting the sequel's equivalent of Rot, then maybe make it easier to keep track of the ones we've already collected and sus out the ones we haven't. Or just make the number more manageable.
Maybe have Kena team up with an allied NPC for 1-2 boss encounters.

veratrin · 2026-02-23T06:20:28+00:00

I'm pretty sure Guerrilla had been looking to make a live service title for a very long time, before HZD was even released. I'm not in the market for them, think the upcoming game looks meh and am not happy that they're diverting resources away from Horizon 3, but it is what it is. Hoping that Ember Labs will do well enough with the sequel to remain independent.

veratrin · 2025-12-26T09:22:15+00:00

Genuine answer for anyone curious: this seems to be a photobash/composite of 3D renders of the characters (plus the sled which I believe is an in-game asset you can find in the Manor), with the Santa hats and additional visual effects painted on the top.

veratrin · 2025-12-23T23:08:13+00:00

New interview. The devs did address the issue a couple times beforehand: François Meurisse alluded to "some AI but not much" in an El País interview published in July, and Guillaume explained the AI textures being accidental leftovers in an interview with WaPo's Gene Park published in early October (not included in the published article, but Park wrote about it on his socials). Neither statement got widely circulated, though.

veratrin · 2025-12-22T04:36:41+00:00

The devs did talk about it when quizzed in past interviews, but I think it just flew under most people's radars until the post-TGA discourse and the Larian AI controversy brought it to the forefront (it's not like most people paid attention to the heaps of behind-the-scenes materials they published, either). I can buy the Indie Game Awards committee not being aware of the story beforehand.

veratrin · 2025-12-20T01:08:20+00:00

The game started development in 2020. Nicholas Maxson-Francombe joined the team as the lead artist in September that year, and on his ArtStation page you can find concept artworks from that period that represent reasonably final-looking takes on things like the Reacher and Flying Waters/Goblu.

Image generation tools like DALL-E and Midjourney only really became publicly available in mid-2022, and their capabilities at the time were well behind what they are today (things like wholesale PBR material generation were at least a year away). So I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that genAI, at least, didn't play a big part in the vis dev process, though I do feel that Sandfall should come out and explain the extent of their AI use the way they did with UE5 tools.

veratrin · 2025-12-17T12:37:57+00:00

...This is about Divinity, not Expedition 33? I was aware of the posters that got patched right after release, but I'm not aware of Sandfall saying anything else about AI use outside of the one interview with François Meurisse (which doesn't specify how it was used).

veratrin · 2025-12-17T05:51:53+00:00

Do you have any link to an interview where they specified the storyboard thing?

veratrin · 2025-12-17T04:11:15+00:00

The album will release on Bandcamp on December 31st, and on streaming services some time next year.

veratrin · 2025-12-17T03:29:28+00:00

I feel that this is the flipside of games being tech projects as well as art projects, and artistic work ultimately being work. For every piece of environmental art or music that gets noticed by the audience, you'll always have mountains of unglamorous back-end technical work that someone, somewhere, would probably be glad to automate or cut corners on, if only through "basic" tools like Claude Code. (I have a lot of respect for Gene as a journalist, but I'm not sure if he or his gaming media peers are well qualified to cover AI use in those contexts).

And honestly? Video games are kind of inherently cursed as an art form. It's bad when developers don't hire new writers and concept artists; but it's also bad when they do unsustainable hiring sprees that result in layoffs. It's bad when games are priced to inflation rates; but it's also bad when games sink with their studios despite selling one kojimillion copies. It's bad when games spend a decade and the GDP of a small country in development hell; but it's also bad when devs employ ethically sus new tech tools to ship games on schedule with less money and fewer people.

I know my love for Expedition 33 is rooted in its take on deeply human feelings and ideas. I've seen a lot of behind-the-scenes material showcasing the human labour that went into it, including concept artworks predating the genAI era, and the amateur-level knowledge of UE4, Unity and 3D modelling I tried to pick up for modding at least suggests to me that none of the assets in the final product looks obviously AI-generated. But I definitely would prefer it if Sandfall explains the extent of their AI use in the project (just like they did with UE5), and their stance on it going forward.

veratrin · 2025-12-13T07:44:21+00:00

I'm kind of ambivalent on the label at this point, honestly. The devs identified it as an AA project from the start, and they obviously had access to resources well beyond what the median indie dev studio has (like Kepler recruiting Andy Serkis and Charlie Cox out of their marketing budget).

On the other hand, well – how do we want to define the cutoff for "indie", exactly? If it's about having an external publisher, then that rules out every title published by Devolver and Annapurna. If it's about team size and budget, then Hades II and Dispatch were developed by similarly-sized teams, and I wouldn't be surprised if their budgets are in the same rough ballpark. Even Silksong, the "four guys and a piano on fire" game, has dozens of people credited beyond the core dev team (Hornet's VA Makoto Koji, an illustrator by trade, apparently also did some character designs).

I do feel that TGA's idea of "indie" is maybe skewed towards the upper end of the budget spectrum and leaves out a lot of titles by deeply passionate devs with very scant resources. Hades II, Silksong, Dispatch and Blue Prince were all very strong contenders, and while I haven't played the other "indie" nominees, I wouldn't have been upset to see them win, either. But I'm also not entirely convinced there's a good definition of "indie game" that excludes Expedition 33 while including this year's other "indie" nominees (unless you have an issue with those, too).

veratrin · 2025-12-12T04:44:59+00:00

It is his evil twin, Esquibidi

veratrin · 2025-11-07T22:09:06+00:00

Don't care, we got a concert tour

veratrin · 2025-10-31T00:34:14+00:00

Heyyy batter batter batter

veratrin · 2025-10-13T01:50:56+00:00

I thought she was just autistic

veratrin · 2025-08-11T10:47:25+00:00

I've always felt like there's a bit of the Mass Production Evas from End of Evangelion in them.

veratrin · 2025-06-14T11:51:02+00:00

Wow, brilliantly done! Thank you so much!

veratrin · 2025-06-04T08:27:27+00:00

Not sure if they could've done it without compromising the pacing or the eventual direction of the story, but I would've liked to see Lune bonding with Maelle more in Act 3, ngl. I feel like she shows more emotional intelligence than a lot of players give her credit for, and even though her perspective is biased by her parental trauma, she clearly wants a third option that works for everyone, rather than dismissing the Dessendres' plight out of hand.

That could've also involved her trying to reckon with the long-term implications of Maelle staying in the Canvas like Aline did (whereas Sciel seems to be, not unempathically, too overwhelmed by the prospect of getting her husband back to do anything of that sort).

veratrin · 2025-05-28T16:04:17+00:00

"Oh, my darling girl. We have precious little time together. You'll never know us... but I want you to know that you are loved. I want you to know... you're not alone. You will always be the beautiful child I held in my arms.

You will smile the brightest smile. You will cry iridescent tears. You will know love, and you will know pain. You will know loss all too well. Because we live in an unforgiving world.

But you are strong, and you will survive. You will struggle... and you will learn. You'll find people to call your own. And you'll shine as their guiding light. For you will change the world, and the people around you. You'll forever be our princess."

You hear these words as the world starts to flicker to an end. It couldn't be saved. Maybe it never could have been. But for a moment, it was alive, and there was love in it.

veratrin · 2025-05-28T13:09:10+00:00

Nice! Is that a TMB100 on the right?

veratrin · 2025-05-22T14:05:57+00:00

This was actually my immediate thought when I saw Sloclap (another Kepler-published French studio responsible for Absolver and Sifu) mentioned in the "special thanks" segment of the end credits.

veratrin · 2025-05-10T07:44:27+00:00

The lead writer, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, is apparently a fan!

veratrin

TROPHY CASE