AMD didn’t provide much by way of performance comparisons, but it’s promising that the cards have the same number of compute units as AMD’s last-generation RX 7600 series. AMD says that RDNA 4 compute units are much faster than those used for RDNA 3, particularly in games with ray-tracing effects enabled. This helped make the Radeon RX 9070 cards generally as fast or faster than the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT series, despite having around two-thirds as many compute units. Sticking with 32 CUs for the 9060 series isn’t exciting on paper, but we should still see a respectable generation-over-generation performance bump. The RX 7600 series, by contrast, provided a pretty modest performance improvement compared to 2022’s Radeon RX 6650 XT.
AMD says that the cards’ total board power—the amount of power the entire graphics card, including the GPU itself, RAM, and other components—starts at 150 W for the 8GB card and 160 W for the 16GB card, with a maximum TBP of 182 W. That’s a shade higher than but generally comparable to the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti, and (depending on where actual performance ends up) quite a bit more efficient than the RX 7600 series. This partly comes down to a more efficient 4nm TSMC manufacturing process, a substantial upgrade from the 6nm process used for the 7600 series.
It’s unusual for a GPU maker to define a TBP range—more commonly we’re just given a single default value. But this is in line with new settings we observed in our RX 9070 review; AMD officially supports a range of different user-selectable TBP numbers in its Catalyst driver package, and some GPU makers were shipping cards that used higher TBPs by default.
Higher power limits can increase performance, though usually the performance increase is disproportionately small compared to the increase in power draw. These power limits should also generally mean that most 9060 XTs can be powered with a single 8-pin power connector, rather than using multiple connectors or the 12-pin 12VHPWR/12V-2×6 connector.
For voice actors who previously portrayed Darth Vader in video games, the Fortnite feature starkly illustrates how AI voice synthesis could reshape their profession. While James Earl Jones created the iconic voice for films, at least 54 voice actors have performed as Vader in various media games over the years when Jones wasn’t available—work that could vanish if AI replicas become the industry standard.
The union strikes back
SAG-AFTRA’s labor complaint (which can be read online here) doesn’t focus on the AI feature’s technical problems or on permission from the Jones estate, which explicitly authorized the use of a synthesized version of his voice for the character in Fortnite. The late actor, who died in 2024, had signed over his Darth Vader voice rights before his death.
Instead, the union’s grievance centers on labor rights and collective bargaining. In the NLRB filing, SAG-AFTRA alleges that Llama Productions “failed and refused to bargain in good faith with the union by making unilateral changes to terms and conditions of employment, without providing notice to the union or the opportunity to bargain, by utilizing AI-generated voices to replace bargaining unit work on the Interactive Program Fortnite.”
The action comes amid SAG-AFTRA’s ongoing interactive media strike, which began in July 2024 after negotiations with video game producers stalled primarily over AI protections. The strike continues, with more than 100 games signing interim agreements, while others, including those from major publishers like Epic, remain in dispute.
After a return to form in Anno 1800, 117 aims to seize an even bigger audience.
Anno 117: Pax Romana is, first and foremost, gorgeous to look at. Credit: Ubisoft
Ubisoft provided flights from Chicago to Rome and accommodation so that Ars could participate in the preview opportunity for Anno 117: Pax Romana. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
There aren’t any games quite like the Anno series, and based on some hands-on time at a recent press junket, I can say that the latest entry has the potential to be an appealing on-ramp for history buffs and strategy game fans who haven’t explored the franchise before—provided players approach it with a lot of patience.
The previous entry in the series, 2019’s Anno 1800, was seen as something of a return to form by longtime franchise fans, who weren’t as thrilled with the futuristic entries that preceded it. It reportedly reached 5 million players, which is quite a lot for a PC-focused strategy title, so 1800 was a popularization moment for the franchise, too.
Anno 117: Pax Romana, due later this year, aims to build on that momentum and turn the franchise into a crossover hit. While the Anno games have long been popular with a certain crowd (strategy gamers in Europe, and specifically Germany, where the games are developed), its addictive gameplay and top-tier presentation have the potential to appeal with even more people, provided publisher Ubisoft makes the right choices.
Throughout its decades of history, I’ve dabbled with the Anno series of strategy games, but it has always been on my “someday I think I’ll really get into this” list. Last month, I attended a press junket where a preview build of the game was available to play for about three hours—a chance to see if it successfully follows up on 1800. In my time with it, I found that the bones of the game are promising, and the presentation is outstanding. That said, the new-player onboarding experience will have to improve for the game to find new audiences.
How an Anno game works
Anno games are part city builders, part supply chain simulations. Like many builders, you lay down roads, build critical infrastructure like firefighting structures, and develop your population in size and wealth. But all of that dovetails with systems of developing and harvesting natural resources, converting them into produced goods, and turning those produced goods into both wealth and further development for your settlements.
You have to pay careful attention to where you place things. For example, warehouses are needed to store goods that you’re gathering or making, and those warehouses have to be strategically positioned to allow the right goods to flow from one structure to another.
Ultimately, you build settlements on multiple islands, connecting them with trade routes and naval units. Natural resources can be island-specific, so your islands end up with specializations. On top of all that, there’s a story, and there are other, AI-controlled leaders scattered around the map you have to either coordinate or skirmish with.
The Anno games have a unique identity, and there’s a lot to learn for new players, even if those players have played other city builders or economic sims (though, of course, prior background won’t hurt). That said, it all becomes relaxing and smooth as butter once you learn it. The game won’t satisfy players who are looking for conquest or tactical combat, though, as that’s not an emphasis.
What’s new in 117
You could argue that the main selling point of Anno 117: Pax Romana compared to its predecessors is its setting; it’s one of the most requested settings and time periods by fans of the franchise, and it’s a natural fit for the game’s mechanics.
I’ll admit I was swept up in the game’s aesthetic presentation while playing it. As the rosy subtitle “Pax Romana” implies, this is the Roman Empire at its most idealized. The wheat fields practically glow golden-yellow, the citizens work and mingle while wearing gorgeous and colorful clothes, and the music swells and soothes with ancient vibes.
Sure, the actual Roman Empire had something awful to offer to counterbalance every positive image we have, but Anno 117 prefers an escapist fantasy, much like many prior entries in the franchise. This is a game about enjoying the idealized aesthetics embedded in our collective cultural memories while building something you’re proud of, not tackling thorny historical or moral realities. It’s more SimCity than Frostpunk.
All told, the game’s artistic and technical presentation is top-notch. It pulls you into the setting, which is further thematically reinforced with the resources and products you gather and produce, as well as some of the new mechanics and the occasional story-based dialogue prompts. The aesthetic experience is easily one of the strongest parts.
There are a few other selling points, too. First, there are new mechanics, like a religion system, a more robust research tree, and the return of ground-based military forces to go along with the franchise’s standard light inclusion of naval conflict. I wasn’t able to engage with the army aspect in this demo, but I did get to touch on the religion system and the research tree.
Shortly into founding the settlement on your island, you can build a temple to one of the game’s deities. Each deity provides bonuses that help you specialize your focus. For mine, I chose Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and fertility. That gave me significant bonuses for my farms. If I had chosen Poseidon instead, my ships would have moved faster, among other things.
You can pick a Roman deity as a patron for your settlement. Samuel Axon
Compared to strategy games that make religion a major factor in how the game is played, this system wasn’t particularly robust or deep in the demo I played, but as I alluded to above, it was a nice way to reinforce the aesthetic and the themes in the game. Plus, it gives you a way to customize what you’re building in a fun way.
The research tree sprawls out in multiple directions, winding around on different tangents. In my time with it, it seemed to be composed largely of numerical bonuses to things like yields or ship speed and wasn’t too focused on introducing totally new mechanics. It’s a nice inclusion in terms of just giving you more customization and choice, but it’s by no means a game changer, and it doesn’t represent a fundamentally new approach to the game.
It’s also worth noting that you can now build diagonal roads and place buildings diagonally on them, allowing you to free yourself from the rigid grid. That said, I found that grids still seemed optimal in most cases, so this is a perk for beauty builders (which is totally valid!), but it won’t generally sway folks focused on efficiency.
You can place roads and buildings (like this farm) diagonally now. (Don’t judge my building placement—I’m still learning!) Samuel Axon
There’s one other major feature I didn’t get to try out during my time with the game. The developers say that players will be able to choose to build either in a Rome/Mediterranean-themed network of islands or a British frontier-themed area from the start. I was only able to try the former during this demo.
It’s still a bit hard to get into
For the Anno games to become as mainstream as the developer hopes, they’ll have to become much easier to learn and get into. Anno 1800 made strides here with its story-based tutorial, though that tutorial was also criticized for some unnecessary busywork and being a bit too involved for existing fans.
Unfortunately, I felt during my time with Anno 117 that the onboarding experience was a step back from 1800. Right off the bat, the tutorial instructed me to do something but skipped a crucial step with no explanation, causing five minutes of confusion. As I progressed, story content guided me further along with objectives, but key systems were left unexplained. Since I played 1800 a bit before, I was able to figure it out, but I still had to ask for help from a nearby developer to progress on two occasions. Another journalist sitting next to me who had no prior experience with the franchise seemed totally lost.
On the bright side, the game benefits immensely from a beautifully thought-out user interface, which is ordered in a logical and intuitive manner. It’s particularly strong at giving the player a sense of the impact of the choices they’re about to make—for example, by indicating with overlays on nearby buildings how placing a building in one spot might be more advantageous than placing it in another. To some extent, this makes up for the relatively anemic tutorial, as many (but not all) of the game’s most important concepts are intuitively obvious from the user interface alone.
The UI does an excellent job of letting you know what the effects of your actions will be. Credit: Samuel Axon
That’s in stark contrast to another recent big-budget, mainstream strategy game release (Civilization VII), which offered robust onboarding tutorials but also had a user interface that at times failed completely to indicate to players what their choices meant.
Anno 117‘s mechanics themselves are intuitive once you’ve had the proper introduction, and I don’t think the game inherently needs to be difficult to learn. But the tutorial experience needs to improve to reduce that initial friction so new players don’t bounce off quickly. Anno 1800 may have been too heavy-handed here, but Anno 117 seems to overreact by going too far the other way.
The launch is months away, though, so there’s time to improve these things, and it wouldn’t take that much to do so. I’m hopeful, anyway.
Something for almost everybody
The Anno games scratch an itch that no other games do, and based on a few hours with a preview build, Anno 117 seems like a promising entry in that unique tradition.
Numbers-obsessed efficiency mavens can go quite deep with optimization to set up the best economic powerhouses possible, but the game’s systems are flexible enough to allow aesthetics-focused beauty builders to get creative and expressive instead—virtually any combination of those two approaches is viable, too.
The appeal is elevated by visuals that are definitely a cut above the usual for strategy, simulation, or builder games, and the Ancient Roman setting gives the game’s technical artists ample space to create an immersive experience.
Anno 117 doesn’t seem to reinvent the experience compared to 1800, but after the controversial attempts that preceded both of these titles, that may not be a bad thing. It’s fun once you get going—I found the minutes drifting away from me as I took in the sights and watched all the right numbers tick up at a satisfying pace because of my choices.
The combination of creative city building, economic simulation, and naval-based combat and exploration with strong visual presentation makes the Anno series’ special sauce. Credit: Ubisoft
I’m not part of the existing core audience for this franchise, so it’s hard for me to predict how they’ll respond to it—there are a lot of finer details they’ll be sensitive to that I’m not yet. My guess, though, is that longtime fans will probably be happy with this one provided it gets most of those things right, with the usual strategy-game sequel caveat that post-launch content has made Anno 1800 much more robust than Anno 117 is likely to be at launch. There’s promise here for newcomers, but Ubisoft Mainz will have to keep working on that tutorial and onboarding experience to really break the dam the way they hope to. That’s really my primary concern about this title.
We’ll find out how that goes when the game launches on Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S sometime later this year. One way or the other, I intend to play more of it when it releases to see if this is the first Anno game that becomes an obsession instead of a passing interest.
Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica, where he is the editorial director for tech and gaming coverage. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.
In an attempt to force Apple’s hand, Epic filed a motion on Friday arguing that Apple’s latest Fortnite denial is “blatant retaliation” for Epic’s court challenge and an attempt to “circumvent this Court’s Injunctions and this Court’s authority.”
Epic says the iOS version of Fortnite it recently submitted complies with all Apple policies and court rulings by offering a link to the external Epic Games Store for purchases. Through that link, players would be able to take advantage of a 20 percent discount on purchases compared to in-app purchases through iOS itself.
“Although Apple’s contracts may permit it to reject an app for lawful reasons, the Injunction provides that Apple may no longer reject an app—including Fortnite—because its developer chooses to include an external purchase link,” Epic wrote. “Likewise, if the Injunction is to have any teeth, Apple cannot reject an app on the ground that its developer has sought to enforce the Injunction’s prohibitions.”
Elsewhere in the filing, Epic says it is being “punished” by Apple after a nearly five-year legal battle and is being denied the ability to “take advantage of the pro-competitive rules it helped usher in.” Epic argues that Apple “cannot reject any developer (including Epic) because they went to court to enforce the Injunction” and “cannot refuse to deal with Epic as retaliation for Epic’s decision to avail itself of this Court’s Injunction.”
The matter will now be taken up by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has shown little love for Apple in recent weeks. In her April order, she took the company to task for its “clear and convincing violation” of her initial injunction and even made a criminal contempt referral for Apple executives who she said “outright lied under oath.”
“Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote at the time. “This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The Court will not tolerate further delays.”
New episodes of season 2 of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who’s played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about them here after they air. While these recaps don’t delve into every single plot point of the episode, there are obviously heavy spoilers contained within, so go watch the episode first if you want to go in fresh.
Kyle: Going from a sudden shot of beatific Pedro Pascal at the end of the last episode to a semi-related flashback with a young Joel Miller and his brother was certainly a choice. I almost respect how overtly they are just screwing with audience expectations here.
As for the opening flashback scene itself, I guess the message is “Hey, look at the generational trauma his family was dealing with—isn’t it great he overcame that to love Ellie?” But I’m not sure I can draw a straight line from “he got beat by his dad” to “he condemned the entire human race for his surrogate daughter.”
Andrew: I do not have the same problems you did with either the Joel pop-in at the end of the last episode or the flashback at the start of this episode—last week, the show was signaling “here comes Joel!” and this week the show is signaling “look, it’s Joel!” Maybe I’m just responding to Tony Dalton as Joel’s dad, who I know best as the charismatic lunatic Lalo Salamanca from Better Call Saul. I do agree that the throughline between these two events is shaky, though, and without the flashback to fill us in, the “I hope you can do a little better than me” sentiment feels like something way out of left field.
But I dunno, it’s Joel week. Joel’s back! This is the Duality of Joel: you can simultaneously think that he is horrible for failing a civilization-scale trolley problem when he killed a building full of Fireflies to save Ellie, and you can’t help but be utterly charmed by Pedro Pascal enthusiastically describing the many ways to use a Dremel. (He’s right! It’s a versatile tool!)
Truly, there’s pretty much nothing in this episode that we couldn’t have inferred or guessed at based on the information the show has already made available to us. And I say this as a non-game-player—I didn’t need to see exactly how their relationship became as strained as it was by the beginning of the season to have some idea of why it happened, nor did I need to see The Porch Scene to understand that their bond nevertheless endured. But this is also the dynamic that everybody came to the show for last season, so I can only make myself complain about it to a point.
Kyle: It’s true, Joel Week is a time worth celebrating. If I’m coming across as cranky about it at the outset, it’s probably because this whole episode is a realization of what we’re missing out on this season thanks to Joel’s death.
As you said, a lot of this episode was filling in gaps that could well have been inferred from events we did see. But I would have easily taken a full season (or a full second game) of Ellie growing up and Joel dealing with Ellie growing up. You could throw in some zombie attacks or an overarching Big Bad enemy or something if you want, but the development of Joel and Ellie’s relationship deserves more than just some condensed flashbacks.
“It works?!”
Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery
“It works?!” Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery
Andrew: Yeah, it’s hard not to be upset about the original sin of The Last of Us Part 2 which is (assuming it’s like the show) that having some boring underbaked villain crawl out of the woodwork to kill the show’s main character is kind of a cheap shot. Sure, you shock the hell out of viewers like me who didn’t see it coming! But part of the reason I didn’t see it coming is because if you kill Joel, you need to do a whole bunch of your show without Joel and why on Earth would you decide to do that?
To be clear, I don’t mind this season so much, and I’ve found things to like about it, though Ellie does sometimes veer into being a protagonist so short-sighted and impulsive and occasionally just-plain-stupid that it’s hard to be in her corner. But yeah, flashing back to a time just two months after the end of season 1 really does make you wonder, “Why couldn’t the story just be this?”
Kyle: In the gaming space, I understand the desire to not have your sequel game be just “more of the same” from the last game. But I’ve always felt The Last of Us Part 2 veered too hard in the other direction and became something almost entirely unrecognizable from the original game I loved.
But let’s focus on what we do get in this episode, which is an able recreation of my favorite moment from the second game, Ellie enjoying the heck out of a ruined science museum. The childlike wonder she shows here is a great respite from a lot of action-heavy scenes in the game, and I think it serves the same purpose here. It’s also much more drawn out in the game—I could have luxuriated in just this part of the flashback for an entire episode!
Andrew: The only thing that kept me from being fully on board with that scene was that I think Ellie was acting quite a bit younger than 16, with her pantomimed launch noises and flipping of switches, But I could believe that a kid who had such a rough and abbreviated childhood would have some fun sitting in an Apollo module. For someone with no memories of the pre-outbreak society, it must seem like science fiction, and the show gives us some lovely visuals to go with it.
The things I like best here are the little moments in between scenes rather than the parts where the show insists on showing us events that it had already alluded to in other episodes. What sticks with me the most, as we jump between Ellie’s birthdays, is Joel’s insistence that “we could do this kind of thing more often” as they go to a museum or patrol the trails together. That it needs to be stated multiple times suggests that they are not, in fact, doing this kind of thing more often in between birthdays.
Joel is thoughtful and attentive in his way—a little better than his father—but it’s such a bittersweet little note, a surrogate dad’s clumsy effort to bridge a gap that he knows is there but doesn’t fully understand.
Why can’t it be like this forever?
Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery
Why can’t it be like this forever? Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery
Kyle: Yeah, I’m OK with a little arrested development in a girl that has been forced to miss so many of the markers of a “normal” pre-apocalypse childhood.
But yeah, Joel is pretty clumsy about this. And as we see all of these attempts with his surrogate daughter, it’s easy to forget what happened to his real daughter way back at the beginning of the first season. The trauma of that event shapes Joel in a way that I feel the narrative sometimes forgets about for long stretches.
But then we get moments like Joel leading Gail’s newly infected husband to a death that the poor guy would very much like to delay by an hour for one final moment with his wife. When Joel says that you can always close your eyes and see the face of the one you love, he may have been thinking about Ellie. But I like to think he was thinking about his actual daughter.
Andrew: Yes to the extent that Joel’s actions are relatable (I won’t say “excusable,” but “relatable”) it’s because the undercurrent of his relationship with Ellie is that he can’t watch another daughter die in his arms. I watched the first episode again recently, and that whole scene remains a masterfully executed gut-punch.
But it’s a tough tightrope to walk, because if the story spends too much time focusing on it, you draw attention to how unhealthy it is for Joel to be forcing Ellie to play that role in his life. Don’t get me wrong, Ellie was looking for a father figure, too, and that’s why it works! It’s a “found family” dynamic that they were both looking for. But I can’t hear Joel’s soothing “baby girl” epithet without it rubbing me the wrong way a little.
My gut reaction was that it was right for Joel not to fully trust Gail’s husband, but then I realized I can never not suspect Joe Pantoliano of treachery because of his role as betrayer in the 26-year-old movie The Matrix. Brains are weird.
Kyle: I did like the way Ellie tells Joel off for lying to her (and to Gail) about the killing; it’s a real “growing up” moment for the character. And of course it transitions well into The Porch Scene, Ellie’s ultimate moment of confronting Joel on his ultimate betrayal.
While I’m not a fan of the head-fake “this scene isn’t going to happen” thing they did earlier this season. I think the TV show once again did justice to one of the most impactful parts of the game. But the game also managed to spread out these Joel-centric flashbacks a little more, so we’re not transitioning from “museum fun” to “porch confrontation” quite so quickly. Here, it feels like they’re trying hard to rush through all of their “bring back Pedro Pascal” requirements in a single episode.
When you’ve only got one hour left, how you spend it becomes pretty important.
Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery
When you’ve only got one hour left, how you spend it becomes pretty important. Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery
Andrew: Yeah, because you don’t need to pay a 3D model’s appearance fees if you want to use it in a bunch of scenes of your video game. Pedro Pascal has other stuff going on!
Kyle: That’s probably part of it. But without giving too much away, I think we’re seeing the limits of stretching the events of “Part 2” into what is essentially two seasons. While there have been some cuts, on the whole, it feels like there’s also been a lot of filler to “round out” these characters in ways that have been more harmful than helpful at points.
Andrew: Yeah, our episode ends by depositing us back in the main action, as Ellie returns to the abandoned theater where she and Dina have holed up. I’m curious to see what we’re in for in this last run of almost-certainly-Joel-less episodes, but I suspect it involves a bunch of non-Joel characters ping-ponging between the WLF forces and the local cultists. There will probably be some villain monologuing, probably some zombie hordes, probably another named character death or two. Pretty standard issue.
What I don’t expect is for anyone to lovingly and accurately describe the process of refurbishing a guitar. And that’s the other issue with putting this episode where it is—just as you’re getting used to a show without Joel, you’re reminded that he’s missing all over again.
My Ars colleagues were kicking back at the Orbital HQ water cooler the other day, and—as gracefully aging gamers are wont to do—they began to reminisce about classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. I was a huge fan of these games in my youth, so I settled in for some hot buttered nostalgia.
Would we remember the limited-palette joys of early King’s Quest, Space Quest, or Quest for Glory titles? Would we branch out beyond games with “Quest” in their titles, seeking rarer fare likeFreddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist? What about the gothic stylings of The Colonel’s Bequest or the voodoo-curious Gabriel Knight?
Nope. The talk was of acorns. [Bleeping] acorns, in fact.
The scene in question came from King’s Quest III, where our hero Gwydion must acquire some exceptionally desiccated acorns to advance the plot. It sounds simple enough. As one walkthrough puts it, “Go east one screen and north one screen to the acorn tree. Try picking up acorns until you get some dry ones. Try various spots underneath the tree.” Easy! And clear!
Except it wasn’t either one because the game rather notoriously won’t always give you the acorns, even when you enter the right command. This led many gamers to believe they were in the wrong spot, when in reality, they just had to keep entering the “get acorns” command while moving pixel by pixel around the tree until the game finally supplied them. One of our staffers admitted to having purchased the King’s Quest III hint book solely because of this “puzzle.” (The hint book, which is now online, says that players should “move around” the particular oak tree in question because “you can only find the right kind of acorns in one spot.”)
This wasn’t quite the “fun” I had remembered from these games, but as I cast my mind back, I dimly recalled similar situations. Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge had been my first Sierra title. After my brother and I spent weeks on the game only to die repeatedly in some pitch-dark tunnels, we implored my dad to call Sierra’s 1-900 pay hint line. He thought about it. I could see it pained him because he had never before (and never since!) called a 1-900 number. In this case, the call cost a piratical 75 cents for the first minute and 50 cents for each additional minute. After listening to us whine for several days straight, my dad decided that his sanity was worth the fee, and he called.
Like the acorn example above, we had known what to do—we had just not done it to the game’s rather exacting standards. The key was to use a glowing gem as a light source, which my brother and I had long understood. The problem was the text parser, which demanded that we “put gem in mouth” to use the gem’s light in the tunnels. There was no other place to put the gem, no other way to hold or attach it. (We tried them all.) No other attempt to use the light of this shining crystal, no matter how clear, well-intentioned, or succinctly expressed, would work. You put the gem in your mouth, or you died in the darkness.
Returning from my reveries to the conversation at hand, I caught Ars Senior Editor Lee Hutchinson’s cynical remark that these kinds of puzzles were “the only way to make 2–3 hours of ‘game’ last for months.” This seemed rather shocking, almost offensive. How could one say such a thing about the games that colored my memories of childhood?
So I decided to replay Space Quest II for the first time in 35 years in an attempt to defend my own past.
Big mistake.
We’re not on Endor anymore, Dorothy.
Play it again, Sam
In my memory, the Space Quest series was filled with sharply written humor, clever puzzles, and enchanting art. But when I fired up the original version of the game, I found that only one of these was true. The art, despite its blockiness and limited colors, remained charming.
As for the gameplay, the puzzles were not so much “clever” as “infuriating,” “obvious,” or (more often) “rather obscure.”
Finding the glowing gem discussed above requires you to swim into one small spot of a multi-screen river, with no indication in advance that anything of importance is in that exact location. Trying to “call” a hunter who has captured you does nothing… until you do it a second time. And the less said about trying to throw a puzzle at a Labian Terror Beast, typing out various word permutations while death bears down upon you, the better.
The whole game was also filled with far more no-warning insta-deaths than I had remembered. On the opening screen, for instance, after your janitorial space-broom floats off into the cosmic ether, you can walk your character right off the edge of the orbital space station he is cleaning. The game doesn’t stop you; indeed, it kills you and then mocks you for “an obvious lack of common sense.” It then calls you a “wing nut” with an “inability to sustain life.” Game over.
The game’s third screen, which features nothing more to do than simply walking around, will also kill you in at least two different ways. Walk into the room still wearing your spacesuit and your boss will come over and chew you out. Game over.
If you manage to avoid that fate by changing into your indoor uniform first, it’s comically easy to tap the wrong arrow key and fall off the room’s completely guardrail-free elevator platform. Game over.
Do NOT touch any part of this root monster.
Get used to it because the game will kill you in so, so many ways: touching any single pixel of a root monster whose branches form a difficult maze; walking into a giant mushroom; stepping over an invisible pit in the ground; getting shot by a guard who zips in on a hovercraft; drowning in an underwater tunnel; getting swiped at by some kind of giant ape; not putting the glowing gem in your mouth; falling into acid; and many more.
I used the word “insta-death” above, but the game is not even content with this. At one key point late in the game, a giant Aliens-style alien stalks the hallways, and if she finds you, she “kisses” you. But then she leaves! You are safe after all! Of course, if you have seen the films, you will recognize that you are not safe, but the game lets you go on for a bit before the alien’s baby inevitably bursts from your chest, killing you. Game over.
This is why the official hint book suggests that you “save your game a lot, especially when it seems that you’re entering a dangerous area. That way, if you die, you don’t have to retrace your steps much.” Presumably, this was once considered entertaining.
When it comes to the humor, most of it is broad. (When you are told to “say the word,” you have to say “the word.”) Sometimes it is condescending. (“You quickly glance around the room to see if anyone saw you blow it.”) Or it might just be potty jokes. (Plungers, jock straps, toilet paper, alien bathrooms, and fouling one’s trousers all make appearances.)
When I admitted this to him, Lee told me that he had actually spent time learning to speedrun the Space Quest games during the pandemic. “According to my notes, a clean run of SQ2 in ‘fast’ mode—assuming good typing skills—takes about 20 minutes straight-up,” he said. Yikes.
What a fiendish plot!
And yet
The past was a different time. Computer memory was small, graphics capabilities were low, and computer games had emerged from the “let them live just long enough to encourage spending another quarter” arcade model. Mouse adoption took a while; text parsers made sense even though they created plenty of frustration. So yes—some of these games were a few hours of gameplay stretched out with insta-death, obscure puzzles, and the sheer amount of time it took just to walk across the game’s various screens. (Seriously, “walking around” took a ridiculous amount of the game’s playtime, especially when a puzzle made you backtrack three screens, type some command, and then return.)
Let’s get off this rock.
Judged by current standards, the Sierra games are no longer what I would play for fun.
All the same, I loved them. They introduced me to the joy of exploring virtual worlds and to the power of evocative artwork. I went into space, into fairy tales, and into the past, and I did so while finding the games’ humor humorous and their plotlines compelling. (“An army of life insurance salesmen?” I thought at the time. “Hilarious and brilliant!”)
If the games can feel a bit arbitrary or vexing today, my child-self’s love of repetition was able to treat them as engaging challenges rather than “unfair” design.
Replaying Space Quest II, encountering the half-remembered jokes and visual designs, brought back these memories. The novelist Thomas Wolfe knew that you can’t go home again, and it was probably inevitable that the game would feel dated to me now. But playing it again did take me back to that time before the Internet, when not even hint lines, insta-death, and EGA graphics could dampen the wonder of the new worlds computers were capable of showing us.
Literal bathroom humor.
Space Quest II, along with several other Sierra titles, is freely and legally available online at sarien.net—though I found many, many glitches in the implementation. Windows users can buy the entire Space Quest collection through Steam or Good Old Games. There’s even a fan remake that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
In that sense, the vulgar Vader situation creates a touchy dilemma for Epic Games and Disney, which likely invested substantially in this high-profile collaboration. While Epic acted swiftly in response, maintaining the feature while preventing further Jedi mind tricks from players presents ongoing technical challenges for interactive AI speech of any kind.
An AI language model like the one used for constructing responses for Vader (Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash in this case, according to Epic) are fairly easy to trick with exploits like prompt injections and jailbreaks, and that has limited their usefulness in some applications. Imagine a truly ChatGPT-like Siri or Alexa, for example, that could be tricked into saying racist things on behalf of Apple or Amazon.
David Prowse as Darth Vader and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia filming the original Star Wars. Credit: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
Beyond language models, the AI voice technology behind the AI Darth Vader voice in Fortnite comes from ElevenLabs’ Flash v2.5 model, trained on examples of speech from James Earl Jones so it can synthesize new speech in the same style.
Previously, Lucasfilm worked with a Ukrainian startup we covered in 2022 on Obi-Wan Kenobi to recreate Darth Vader’s voice performance using a different AI voice model called Respeecher, which isn’t used in Fortnite.
According to Variety, Jones’ family supported the new Fortnite collaboration, stating: “James Earl felt that the voice of Darth Vader was inseparable from the story of Star Wars, and he always wanted fans of all ages to continue to experience it. We hope that this collaboration with Fortnite will allow both longtime fans of Darth Vader and newer generations to share in the enjoyment of this iconic character.”
This article was updated on May 16, 2025 at 4: 25 PM to include information about an email sent out from Epic Games to parents. This Article was updated again on May 17, 2025 at 10: 10 AM to correctly attribute ElevenLabs Flash v2.5 as the source of the Darth Vader audio model in Fortnite. The article previously incorrectly stated that Respeecher had been used for the game.
When Nintendo took the wraps off the Switch 2 in early April, it announced that around a dozen first-party Switch games would be getting free updates that would add some Switch 2-specific benefits to older games running on the new console. We could safely assume that these updates wouldn’t be as extensive as the $10 and $20 paid upgrade packs for games like Breath of the Wild or Kirby and the Forgotten Land, but Nintendo’s page didn’t initially provide any game-specific details.
Earlier this week, Nintendo updated its support page with more game-by-game details about what players of these older games can expect on the new hardware. The baseline improvement for most games is “improved image quality” and optimizations for the Switch 2’s built-in display, but others include support for GameShare multiplayer, support for the new Joy-Cons’ mouse controls, support for HDR TVs, and other tweaks.
The most significant of the announced updates are frame rate improvements for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the main-series Pokémon games released in late 2022. Most latter-day Switch games suffered from frame rate dips here and there, as newer games outstripped the capabilities of a low-power tablet processor that had already been a couple of years old when the Switch launched in 2017. But the Pokémon performance problems were so pervasive and widely commented-upon that Nintendo released a rare apology promising to improve the game post-release. Subsequent patches helped somewhat but could never deliver a consistently smooth frame rate; perhaps new hardware will finally deliver what software patches couldn’t.
If you build up a big area of plains on your board, you can drop your “Farm” piece in the middle, and it converts those plains into richer plains. Put a “Woodcutter” into a bunch of forest, and it harvests that wood and turns it into plains. Set down a “Watchtower,” and it recruits some archer units for every plains tile in its vicinity, and even more for richer fields. You could drop a Woodcutter next to a Farm and Watchtower, and it would turn the forests into plains, the Farm would turn the plains into fields, and the Watchtower would pick up more units for all those rich fields.
That kind of multi-effect combo, resulting from one piece you perfectly placed in the nick of time, is what keeps you coming back to Drop Duchy. The bitter losses come from the other side, like realizing you’ve leaned too heavily into heavy, halberd-wielding units when the enemy has lots of ranged units that are strong against them. Or that feeling, familiar to Tetris vets, that one hasty decision you made 10 rows back has doomed you to the awkward, slanted pile-up you find yourself in now. Except that lines don’t clear in Drop Duchy, and the game’s boss battles specifically punish you for running out of good places to put things.
There’s an upper strategic layer to all the which-square-where action. You choose branching paths on your way to each boss, picking different resources, battles, and trading posts. Every victory has you picking a card for your deck, whether military, production, or, later on, general “technology” gains. You upgrade cards using your gathered resources, try to balance or min-max cards toward certain armies or terrains, and try not to lose any one round by too many soldiers. You have a sort of “overall defense” life meter, and each loss chips away at it. Run out of money to refill it, and that’s the game.
Digital Foundry also notes that the Switch 2’s stated clock speeds can be tuned to higher theoretical maximums: 1.4 GHz for the GPU and 1.7 GHz for the CPU. Nintendo could eventually make use of this headroom for improved graphical performance and faster loading screens, as it did on the original Switch in 2019. And while developers can adjust the GPU clock rate used by their games, it’s unclear if they’ll be able to directly overclock to the theoretical maximum themselves.
System resources
As on the original Switch, 25 percent of the CPU cores and overall memory on the Switch 2 is reserved by the system for OS features and is thus inaccessible to game developers directly. Digital Foundry also notes that some GPU resources are reserved by the system OS, though it didn’t provide a precise measurement for this amount.
Using Game Chat on the Switch 2 could have a significant effect on system performance, according to Digital Foundry.
Credit: Nintendo
Using Game Chat on the Switch 2 could have a significant effect on system performance, according to Digital Foundry. Credit: Nintendo
This time around, those system-level features include Game Chat, which offers the ability to stream gameplay and/or webcam video from up to four friends to a single system. Even with significant resources set aside by the OS, though, Digital Foundry notes that Game Chat has “a significant impact on system resources,” leading Nintendo to provide developers with a testing tool that “simulates API latency and L3 cache misses” that can happen when Game Chat is in use.
Aside from the core pixel-pushing hardware, the Switch 2 also adds a new separate File Decompression Engine, which can handle loading game data off of the system’s 256GB of on-board UFS memory and MicroSD Express expansion cards without taxing the CPU. And while the Switch 2’s portable screen includes support for variable refresh rates up to 120 Hz, there is currently no official support for VRR on HDMI displays connected to the system’s dock.
While it’s fun to look at numbers, the real proof of the Switch 2’s hardware power will be in the performance of its games. We look forward to having more direct comparisons of software performance when the console launches next month.
Switch and Switch 2 users who try to hack their consoles or play pirated copies of games may find their devices rendered completely inoperable by Nintendo. That new warning was buried in a recent update to the Nintendo User Account Agreement, as first noticed by Game File last week.
Nintendo’s May 2025 EULA update adds new language concerning the specific ways users are allowed to use “Nintendo Account Services” on the console, a term defined here to encompass the use of “video games and add-on content.” Under the new EULA, any unlicensed use of the system not authorized by Nintendo could lead the company to “render the Nintendo Account Services and/or the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.” (Emphasis added.)
That language would apply to both the current Switch and the upcoming Switch 2.
Later in the same EULA, Nintendo adds new language clarifying that it reserves the right to “suspend your access to any or all Nintendo Account Services, in our sole discretion and without prior notice to you.” That suspension can even come before a EULA violation occurs if Nintendo has “a reasonable belief such a violation… will occur, or as we otherwise determine to be reasonably necessary for legal, technical or commercial reasons, such as to prevent harm to other users or the Nintendo Account Services.”
Play inside the lines
So what kind of Switch usage counts as a “violation” here? Unsurprisingly, playing pirated games is high on the list; the EULA now specifically calls out “obtain[ing], install[ing] or us[ing] any unauthorized copies of Nintendo Account Services.” That language would likely apply to users with hacked console hardware and those who use any number of third-party flash carts to play pirated games.
Yesterday’s naming of Chicago native Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV—the first American-born leader of the Catholic church—has already led to plenty of jokes and memes about his potential interactions with various bits of American pop culture. And that cultural exposure apparently extends to some casual video games, making Leo XIV our first confirmed gamer pope.
Speaking to NBC5 Chicago Thursday, papal sibling John Prevost confirmed that the soon-to-be-pope played a couple of games just before flying to the papal conclave earlier this week. “First we do Wordle, because this is a regular thing,” Prevost said. “Then we do Words with Friends. It’s something to keep his mind off life in the real world…”
In the recent past, papal interest in video games has usually taken the form of official statements decrying their potential for harm. Pope Francis, for instance, warned in a 2016 speech that young people should avoid spending excessive time on “a sofa that promises us hours of comfort so we can escape to the world of video games and spend all kinds of time in front of a computer screen.” And in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI specifically called out video games “which in the name of entertainment exalt violence and portray anti-social behavior or the trivialization of human sexuality.”
