With only the odd exceptions such as “Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart” and the ‘Enhanced Edition of “Metro Exodus,” we’ve yet to see many games cut free of the shackles of older hardware and thus have to be designed to accommodate those past generations.
That’s about to change as a good portion of the major video game titles for 2023 are being designed as titles that require next-gen hardware. Thus if you don’t have a PS5, an Xbox Series X|S or a PC with a high powered graphics card (ie. with ray tracing and AI upscaling) and a fast enough solid-state drive – then it’s not going to work.
This past weekend came the official announcement of another of that ilk with “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor,” the sequel to 2019’s best-selling “Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order”. Respawn Entertainment’s prior title was developed for the previous-gen consoles, but this one is not going that route at all.
Speaking with the “Star Wars” official site, the game’s director Stig Asmussen discussed how putting in that hard limit has impacted not just the game design but the gameplay as well. Certainly, it sounds like, for developers at least, it’s easier going if you only build for the newer hardware and gives them more time to test and tweak things:
“So I think the biggest thing is ray tracing, or lighting. That’s allowing us to do real-time lighting, all the time, at a fidelity that’s well beyond anything that we’ve ever produced before. Since it’s real-time, we get to see the changes as we tweak the lights – immediately, essentially. That means that we have more time to polish, that means that we can iterate more, and we can get better results that feel more filmic.
Beyond that, we have these blazing fast drives on these consoles that are allowing us to load tons of content really quickly. I’ve always worked on streaming games – games that don’t have load screens. The fact that these consoles have such fast storage has made it even easier. Those are probably the two biggest benefits. PlayStation 5 has some really interesting haptics on their controller that we’re digging into, and it’s just an easier process in general.”
Asmussen adds that the game will boast more vibrant worlds and a darker tone than the previous title. “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is expected to score a release sometime in 2023.
