Daily Archives: July 28, 2017

My favorite cyberpunk stories are usually the ones about criminals and outsiders in situations way out of their league, and my least favorite are about badasses with future-guns shooting a bunch of cyborgs or robots or whatever. In between there's the third kind of classic cyberpunk story, in which an investigator gets too involved in a case and uncovers something they shouldn't while also confronting a bunch of philosophical questions about what it means to be human. It sounds specific, but that's genre for you. Observer tells that third kind of cyberpunk story, and is about as pure a version as you can imagine.

Developed by Polish studio Bloober Team and launching August 15, Observer is set in Krakow in the year 2084. You play Daniel Lazarski, voiced by Rutger Hauerpresumably cast on the strength of his performance in an iconic cyberpunk detective movie, by which I mean Split Second of coursewho has been cybernetically enhanced to perform neural interrogations, plugging himself into people's brainchips. It's as if he's walking around inside their subconscious, observing their memories and secrets. Observers are basically cops that can climb into your head. Yeah.

These hallways of the mind are represented as literal hallways. Bloober's previous game was Layers of Fear, a first-person horror experience full of mindfuck trickery, and that lineage is obvious when you perform a neural interrogation and find out it's actually super claustrophobic in someone else's head. In the part of Observer I've playedthe opening 10 hours or so, most of which takes place in an apartment building with a bad case of the murderseveryone I plug into is either dying or dead, and their mental landscapes are surreal.

Think Seinfeld re-runs are still on?

One victim works for the same corporation funding the Observer task force, and has been stealing data from them. Plugged in, I experience their fading consciousness as an Orwellian computerized job interview and a stealth sequence in an open-plan office, but also through more metaphorical scenes. In one, I have to cross a field where data cables grow like corn, while eye-in-the-sky camera drones patrol overhead.

At its best, the hide-and-seek pursuit stuff is reminiscent of Alien: Isolation, and at its worst it's every instafail stealth sequence shoehorned into a genre where it doesn't belong.

Sometimes things from outside their brain leak through, in such forms as memories of Dan's missing son suddenly overlaying the scene or a mysterious figure pursuing me through the dreamscapes. At its best, the hide-and-seek pursuit stuff is reminiscent of Alien: Isolation, and at its worst it's every instafail stealth sequence shoehorned into a genre where it doesn't belong. Two of the neural interrogations Ive played so far have involved sneaking. By the second I was hoping there wouldnt be more.

And wow does it get weird. Rooms repeat, I get trapped in mazes. Chairs and buckets hang in the air. Shadowy people-shapes, abstracted fuzzing representations of humanity, hurry past or block doorways. Sometimes lumps of flesh grow on things. I follow a floating screen and a glowing deer, walls explode into pigeons, and everything goes fish-eyed or wobbly like a Wayne's World dissolve. It's like being trapped in a Tool video. When the walls are breaking into shards that hang in the air or screens are flashing images of Polish dumplings at you, its trippy enough to invoke a full-on Keanu Woah!

Mostly though, it's hallways. It feels a lot like P.T., and after a while I start to develop a kind of psychedelic fatigue. More floating chairs? More old-timey black and white TV footage? Cool, cool. I'm glad to get back to the real world, even though it's a dystopian future Poland controlled by a corporation. Here, it's less horror and more adventure game, all investigating crime scenes and quizzing witnesses.

For the investigation scenes, Dan's cybernetic eyes kick in and I start scanning everything like I'm Batman with the detective vision, trying to piece together clues and find a way out of this apartment complex. It's under lockdown due to a disease called the nanophage because of course there's a cyberplague, and automatic security has trapped us all here together.

It's a long time to explore the one slum (and attached tattoo parlor), but worth it to get to know so many inhabitants. Their faces are obscured by crusty vidscreens because most of the tech in 2084 Poland looks like it comes from 100 years earlier (they even play a pixelated puzzle dungeon game straight off a Commodore 64), and through those screens I talk to a bunch of scared people hiding in their rooms, trapped in here with me.

They all have their stories, whether it's the guy going through holographic projector withdrawals or the widow who lost her wife to the nanophage. Cyberpunk is at its best when it's engaging with characters who usually get ignored in favor of people who fly spaceships. And even though Dan is a fancy cybered-up future cop, he spends a lot of time observing ordinary folks. There's even a confused guy knocked out of an extended VR session by the lockdown whos convinced he's a starship captain.

My favourite character in Observer so far is another ordinary person, a janitor. At first,my Dan is rude to him, a scrappy guy outfitted with junk cyber-parts, but then I get onto the janitor's computer and read his emailsbecause of course a cyberpunk game is about reading everyone's email. Turns out he's a war veteran whose current job excludes him from the veteran's group that used to pay for upkeep of his prosthetics. It's a common, relatable story: the people who most need help are ineligible for it due to bureaucratic nonsense theyre helpless against.

I see the janitor again later and choose a friendlier line of dialogue, and mumbly Rutger Hauer warms up to him. We stand in the courtyard while it rains, Krakow's skyscrapers and hologram ads on the other side of a wall we can't cross while we're stuck with the pigeons and glitching augmented reality data overlays that coat the walls like digital glaze. It's a moment, you know?

When Observer isn't being David Lynch's Blade Runner it's a detective game where you don't have a gun and can't fall back on violence, an adventure game that's all about talking to people, guessing codes, hacking computers, and opening doors. Like all mystery stories, a lot will depend on its finale and whether it ties up the loose ends in a satisfactory way. I'm not allowed to tell you what happens after you make it out of the apartments, so I stopped playing there to write this, but I'm itching to go back and hunt around for more near future philosophy, or at the very least, I hope to have more honest conversations with lonely cyborgs.

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Observer's cyberpunk hallucinations are like being trapped in a Tool video - PC Gamer

CD Projekt RED released The Witcher 3 back in 2015 and to this day it is one of the best looking games out there. The developer is currently working on a futuristic title called Cyberpunk 2077. The game is still far from release and there are minimum details available.

However, a new job listing has pointed out something very interesting about Cyberpunk 2077. According to the listing posted by CD Projekt RED, the game features Photorealistic graphics. The listing confirms that Cyberpunk 2077 developer is putting extra focus on the visual appearance of the title.

CD PROJEKT RED is currently looking for talented artists to join our environment art team in Warsaw to work on Cyberpunk 2077. The Environment Artist will create a wide range of photorealistic environments in futuristic settings, covering also physicalized objects and destruction models.

The artist they are looking for will be responsible for creating photorealistic environments with original textures using various tools and middleware. The game is also believed to be featuring destroyable environments.

This also indicates that PC gamers would require a hefty piece of graphics hardware to run the game. The Witcher 3 proved to be a very demanding title for PC users.

While amazing graphics and environment is something commonly found in modern games, there is one element thats unique about the new game.

Most games that are played on tabletops run a fairly simple group of classes, from warrior to barbarian to paladin to cleric to thief. The Cyberpunk 2077 classes, however, are going to be a little bit different. Based off the tabletop game Cyberpunk 2020, classes in the game include journalist, executive, rock star, and more.

Cyberpunk 2077 is releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. No final release date has been announced. However, its promotional campaign is ready to go.

The rest is here:

Cyberpunk 2077 To Feature Photorealistic Environments ... - SegmentNext

(Last Updated On: July 27, 2017)

Cyberpunk 2077 is a sci-fi RPG currently in development and has no gameplay footage for the public to see just yet, but the game has a lot of anticipation surrounding it. As of now, CD Projekt Red seems to be making progress on the game in that the team recently posted up its development team is expanding, revealing that the game will have photorealistic graphics.

CD Projekt Red recently posted up a new batch of job listings via Twitter for its upcoming sci-fi RPG entitled Cyberpunk 2077. The game has a lot of people looking forward to its video game adaptation, as well as the upcoming tabletop game that is set to release around the same time as the video game version.

Looking to step things up a notch from the Witcher 3 to Cyberpunk 2077, the devs behind both titles upgraded the third iteration of RedEngine (the companys game engine) to RedEgnine 4. The step in upgrading the game engine will obviously give the devs behind the upcoming cyberpunk title more room to add better features, like what one of the new job listings reveal which is photorealistic original textures. Additionally, games like Battlefield 1 and Star Wars: Battlefront EA uses a similar photorealistic system that produces graphics that will hold up well in the years to come thanks to the Frostbite.

In addition to the above, the job of the Senior Environment Artist is set to produce such quality graphics for Cyberpunk 2077 and is followed by more job listings:

Moreover, my being a gamer and a crazy fanatic of all things cyberpunk, Cyberpunk 2077 has my attention and many others, and seeing that the game is slated to come out somewhere around 2019 or 2020 means that a lot could go into this game thanks to the game engine receiving an update. This means that the game could potentially be unlike any other cyberpunk title on the gaming market.

Lastly, given Cyberpunk 2077 is using photorealistic graphics in an open world with destructible environments, it could be likely that the game will not debut for PS4 and Xbox One, but the generation of consoles afterward given that the devs want to release it for the latest consoles and for PC when it is complete.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Team Expansion Reveals Graphics To Be ... - One Angry Gamer (blog)

Polish studio Bloober Team are working on a promising new game titled simply Observer. The game starsRutger Hauer, whose name will be instantly familiar to any fans of the original Blade Runner. We actually wrote about the game last year, however the new reveal today is Hauer leading the experience.

While Hauer starred as the leader of a band of murderous replicants in Blade Runner, hes kind of jumping to the other side of the equation with his role as an the eponymous Observer a neural detective that hacks into the minds of people in search of clues behind crime cases.

Featured above, you can view the games latest trailer, which showcases Hauers velvety chords as Detective Daniel Lazarski.

The cyberpunk horror story begins when you get a strange message from your estranged son, a high-level engineer for the powerfulChiron Corporation. Sound familiar?

Set in the year 2084, most of humanity has been wiped out and those who survived live in a disgusting, near-uninhabitable world that sees most people living out their days in drugs, or virtual reality. Each mind hack brings with it horror-like experiences how far will you go in search of the truth?

Here are the games key features:

Observer is launching on August 15th across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Big Papa Overlord at Niche Gamer. Italian. Dad. Outlaw fighting for a better game industry. I also write about music, food, & beer. Also an IT guy.

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Rutger Hauer Stars as a Neural-Detective in New Cyberpunk Horror-Thriller Game Observer - Niche Gamer