Concord's Shutdown, Indiana Jones, and Switch 2 Rumblings

The Closure of Firewalk Studios and Concord

This week's primary topic involves a significant industry shift: Sony has permanently canceled the live service game Concord and closed the doors on its developer, Firewalk Studios.

• The panel discusses the high-risk nature of the live service model, noting that despite the game being technically competent, it failed to build a sustainable audience.
• There is skepticism regarding the initial theory that the game might pivot to a free-to-play model, as the core design and character appeal were already rejected by the public.
• The host expresses deep concern regarding the impact of these corporate decisions on developers' livelihoods, emphasizing that the search for the next "forever game" often comes at a high human cost.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Impressions

We transition to a more positive discussion regarding the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

• The game feels like an evolution of older first-person adventure titles, drawing comparisons to The Chronicles of Riddick rather than modern Uncharted spectacles.
• It is described as a slower-paced, methodical experience that focuses on exploration, clue-finding, and stealth mechanics rather than constant gunplay.
• The panel praises the authentic dialogue and high-quality global illumination, suggesting that MachineGames is leaning into their strengths instead of forcing a direct imitation of other action franchises.

Performance Concerns: Mario & Luigi and Horizon

• Mario & Luigi: Brothership: The panel notes disappointment regarding the game's technical state. It reportedly suffers from uneven frame pacing and long, immersion-breaking loading screens, particularly appearing to struggle within the Unreal Engine 4 environment.
• Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered: On PC, the game is generally perceived as a successful effort, though with some CPU-bottleneck issues occurring in dense areas like Meridian. The panel highlights the visual improvements but notes that the original port's issues with cutscene playback quality remain present.

Disaster Remasters

"The whole point of remastering a game is to get it in just a universally better shape... it shouldn't run worse."

• The discussion touches on "disaster remasters" like Shadows of the Damned, which on PS5 reportedly runs worse than its backward-compatible PS4 counterpart in some scenarios, failing to maintain a locked 60 FPS despite a lack of significant visual upgrades.
• Darksiders 2 is also mentioned as having potential issues with memory leaks and DX12 shader compilation stutter on PC, showcasing the importance of proper technical execution in legacy re-releases.

Star Citizen and CitizenCon 2024

Finally, the episode covers updates from Cloud Imperium Games regarding Star Citizen and the Squadron 42 prologue.

• The team showcased new planetary tech, virtualized geometry systems to eliminate environment popping, and future plans for hardware-accelerated features like RTGI.
• While the visual fidelity is impressive, critics point out existing issues with shadow map stability, motion blur vectors, and depth-of-field artifacts that can temporarily break immersion.