Forspoken PC Specs and Features Revealed, including 32:9 Ultra-Widescreen Support and AMD FSR 2

[DrezKill]

Why no PC demo?

Now there's a demo coming to PC: https://www.destructoid.com/forspoken-pc-demo-steam-epic-games-store-square-enix/

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Now there's a demo coming to PC: https://www.destructoid.com/forspoken-pc-demo-steam-epic-games-store-square-enix/

I saw that when I was on Steam this morning, getting Dead Space, but didn't have time to check it out. I'll try to give some time to it this weekend and check it out. Shame they didn't do that for The Callisto Protocol. Both are games I'm curious about, although we pretty much know how TCP turned out. If I get into that one it won't be until it's $19.99 or less and w/ all content.

 

[LazyGamer]

Now there's a demo coming to PC: https://www.destructoid.com/forspoken-pc-demo-steam-epic-games-store-square-enix/

Something new to check out, thanks for sharing!

 

[DrezKill]

Shame they didn't do that for The Callisto Protocol.

It's just a shame demos basically died out in general, on all platforms. In the 90s it was nice getting demo discs for PC and console games with magazines (where this behavior was not only expected but taken for granted), and I remember even in the 2000s some retailers gave out demo discs for games when you pre-ordered the games, or for other promotions. I figured in the Internet age devs were gonna go hog-wild with downloadable demos, but nope. Closest I saw was on X360 back during the 7th-gen days, especially when it came to XBLA games which Microsoft required devs to provide free trials for. Didn't see as many demos on PS3, but still more than in later gens. After 7th-gen consoles were lucky if they got game demos, and on PC that sh1t almost became non-existent. I have no idea how in the age of broadband Internet and large storage things have regressed greatly since the days of subscriptions to monthly magazines. So now that the devs don't provide demos anymore, the community provides them. Full game trials. Try before you buy, don't get f*cked over by devs and especially the publishers. Too many game companies don't give a sh1t about letting the customer try out their games for free, and using the quality of the game to sell the product. Yet when I go to places like Sam's Club, they still got old ladies posted up with food carts letting customers sample a wide variety of stuff. I used to go to retail stores just to play the video game demo kiosks they had set up.

 

[Denpepe]

I tought beta testing was the new demo.

Back in ye olden days games were (to some degree anyways) easier and faster to make, making a demo these days for games that take 2-300 people to make in the span of 3+ years might not be a viable thing to do anymore.

Aaah the good old days of shareware.

 

[SmokeRngs]

I tought beta testing was the new demo.

Back in ye olden days games were (to some degree anyways) easier and faster to make, making a demo these days for games that take 2-300 people to make in the span of 3+ years might not be a viable thing to do anymore.

Aaah the good old days of shareware.

It's perfectly viable for companies to make game demos but they won't do it because it's not cost effective. They have to spend more money to make the demo even if the cost is a drop in a bucket of making the game but more importantly, the demo is more likely to reduce sales because people find out the game is crap. Or in some cases the demo would only be a starting level (so to speak) where there is little to be done and it's not until you get out of the "starter zone" that the game picks up. In the second instance it's not likely to reduce overall sales but will reduce early sales until word of how good the game really is gets around.

 

[DrezKill]

Actually @SmokeRngs, you reminded me that I have played demos where the demo sucked but the actual real game was awesome. One example is Ratched Deadlocked on PS2. I pre-ordered the game, and got a demo disc as a result. The demo was so horrible that I canceled my pre-order for the game. After the full game launched, I got a chance to check it out, saw that it was awesome, and ended up buying the game. And beat it like a bajillion times since. So yeah, demos are not always the best indicators of a game's quality.

I also get that making demos can take time and resources away from building the actual game.

 

[MadMummy76]

I really don't understand how can a demo be terrible if the game is awesome. Care to elaborate on that? Did they change the game after the demo?

 

[DrezKill]

I really don't understand how can a demo be terrible if the game is awesome. Care to elaborate on that? Did they change the game after the demo?

I would love to tell you, but this was like 18 years ago and I can scarcely remember the details. All I remember is that I played the demo, didn't like it, canceled the pre-order, played the actual game later and liked it enough to buy it. I know it sounds crazy. I doubt I still have that demo disc lying around. My PS2 no longer reads discs anyways. You got me curious though. If I happen upon the disc maybe I'll throw it in the PC and fire up PCSX2 (or look up an ISO for the demo disc). It'll be good to revisit that demo after all the hours I put into the final game.

 

[LazyGamer]

Well, the demo is mostly gameplay - it's not terrible, runs smooth, looks good - but can't say that it's terribly engaging either.

 

[DrezKill]

Yeah I just finished the demo myself. Took me about 50 minutes. At max settings (except for DX12 Ultimate stuff like ray-tracing and VRS which I can't use on the 1080 Ti) at 1440p, the framerate ranged from the high 40s to the low 50s. The game pushed system RAM usage to around 14GB, and vRAM usage was well over 8GB, closer to 9GB. The game itself seemed aiight. Not terrible but nothing to write home about, or go outta your way for. It does have me interested in checking out the full game at some point in the future though.

 

[Elf_Boy]

I'll have to check out what having it all maxed will do...

 

[DrezKill]

(haven't watched yet)
Related article: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2023-forspoken-pc-tech-review (Only skimmed the DirectStorage stuff)

"One of the few bright spots of Forspoken on its PC are related to its loading times, which are excellent - in some cases, faster than the already near-instantaneous PS5 version. This is because this is the first shipping title with DirectStorage 1.1, Microsoft’s toolbox for cutting down loading times on PCs equipped with (ideally) NVMe SSDs running Windows 10 or 11."

"When loading the exact same save from the same area, we can see a 3.5GB/s (PCIe 3.0) SSD loads the game faster than on PS5 (4.1s vs 4.4s); with DirectStorage disabled with a command line option, the same load takes around 25 percent longer (5.4s), making it slower than PS5. That’s with a fast 12900K processor though; the same drive used with an older, slower Ryzen 5 3600 still benefits from DirectStorage (6.7s enabled vs 11.7s disabled) but loads do take longer. So DirectStorage helps, but CPU speed is also a factor. Similarly, SATA drives also benefit from DirectStorage..."

"Finally, Windows 11 offers better loading performance than Windows 10, with game loads finishing two seconds faster on Windows 11 with DirectStorage on (6.8s vs 8.8s), and essentially the same speed with DirectStorage off (~11.8s)."

"Note that the DirectStorage 1.1 standard does include GPU decompression, but this doesn’t appear to be used in Forspoken at present, with no GPU compute usage spike when the game is doing a dedicated load. So despite not using what is arguably the most interesting part of the DirectStorage 1.1 API, the game’s loading speeds are significantly faster than they would be otherwise."

 

[Grimlakin]

Sounds interesting. Did anyone buy this here and can give a impression? If you like the Assassins creed style of see light blob go investigate light blob, remove light blob from map, rinse repeat...