DF Direct Weekly #157: Hellblade 2 Reaction, PS Portal Hack, Ambitious XeSS Improvements

A wide range of Hellblade 2 previews emerged last week, but what have we learned about the game and is the dynamic resolution 30fps revelation in any way surprising? John, Rich and Alex share their thoughts while also sharing reactions to the latest chapter in the PS Portal hack story and Nightdive's POed remaster non-April fool. Alex shares news of his experiments with Intel's PresentMon 2.0 - and how it will change our PC games and hardware coverage - while there's intrigue and some level of excitement surrounding Intel's latest XeSS news.

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0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:04 News 01: Hellblade 2 previews drop!
0:26:53 News 02: PS Portal hack patched before release
0:34:41 News 03: 90s FPS PO'ed getting Nightdive remaster
0:41:07 News 04: C-Smash VRS hits Meta Quest
0:52:03 News 05: Alex’s PresentMon experiments
1:06:57 News 06: Campaign demands: stop killing games!
1:16:19 News 07: Intel updates XeSS with revised modes
1:22:04 Supporter Q1: Would it be more practical to target 1440p than 4K for performance modes?
1:28:11 Supporter Q2: Dragon’s Dogma 2 has unimpressive NPC density, so why can’t it hit 60fps on consoles?
1:35:17 Supporter Q3: Why do some developers implement incorrect 30fps frame-rate caps?
1:43:36 Supporter Q4: Why isn’t low frame-rate compensation the default with 120Hz and VRR on PS5?
1:50:05 Supporter Q5: Could the PS5 Pro be powerful enough to run advanced path traced games?
1:55:04 Supporter Q6: With Microsoft potentially opening Xbox to third parties, was the 3DO approach right all along?
2:01:21 Supporter Q7: Would it have been better to forgo the PS5 Pro and instead shorten this console generation?

[dumahim]

Is John testing the limits of YouTube content ID by letting the Running Man movie play in the background?

[Accursed_Farms]

Thanks a bunch for the mention on stopkillinggames! As far as options, we're not trying to mandate any one way of preventing game destructions, just that SOMETHING has to be done for it to be in a playable state after support ends and thankfully this practice hasn't been tested in quite a few countries. The more complaints people file, the more we'll likely have something happen!

[Pavel-ibrq]

Johns beard is very bespoke and the best mid gen refresh we could have possibly asked for.

He shall now be known as - John Pro -

[jamesgaines]

Alex: You buy DLC and they just take it away.

Destiny 2: 🐸 🍵

[fkzgfk]

"Turn-based Hellblade sound compeling" - Alex
"Its really doesn't sound compeling" - Rich

[Wobbotherd]

The Stop Killing Games campaign is a great step. Most EULAs dont hold up in court, and many explicitly violate consumer protection laws in many countries.

[UmVtCg]

47:40 "If you spend a lot of money on it you're going to be passionate about it" That is the nail on the head right there John. It's the emotional bondage to a product that causes fanboy-ism. It's invested money as well as time which later turns into nostalgia.

[Nigel]

MAG and Warhawk are 2 online games I miss that were permanently shut down.

[-PVL-]

EULA's going the way of "Warranty Void" stickers would be truly revolutionary for videogames

[peteparker]

The invisible NPCs popping in is so ridiculous in DD2

[psinquisition]

Running Man in the background is an epic move by John

[koklusz]

I greatly enjoyed seeing Alex being genuinely hyped for prospect of trashing Jedi Survivor some more.

[johnsmith-vto]

You ever hear of the "law of constancy of pain"? It's this joking concept from Pixar computer animation, whereby even though processing power has increased exponentially, that processing power is simply used for higher quality rendering and more complex scenes, and as a result the render times have remained about the same for 30 years. I think that may be where 30 fps on console is at, and I'm not so sure it's going away any time soon, unfortunately - but at least we have 60 fps options in most major games.

[Cloysterpete]

Nice the video is in 2160p now! Makes for a nice improvement when you show gameplay footage

[kcmsterpce]

I am looking forward to next week's episode.
I haven't seen "Total Recall" in a few years!

[pensologohesito]

I hope the Stop Killing Games campaign takes off and makes it possible in the future for us to be able to sell or trade our virtual bought games. Now that is something I want for next gens.

[AndreThompson]

Is that the Running Man playing on John's TV? LOL😅

[StephenTheZ]

IMO the most important thing about The Crew not really delved into here is the fact that... It's literally a single player game! Ubisoft's marketing for it would make you think otherwise, but, the game is legit just a checklist style open world game (typical Ubi stuff) but you're in a car the whole game instead of being a human dude. Like seriously, when you load up the game the first time you're greeted with a scripted race + exposition dump followed by an expensive looking pre-rendered cutscene and then you're thrown out into the world to go find more story content.

To me that is why all of this is blowing up right now, cause even though the game had multiplayer it was all optional. This is just your bog standard Ubisoft single player game and it's completely gone now because of incompetence if we're being charitable or malice if we're being cynical.

[britishyankee]

Ugh, Hellblade 2 will be 2 hours of walking, 3 hours of puzzles, and 1 hour of combat.

[odinsplaygrounds]

Hellblade 2 looks to be as boring as it's prequel. Looks like they learned nothing and just doubled down on "cinematic", while completely putting gameplay and fun to the sideline. The original was already bloated with walking sections, simple puzzles and extremely slow, basic and boring combat encounters that all felt the same with similar enemies (just minor tweaks as you got further in the game). It really is one of the most boring games I have played through and I have zero hype for the sequel. No matter how good it will look, it doesn't seem to be able to escape what it is.