@happygaming

Over the years I've generally heard file sizes get large by duplicated assets, unnecessary assets, and since the advent of HD, high quality WAV files for crispy audio. Even in 2006 when BD was brand new, 40GB was still limiting but nowadays the file size has no limit and I don't know if anybody is showing restraint. I guess its a better trade off than a compromised game (i.e. slower loads, compressed textures and compressed audio).

I guess I was naive in thinking the sizes would reduce. Makes the < 1TB space a hard pill to swallow.

Eurogamer: Sony reveals the install size of some of its PS5 games

Insomniac's Spider-Man: Miles Morales requires a minimum of 50GB, according to the PlayStation website.
The Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Launch Edition, which includes a remaster of Spider-Man PS4, is more than double that, weighing in at 105GB minimum.

And the eye-catching Demon's Souls requires a minimum of 66GB.

Uhhhh didn't they say SSD from the ground up is going to significantly reduce file sizes? I guess if SMMM is the same scale of game as SM 2018 then we have reduced the game by 50% but then idk how that explains the size of SM on PS5.

I got my hopes up for smaller files based on the Cerney hardware discussion from GDC earlier. Plus the reduced SSD storage limit shifted my scale to expect smaller games, but at this point maybe I should just wait for a better PS5 model altogether. This will fill up in 2 seconds.

Or if they aren't going to release a new PS5 within 12-18 months, maybe they can start getting Sony certified after market PS5 SSDs going into production.

I really liked GOD OF WAR but I also felt somewhat disappointed by the game and I honestly think I tainted it by beating it full steam ahead in one weekend. My little brother was visiting so we could play the game but we only had Saturday and until noon on Sunday when he was leaving so we rushed and the whole game feels like a blur.

I love one-sitting games, but this isn't the type of game that's better by playing in one sitting.

I like mostly everything about it including the direction they went with the story and the extremely simple but effective plot, but I do have two gripes.

1. Freya's acting was really damn cheesy and generally bad. I found her presentation more in-line with the older GOW games. She stood out like a sore thumb to me compared against the other characters.

2. The Ferry level was way too long and I didn't really like anything about it. It was a ton of fighting in a level that didn't speak to me in any way. It also happens to be by far the longest part of the game. In the grand scheme of amazing God of War levels, nobody is going to say "oh I love the one with the ferries flying around".

I'm insanely hyped about the sequel and I want to play this game in a more slowed down normal form but as of now, it's tied for my least favourite God of War game with Ascension. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing because all of the games are awesome.

@jdincinerator

Like most gamer-humour "git gud" is a bad joke. The Souls community I know was playing the game and reporting their findings on the Demon's Souls Wikidot forum back in 2009. The punishment element of the series is pretty subjective. For those adept enough to follow through with the functions, it isn't torture, it's more like discovery.

I totally respect how people don't like these games because they are tough, and I appreciate you and others resent those Dark Souls fans trying to act superior with their "git gud" nonsense, but that's not my experience with the community. I liken the early days of this series to something like Journey - you are discovering the unknown with complete strangers who you can't communicate with.

Let's not forget that the original game design for online play was like GOOD VS EVIL. Help a player go through a tough level and defeat a boss and you are rewarded handsomely. Sabotage somebody and you are also rewarded, but punished if you fail. Believe me, there were a lot of helpful souls who guided me through Demon's and Dark Souls on the first playthrough. Not everyone is an ass.

But yes, fair enough, the game is tough and I don't deny it. I also ate spicy lamb biryani last night and enjoyed that too haha.

Not sure if anybody has started playing it yet. Huber did some recent impressions on Frame Trap, which I'll admit are pretty vague in describing the game. I just finished Chapter 1 and I can safely say I got sucked into it like I have in the first chapter of every Don't Nod game.

It's like this small town murder mystery but it isn't treated like one which is actually a pretty great spin for the story. You play as twins and you both acknowledge something fishy surrounds the way your mother was acting before her demise. You have this supernatural mental connection between one another and you can recollect memories in places that really wring out your emotions, like an old hiding spot you'd play in as kids. Here's an example below:

There is a pseudo-twist here in that your memories might not be entirely reliable. For example, as you extract info from the denizens in town, you are challenged with two differing recollection of the same event, and it seems like it might temper your relationship with your sibling depending on which memory you choose.

It's cool because there is this unspoken of tension where the siblings Tyler and Alyson might be unreliable narrators or something, but I'm not far enough to prove that theory yet.

I'd like to give a nod to the art direction. This is their best work so far. Alyson is an especially great character model who fits perfectly into small town Alaska. Same goes for Tyler, but I just think Alyson is a really great looking character. I just believe the both of them so much more than other characters from LiS. Generally speaking, these are some of my favourite character designs in a while.

Tyler -

Alyson -

And Don't Nod seems to always have these little toys, stuffed animals, and other little mini-characters that are so great. Here is "Trout King" (I think):

But they really did some awesome work with the environments themselves. Life Is Strange had this kinda cool but VERY low budget looking painterly art style. Life Is Strange Before The Storm has the ugly cheap plastic looking character models. LiS 2 has something between the two. Well, TMW just makes realistic looking characters and environments but then the backdrops have this painterly look to them. So detail is high res in the foreground and very artistic in the back. It work sooooo well for this Alaskan small town surrounded by trees and mountains. It's the first story-driven indie game I've played that looks and feels high budget while also having that indie game flare to it. It's really nice.

I thought I took a screengrab but I must've missed an example of that. I'll upload it later.

@chocobop

You just perfectly put into words another feeling I have with Dark Souls. The notion of getting attached to it in a way that I just don't get attached to games anymore. Dark Souls never lets you down because you are always building on that solid foundation which was the initial discovery of the game and everything in it. The Dark Souls sequels are good, but they have this critical flaw of being "NOT Dark Souls", so by default, I lose this ability to form a bond with those games.

I can safely say, Dark Souls is probably the last game I've ever sort of memorized in the sense I've played it so much that it's comforting in more way than the game itself. I just don't have that with any game anymore.

@phbz I just mean from a raw inventory standpoint we're talking like 20+ fully fledged levels that can take hours to conquer, have so many secrets and branching paths, and to top it all off, are interconnected.

I'll take these handcrafted levels over some open world field any day.

From the Dark Souls Fextralife Wiki - take in all of these locations. These aren't some tiny ass Mario Odyssey hop skip and a jump levels either. These are full blown deeply different and robust levels.

I don't have the words to explain what I mean but when you are in any one of these levels, it's so hard to imagine where you'll go
forward towards and it's amazing thinking how far from the Firelink Shrine (starting area) you've come:

I said it before but my Top 5 may as well be interchangeable. Dark Souls is one of the best games I've ever played.

Now that so much time has passed, we forget that Dark Souls is the spiritual successor to Demon's Souls and I really look forward to people noticing how much Dark Souls lifted and essentially remade parts of Demon's when they play it for the first time on PlayStation 5. I played the series in chronological order so a lot of Dark Souls felt like finesse upon Demon's but people started the series right on Dark Souls so I think people will really appreciate this upcoming remake of Demon's to see the origins.

I have a small handful of games "memorized" and Dark Souls is one of them. I can get through the game really damn fast, I know all the good farming strategies, and nothing will catch me by surprise anymore. It's a relatively modern game that has that old school vibe where there are "levels" instead of a completely non-linear open world. The levels feel different from one another. You aren't doing one singular thing in this game and progression feels like this epic journey where scrub demon's can punish you in the first 3 hours then barely damage you in the final hours. Some new twist is always being thrown at you and throughout 60-80 hours that a first playthrough will take, you're always on your toes.

One of my favourite things about Dark Souls is the feeling it evokes. When you are in, say, Darkroot Basin (a dark dank forest undeath a medieval fantasy city), you can't imagine yourself anywhere else. You're IN that part of the world and it took a lot to get there and it'll take a lot to get out. So when you eventually advance to Anor Londo and can see how tiny the forest is, you feel the scale of your journey and how far you've come along. Same goes with late game areas like the Tomb of Giants, a pitch black cavern that overlooks an early game level down below. You can say to yourself - holy shit I was down there 15 hours ago!

https://www.polygon.com/2020/9/18/21445454/cyberpunk-2077-minimum-recommended-pc-specs

Both minimum and recommended specs are quite modest. You can happily play this game on a card from like 2012. Not sure why people thought this game would require insane hardware considering CDPR are technical wizards but I bet this gave plenty of PC owners a sigh of relief.