Daily Archives: July 4, 2022

Far too many home cooks are more obsessed with hardware than they are about software. What good is a $700 knife if your ingredients are sub-par? Half the battle of making your meals taste good has to do with how you flavor everything from skinless chicken breasts to chopped dinosaur kale. Im willing to bet that the spices and seasonings in your pantry havent been replaced since the tail end of the Obama administration. Plus, there are likely some untapped flavor profiles you havent even considered adding to your repertoire. Here are five secret ingredients that will breathe new life into whatevers for dinner.

Key Selling Point: New twist on a classic treat.

One of the easiest ways to improve a classic brownie recipe is to not try and reinvent the wheel. Instead, tap into subtle but surprising flavors. Chocolate is an art form in Mexico, where artisans still mill cacao beans by hand over centuries-old lava rock. Spice experts Occo have curated five spices to add to a bag of Renewal Dark Chocolate Brownie Mix. Once baked, these brownies will have a warm, satisfying finish, with a crackly churro crust to boot. Let's see a box of Betty Crocker pull that off.

Key Selling Point: An affordable splurge on the worlds most coveted spice.

What does luxury taste like? Oysters, caviar, and wild truffles have their fans, but pound for pound, saffron is one of the priciest foods on the planet. Luckily, a little goes a long way and gives everything from rice pilaf to ice cream base a summery yellow hue and unique floral fragrance and taste. While lesser brands cut the real stuff with fillers and colors, Moonflowers doesnt settle for anything less than deep red threads in its hand-picked offerings. If youve never tried saffron, dip your toes with Moonflowers, which packages its threads almost like jewelry.

Key Selling Point: Three summery ingredients that work great alone, and amazing together.

Brightland Cellars curates the best extra virgin olive oils, fruity vinegar, and floral-forward honey, and its Luminous Capsule is crafted to perfect for anyone looking to up their flavor game. It includes Awake, a robust extra virgin olive oil thats perfect for grilling meat, sauteeing veggies, or just using it as a dip for warm bread. It pairs well with Parasol, a raw champagne vinegar with a refreshing brightness that will make you forget about crummy old balsamic. The package is topped off with a jar of California Orange Blossom Honey, which packs both floral intensity and a citrusy punch. Use these ingredients separately, or combine them and add a smack of summer to dinnertime year-round.

Key Selling Point: Powdered version of your favorite hot sauce thats made to sprinkle on everything.

Your favorite hot sauce with the rooster on the bottle tastes good on everything from eggs to ramen, but cooking with it can occasionally throw off a recipe. This spice blend by Uncommon Goods comprises six different Sriracha flavor profiles including Black Truffle, Candied Bacon, Honey Garlic, Miso Teriyaki, Thai Lime, and Smoked Maple. Each of these will pack that familiar and satisfying nostril-searing spice thats great for adding to sauteed veggies, marinades, or just sprinkling over popcorn or air-fried potato wedges. Switching out your pepper mill for one of these six spice blends is an easy way to turn the flavor quotient up to 11.

Key Selling Point: Powdered version of your favorite hot sauce thats made to sprinkle on everything.

Theres no cuisine on earth that has umami down pat better than Japanese, and this barbecue sauce is the fifth flavor distilled into a delicious sauce. Bachans Original Japanese BBQ sauce will be familiar if youve enjoyed an omakase sushi platter or bento box lunch. Whats Bachans good on? Pretty much everything. Its versatility makes it play well with hot dogs, burgers, grilled meat, and even homemade California rolls. But considering the savory complexity in this bottle, its also great adding straight to your favorite recipes in place of BBQ sauce or ketchup. Plus, check out that kawaii octopus on the bottle how can you not want to score a bottle?

This post was created by a non-news editorial team at Recurrent Media, Futurisms owner. Futurism may receive a portion of sales on products linked within this post.

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5 Secret Ingredients That Will Seriously Improve Your Cooking Game - Futurism

"Any reports that the Celsius CEO has attempted to leave the US are false."No Worries!

In news that we definitely, one hundred percent believe, with absolutely no hesitation: Alex Mashinsky, CEO of anguished crypto lending firm Celsius, did NOT attempt to flee the US amid the ongoing bitcoin crash, as a Celsius spokesperson has clarified to Cointelegraph.

The company was moved tospeak out after widely-followed crypto analyst and investor Mike Alfred alleged, in a Sunday tweet, that Mashinsky had tried to board an international flight at the New Jersey's Morristown airport, but was barred from exit by authorities.

"All Celsius employees including our CEO are focused and hard at work in an effort to stabilize liquidity and operations," said the representative, in response to the claim. "To that end, any reports that the Celsius CEO has attempted to leave the US are false."

Alfred clarified that his intel came from an anonymous source, who claimed that the besieged CEO was en route to Israel.

The situation is very he-said, she-said, and some Celsius loyalists were quick to note that the allegation suspiciously comes on the heels of last week's short squeeze, in which holders of Celsius' native coin, called CEL, were briefly able to boost the price of the asset.

But honestly, if Mashinsky was attempting to skedaddle, it wouldn't be that surprising. His trading enterprise halted all withdrawals and exchanges earlier this month, placing it near the center of the ongoing crypto crisis. A lot of folks are unable to access the resources they put into the platform, and the company is currently under investigation by several state regulators.

And at the end of the day, whether Mashinsky was actually trying to escape the country and with it, perhaps, billions of dollars of responsibilities the fact that the accusation is believable enough for the company to feel the need to issue a response isn't exactly a promising sign for any organization.

More on the bitcoin crisis: Financial Planner Desperately Explains to Clients Why the Bitcoin Crash Is Good, Actually

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Crypto Startup in Crisis Insists That Its CEO Isn't Trying to Flee the Country - Futurism

"Its a Wright Brothers moment."Ticket to Ride

General Motors just started charging for rides in its new fleet of driverless Cruise model robotaxis in San Francisco last week, and next it plans to expand to other cities.

Its a historic moment, and likely a glimpse of things to come. There aren't a lot of companies with fully driverless vehicles on public streets, and even fewer are charging for rides. It was only back in March that federal regulators opened the way for fully driverless vehicles which, to clarify, now dont even need to come equipped with manual controls like a steering wheel.

"Its a Wright Brothers moment," said Cruise Chief Operating Officer Gil West in an interview with Bloomberg. "If you fast forward to next year and beyond, its rapid scaling of business."

Initially proposed in 2020, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officially enacted the ruling just a month after GM requested permission to deploy its driverless Cruise model on public streets. Now its robotaxis prowl the San Francisco streets, open to paying customers.

Many have raised concerns over the safety of deploying driverless cars onto public roads. In 2018, a self-driving car with a human safety driver struck and killed a pedestrian, an incident which was primarily blamed on the inattentive safety driver and catalyzed scrutiny of autonomous vehicles. The premise of self driving cars has long been that they'll make driving safer, but the data remains unclear, and a grisly accident during a trial like GM's could cast a long shadow for public perception of the tech.

And of course, the question of employment cant be overlooked. If autonomous vehiclesdo become ubiquitous, they could easily stamp out countless jobs in taxis, trucking, and beyond, with grim implications for the economy.

As it stands, all eyes are on San Francisco. What happens there with driverless cars may be the future for many American cities.

More on autonomous vehicles: BMW Posts, Deletes Ad About Sex Inside Self-Driving Cars

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GM's Robotaxis Are Now Collecting Fares with No Safety Driver - Futurism

Space travel is undoubtedly one of the most exciting frontiers in science, especially now that there's significant private investment from companies like SpaceX but it comes at a significant cost as well.

With launch rates in recent decades tripling according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as significant investments in space tourism, the damage space travel may do to the environmentmay no longer be as negligible as once believed.

In fact, if we continue on our current course, projected levels of increased spaceflight would damage the ozone and increase annual temperatures in the stratosphere by up to four degrees Fahrenheit, a new study by a team of researchers led by Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science scientist Christopher Maloney, has found.

The most problematic byproduct of rocket launches which the researchers focused on is black carbon, otherwise known as soot, which absorbs sunlight and retains heat. Accordingto the NOAA, rockets used in spaceflight currently release a baseline of 1,000 tons of the stuff per year.

Assuming a tenfold increase in hydrocarbon fueled launches within the next 20 years which the regulator asserts is in line with current rocket launch growth rates the researchers estimate that the resulting increase in temperature could cause changes in atmospheric circulation and reductions of the ozone, particularly in the northern hemisphere.

And that's a big problem, asthe ozone resides in the stratosphere and is strongly affected by changes in temperature and circulation. Combine that with the fact that the stratosphere is sensitive to even modest increases in black carbon, and you have a recipe for disaster.

"We need to learn more about the potential impact of hydrocarbon-burning engines on the stratosphere and on the climate at the surface of the Earth," said Maloney in a press release about the work. "With further research, we should be able to better understand the relative impacts of different rocket types on climate and ozone."

Space flight emissions are also potentially more damaging than airplane emissions, according to the NOAA, because theyre the only form of direct human aerosol pollution present above the troposphere where it can do the most damage to the ozone in particular.

Although we're still sitting at around 1,000 tons of rocket soot per year, the projected 10,000 tons by NOAA doesnt seem very far off. Of course, its possible that we develop cleaner methods of spacecraft propulsion but even then, will that be enough to offset the projected industry growth?

So while our sights are set on space tourism and landing humans on the Moon, we might need to come back down to Earth, literally, and consider if its worth the potential damage to our planet.

READ MORE: Projected increase in space travel may damage ozone layer [NOAA]

More on rocket launches and the environment: Rocket Launches Are Shockingly Bad for the Environment

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Space Travel Will Absolutely Gut the Environment, Scientists Warn - Futurism

For the vast majority of people who tinker with machine learning technology, the best they can hope for is that others in their community will recognize their work. Which was why it was so shocking to Boris Dayma, the creator of the AI formerly known as "DALL-E Mini," when his went viral.

Now, a chaotic few weeks and one name change later Dayma changed the name to Craiyon after OpenAI, the creators of the original DALL-E neural networks, asked him to the French-born machine learning expert tells us that he's mainly just happy to see what kinds of outlandish things people have generated using his creation.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Futurism: Is DALL-E Mini related at all to OpenAI's DALL-E?

Boris Dayma: OpenAI's DALL-E was actually the first model that was able to make images from text that were pretty good, and it came out in the beginning of last year, but it was not public. There was no code, no model, you couldn't use it. And so the open source community tried to replicate it, to build something that's the same.

In AI, when you build a model that is inspired by another model, we typically take it as a root name, and you add something. It's very common. For example, there's a model called BERT, and built on top of it are open-source modelscalled BART, ALBERT, CamemBERT. It's almost an homage to the initial model, right?

So I created DALL-E Mini, which was a small version, because DALL-E is a huge model and I wanted something small that, you know, anyone can use.

There's like 300 projects that use the DALL-E name, and I've just done the most famous one. But yeah, there's were a lot of others before me.

F: Did you change the name to "Craiyon" because OpenAI was pissed at you?

BD: No no, nothing like that. It was more that my model had been out for a while and it was time to change the name because it went viral. There's so many other models that use the DALL-E name, though, that I don't think asking to change the name was necessarily the best approach.

F: What do you think made your AI model go viral?

BD: Initially, the first version was released at the end of July of last year. At the time, it was not that great, but I was already pretty happy. I would input "on the beach under the sunset," and it was already pretty good, but you couldn't do very complex things.

So since then, I've been working on it to make it better. And I guess it reached a certain threshold of quality where it became viral. It already had a digital audience from that time, but more in the AI community. I've been sharing how I built it, my difficulties and my successes. A lot of people already knew about it, and there were already some users who liked to play with it. But I think it's reached a level where I was able to create those complex things that I didn't even realize that it was able to do.

I guess people just said "oh, it's good," and amplified it, and it became viral.

F: Are you familiar with a bizarre monster called a "Crungus" that the network generated, even though nobody seems to have dreamed up such a monster previously? Do you know what happened there?

BD: Behind the scenes, I set up the prompt and I'm the one who drew it. Just kidding, I didn't know about it at all.

You know, there's that Twitter account, @weirddalle, that is extremely impressive. People come up with crazy stuff some it's borderline a bit too crazy. But some of them are like, you know, trail cam of teddy bears rubbing a stone. It looks good. It's really nice.

F: How do you think this AI does with NSFW content?

BD: Some of the early models, not produced by me, they had some issues. Like, you would ask it something very innocent, and maybe it will produce some NSFW content. So I tried to prevent that from happening.

So far, based on what I see, it seems to be working quite well, for sure.

F: For our piece about the AI generating drug imagery, we got Craiyon to produce some wild images, like of Richard Nixon snorting lines of coke in the Oval Office, and it came out surprisingly well. Do you know how or why it takes those leaps to create such weird and spot-on images?

BD: I think it's actually surprising, even for the basic stuff like when you put the Eiffel Tower on the moon it's kind of impressive, what it comes up with. I'm actually still amazed at that. It works so well.

F: What's your favorite prompt that you've seen?

BD: I like to just follow that @weirddalle account. I think the creativity there is amazing. I also really like the trail cam images.

F: What has it been like for you as the model went viral?

BD: I'm surprised at how fast it grew and became really large. Initially, I was working on making models and improving models. Like that, you know, I was just busy doing that, and then there was a crazy amount of people who wanted to use it. And then I'd have to talk to the newspaper and reporters. It kind of changed my routine a bit, I guess.

I was working on my on my new model when Craiyon went viral and I had to put that on hold to try to fix the server being too busy.

But overall, I think I'm happy that that the reception is quite positive, that people overall have a pretty positive reception, which is nice.

F: What are you working on now?

BD: I'm still interested in making these models better, in reaching their limits. I don't know exactly what I'll do next, but I really like media generation. There's some work now with videos, creating videos, or maybe creating sound or music, that I think can be a great tool as well.

More on the darker side of Craiyon:That AI Image Generator Is Spitting Out Some Awfully Racist Stuff

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The Creator of That Viral Image Generating AI Loves All Your Weird Creations - Futurism

"There are companies that are basically too far gone..."Huffing Insolvents

Crypto billionaire and founder of exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into cryptocurrency exchanges to keep them from going under amid a growing crypto crisis, Forbes reports.

In fact, he argues, the crypto exchange market has already slid far further than executives are willing to admit.

"There are some third-tier exchanges that are already secretly insolvent," Bankman-Fried told Forbes.

In other words, the crypto market is doing even worse than you might think which isn't exactly confidence inducing, given the fact that exchanges are already in deep trouble amid the ongoing blockchain crash.

"Were willing to do a somewhat bad deal here, if thats what it takes to sort of stabilize things," he added.

The value of OG cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been plummeting in fits and startsthis year, wiping out more than $200 billion off the crypto market in just one day earlier this month.

Meanwhile, crypto lenders are facing class-action lawsuits, laying off thousands, halting withdrawals and even shutting downaltogether.

Making matters worse, the industry operating within arelative regulatory vacuum, making them particularly vulnerable to scams and hacks.

In fact, a number of these exchanges operating within and outside of the US have already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto due to hacks, Forbes reports.

Worst of all, at least according to Bankman-Fried, itmayalready be too late for some.

"There are companies that are basically too far gone and it's not practical to backstop them for reasons like a substantial hole in the balance sheet, regulatory issues, or that there is not much of a business left to be saved," he told the publication.

Where that leaves the crypto market or what's left of it remains to be seen. But billionaire investors like Bankman-Fried are likely to have the last laugh if the market does rebound.

READ MORE: Bankman-Fried Warns: Some Crypto Exchanges Already Secretly Insolvent [Forbes]

More on crypto: Yuga Labs Files Furious Lawsuit Against Guy Minting Copies of Bored Apes

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Crypto CEO Warns That Exchanges Are "Secretly Already Insolvent" - Futurism

What is that pose?Papal Pose

Never has a photo looked as awkward as the one Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his children just took with the Pope.

The billionaire tweeted the group pic yesterday breaking a prolonged absence from the site which shows four of his kids standing next to Pope Francis while the would-be Twitter head stood off to the left. There were almost certainly rules about distancing and not touching the Pope given the way everyone is all spaced out, but one of the youngsters did have time to thrust a victorious fist in the air.

Musk, though, is posed up like a Secret Service member on the first day of work who forgot to take four inches off the hem of his government-issued suit pants.

Plenty of Musk's followers were glad to see his return to Twitter after a lengthy break.

"Welcome back Elon," an obvious admirer said. "Missed you. Twitter was getting a lot boring without you. You, your tweets, & your presence makes Twitter an exciting, entertaining, & knowledgeable place to be at."

Others were less enthused, like the kid who's been tracking Musk's private jet for months now with an automated Twitter account despite previous bribes to shut down.

"Saw it coming," ElonJet said in response to Musk's photo.

The account said Musk's jet landed in Italy yesterday after a nearly 10-hour flight which could explain all the wrinkles in those pants.

More on bad decisions: Terrifying Video Shows Self-Driving Tesla Head Into Oncoming Traffic

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Elon Musk Takes Flabbergastingly Awkwardly Picture With the Pope - Futurism

"Other big brands are getting all the bread..."RadioWhack

RadioShack the once-bankrupt strip mall electronics staplewhich was brought back from the dead and turned into ablockchain company for some reason has chosen chaos for its social media strategy.

A scroll through the device retailer's Twitter account reveals someshockingly profane and absolutely NOT safe for work tweets, in a somewhat bizarre attempt to revive a name that was once synonymous with mail-order catalogues and car stereos.

"If you find a squirter marry her," reads oneromantic missive, presumably penned by one of the company's social media managers.

"Taking the second half of an edible after feeling nothing from the first half is always a bad idea," the retailer tweeted in an another unwarranted public service announcement. "This chocolate bar got me out here fighting for my life."

The account also took some profane shots at NASA, Wendy's, Jake Paul, and basically anyone who's into NFTs.

Which begs the question: what's with the sudden, uh, strategy shift?

In an email, a company representative involved with the tweets told Futurism that the new social media energy is part of a brand effort to revive RadioShack's name.

"RadioShack used to be the cool store that nerds went to back in the good old days," the rep told Futurism. "These days, due to the monopolization of the Internet, other big brands are getting all the bread so we're trying to get back into our game."

It's interesting to see RadioShack take such an extreme direction, especially as they've been specifically marketing themselves as an approachable crypto platform for boomers.

Seriously, their whole new shtick is that older CEOs are more likely to trust an established, old-school company.

"The older generation simply doesnt trust the new-fangled ideas of the Bitcoin youth," their official motto, announced last year, reads, adding that they were "seeking to woo" adults with "authoritarian, intelligent, and well-read" qualities.

In any case, we wish them all the best in their Twitter pursuits but we certainly won't be shocked if the approach ends up backfiring.

READ MORE: RadioShack, Now a Crypto Swap, Trends Over Profane Tweets [Newsweek]

More on Big Crypto Energy: Crypto Ceo Warns That Exchanges Are "Secretly Already Insolvent"

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RadioShack Is Tweeting About Drugs and Unusual Sexual Acts, for Some Reason - Futurism

Up until now, Julien Dossenas Paco Rabanne collections have been refracting a myriad angles on his modern-romantic ideas about French girls in the 70s and 80s; clothes for parties and disco nights, frequently with glimpses of goddess-y off-world futurism about them. So it was a surprise change of tack for spring, to hear him speak of chaos, a little violence, and anger and radical sensuality.

On a metal gridded runway his models strode out in heavy chain-lashed combat boots, babushka headscarves studded with metal grommets, and a wardrobe cut from latex and lace in searing colors, interspersed with lashings of black and bondage harnesses. On the soundtrack: a womans voice repeating Im going to make you sweat.

We were definitely somewhere a lot heavier than the happy, hedonistic Paco Rabanne disco this season. All the skills of the house went into fabricating a collection which called on the traditional playbook of subversion: grunge slips, punk kilts, fetish rubber, and wipe-clean raincoats, intersected with the house signature silver chain mail.

Dossena said it was his reaction to watching the war in Ukraineand even though it wasnt at the same time (as I was designing), what happened two weeks ago in the US; that now women may be forbidden abortion. Were the headscarves a direct reference to seeing distressed Ukrainian grandmothers on newsfeeds? It was more a combination of Queen Elizabeth and fetish, he claimed. But all of the toughness was completely intentional. Its about this feeling that theres going to be a fight, and its going to be a long one. So, its about expressing that passion and giving clothes for the moment to prepare to fight, because thats what its about: no apologies.

Originally posted here:
Paco Rabanne Spring 2023 Ready-to-Wear Collection - Vogue

When discussing the founding of Starward Industries, game director Marek Markuszewski brings up all the points you might expect from a new team. The company wanted to gather a group of experienced but still-passionate developers, all focused on the idea of creating something ambitious despite the studios smaller size. The surprise, however, comes from the studios approach to narrative. According to Markuszewski, Starward looked for stories that werent already exploited by media when figuring out its first project. It wanted to tell a story that hadnt been told.

Admittedly, where Starward landed was a story told before almost 60 years ago, in the novel The Invincible, written by Stanisaw Lem. In it, the crew of the Invincible spacecraft investigates the planet Regis III for its missing sister ship. There they discover self-replicating machines that, over time, become more hostile. It ponders questions about what it means to be alive, the ever-increasing role of technology in everyday life, and has more than its fair share of retro-futurism, proper nouns, and heady jargon.

For Starward, comprised of developers previously from CD Projekt Red, Techland, and more, it was the right fit for its narrative ambitions something dense and literary. And for what its worth, video game adaptations of novels are relatively rare.

In Starwards The Invincible, you assume the role of Yasna, a scientist. In typical video game fashion, the protagonist is a somewhat unreliable narrator. She knows shes a scientist. She knows she came here with a crew thats since gone missing. But many of her memories are foggy. A voice on the other end of an earpiece, that of the Astrogator, helps you along your journey.

Its all fairly standard video game fare, though the source material is an interesting starting point. Lem was known for his approach to hard sci-fi, and the world of The Invincible feels well-realized and believable within its fiction. Its perfectly conceivable to imagine it translating to a video game well, where players are incentivized to explore, experiment within, and discover the world around them. And for the next hour, with insights from the team, I have the chance to do just that.

My time playing an early pre-alpha build of The Invincible begins with Yasna exploring her surroundings, taking note of her findings, and reporting back to the Astrogator. Im looking for a lost convoy and perhaps other survivors. Things arent going well.

One of the most immediate things about The Invincible is that fidelity-wise, it looks great. Textures have lots of definition I can really tell these are rocks everywhere I look and the bright bask of the sun gives off a feeling of warmth as it bakes the ground around Yasna. Regis III mostly looks like Mars red, arid, dull. But in a way that drives home the desolation of the setting. There isnt much to do in The Invincible other than go forward and look around. The environment gets that point across.

So, forward I go. I can go around stealthily or move directly to my objective. I choose to take the direct route. After a short drive, I find one of the convoys vehicles trapped under a collapse of rocks. Yasna notes that the radiation levels in the area are high. I climb through the vehicle and out the other side of the collapse, running across a machine that will soon mean trouble: a mobile antimatter cannon. Well, two, to be specific. One intact. One destroyed. Nearby is a massive tunnel blown clean through a rock face. One final discovery awaits me: a corpse.

Yasna removes the onboard recorder from the antimatter cannon, and the scene of carnage in front of me begins coming into focus. Yasna sees the missing convoy marching towards its destination. Things seem to be going well. However, the plan goes awry upon reaching Yasnas current location.

One slide shows the team using the antimatter beam to make their own path through the rock, retrieving materials from the tunnel they created with the antimatter cannon. The next slide shows the convoy rushing out of their new hole. Another shows the cannon firing into the hole. And then, chaos. One of the antimatter cannons shoots at the other, obliterating it, before turning its beam onto the humans. As you might expect, it tears them apart. Its monstrous what the antimatter beam does to the human body, Yasna remarks. Finally, she looks at the final slide, a still image of herself just moments ago inspecting the cannon. Shes shocked but decides to continue her exploration, turning her sights to whatevers on the other side of the tunnel.

It doesnt take long to figure out The Invincible is a slow game both literally and narratively. It takes time to do just about anything, from walking to your objective (there is, thankfully, a sprint button which I found after some time in the menus) to listening to Yasna and the Astrogator talk, which they do a lot.

According to Markuszewski, this is a deliberate choice, which makes sense. The work of Stanisaw Lem is, again, dense. Lem is often categorized as a hard sci-fi author, meaning the work is focused on being scientifically accurate and believable based on current technologies and theoretical possibilities.

He was kind of a prophet, writing about things like [the] matrix, ebooks, Markuszewski says.

Internet, art director Wojtek Ostrycharz adds.

Internet, cell phones, marketing manager Maciej Dobrowolski pipes in. All those things, yeah.

It takes time for that information and exposition to be relayed to the player via visuals and dialogue. As Markuszewski points out, in a book, you can spend as many pages as you want to describe how something looks or a characters thoughts and feelings. Video games dont quite have that luxury; adapting The Invincible into something interactive has been a challenge.

If youre going with the much more conventional approach, like real-time action, leading a character, being in the place normal pacing, normal speed you dont have this stop-moment [to visualize] all the very attractive parts of the book, Markuszewski says. Its tricky to have really short slots for describing all the emotions or concepts [that we want to discuss].

Based on my time with the game, I think Starward could work on that balance more. Contrary to what Markuszewski says, I spend a large portion of my playtime doing very little, just listening to characters speak, occasionally choosing a dialogue prompt. If theres one major issue I have so far, it is the games pacing. Its hard to know how much Starward can fix this before launch, but with such an interesting story concept, its a shame that its delivered in often-tedious ways.

At the end of the tunnel, I find a little robot carrying a crate in circles around a cave. Yasna later notes the robot is stuck in his task.

Deeper in, I find metallic plants growing from the cave walls. Yasna and the Astrogator then debate the nature of biology whether or not the metal in front of us can be classified as alive or not if it lacks things like membranes, organs, and the like. All very heady stuff, with the jargon theoretical science fiction fans eat up, slowly doled out as you stand still, waiting for The Invincible to give you your next objective.

On my way to my new point B, my little robot, for reasons never made abundantly clear, breaks his loop and begins walking out of the cave. I follow suit, making my way back to the location with the two antimatter cannons. As my mechanical companion walks along his new route, making his way on a new adventure, the in-tact antimatter cannon springs to life. It shoots the robot, completely disintegrating it, before turning its cannon towards me.

I ready my hands to dodge out of the way, then to fight back, to save my own life from what would otherwise be sudden death. I remember those slides I slowly looked through, recalling the way it tore through the convoy. Im ready to use their failures to my advantage, to save my own life from utter destruction. On the other end of the line, Astrogator begins panicking, knowing Im likely mere seconds from death. Fight, he yells into my ear.

To not spoil anything, Ill stop short of revealing more of what I played. If youre excited for The Invincible or a fan of the novel, some of the narrative moments youre looking forward to come next. After this initial set-up and some further exploration, I will say that Im left with many questions about whats happening on Regis III and who is on the desolate planet.

My numerous questions stem mainly from seeing a later-stage mission largely out of context. One conversation between Yasna and Astrogator stands out to me the earlier chat about the metal plants, biology, and the human condition.

I dont think that particular moment has anything interesting to say or anything other games havent already explored in great detail, such as 2017s Nier: Automata, for example. But I do like a video game asking these questions if only because its a rare example of a big-budget game taking the time to explore more nuanced, mature questions, even if a specific moment isnt adding too much to the conversation. In its current form, I have problems with how The Invincible is telling its story structurally, but I cant help but feel like its themes are a welcome change of pace. And I feel thats exactly what Starward was going for that the developers want players to think about new concepts and ideas.

I had this one great feeling when I was playing Persona 5, where after an hour and a half of playing that game, I actually had to stop, go outside, have a cigarette, and go, Oh my God, I cant believe what this game is about, Starwards community manager Micha Napora says. Maybe people dont need to go at [it in] this extreme way go out and smoke cigarettes but itd be cool if they finish the game and maybe thought about some things that they didnt think about before.

This article originally appeared in Issue 346 of Game Informer.

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Inside The Invincible - Game Informer