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dragon-age:-the-veilguard-and-the-choices-you-make-while-saving-the-world

Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the choices you make while saving the world

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“Events are weaving together quickly. The fate of the world shall be decided.”

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is as much about the world, story, and characters as the gameplay. Credit: EA

BioWare’s reputation as a AAA game development studio is built on three pillars: world-building, storytelling, and character development. In-game codices offer textual support for fan theories, replays are kept fresh by systems that encourage experimenting with alternative quest resolutions, and players get so attached to their characters that an entire fan-built ecosystem of player-generated fiction and artwork has sprung up over the years.

After two very publicly disappointing releases with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, BioWare pivoted back to the formula that brought it success, but I’m wrapping up the first third of The Veilguard, and it feels like there’s an ingredient missing from the special sauce. Where are the quests that really let me agonize over the potential repercussions of my choices?

I love Thedas, and I love the ragtag group of friends my hero has to assemble anew in each game, but what really gets me going as a roleplayer are the morally ambiguous questions that make me squirm: the dreadful and delicious BioWare decisions.

Should I listen to the tormented templar and assume every mage I meet is so dangerous that I need to adopt a “strike first, ask questions later” policy, or can I assume at least some magic users are probably not going to murder me on sight? When I find out my best friend’s kleptomania is the reason my city has been under armed occupation for the past 10 years, do I turn her in, or do I swear to defend her to the end?

Questions like these keep me coming back to replay BioWare games over and over. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of the fourth game in the Dragon Age franchise so I can find out what fresh dilemmas I’ll have to wrangle, but at about 70 hours in, they seem to be in short supply.

The allure of interactive media, and the limitations

Before we get into some actual BioWare choices, I think it’s important to acknowledge the realities of the medium. These games are brilliant interactive stories. They reach me like my favorite novels do, but they offer a flexibility not available in printed media (well, outside of the old Choose Your Own Adventure novels, anyway). I’m not just reading about the main character’s decisions; I’m making the main character’s decisions, and that can be some heady stuff.

There’s a limit to how much of the plot can be put into a player’s hands, though. A roleplaying game developer wants to give as much player agency as possible, but that has to happen through the illusion of choice. You must arrive at one specific location for the sake of the plot, but the game can accommodate letting you choose from several open pathways to get there. It’s a railroad—hopefully a well-hidden railroad—but at the end of the day, no matter how great the storytelling is, these are still video games. There’s only so much they can do.

So if you have to maintain an illusion of choice but also want to to invite your players to thoughtfully engage with your decision nodes, what do you do? You reward them for playing along and suspending their disbelief by giving their choices meaningful weight inside your shared fantasy world.

If the win condition of a basic quest is a simple “perform action X at location Y,” you have to spice that up with some complexity or the game gets very old very quickly. That complexity can be programmatic, or it can be narrative. With your game development tools, you can give the player more than one route to navigate to location Y through good map design, or you can make action X easier or harder to accomplish by setting preconditions like puzzles to solve or other nodes that need interaction. With the narrative, you’re not limited to what can be accomplished in your game engine. The question becomes, “How much can I give the player to emotionally react to?”

In a field packed with quality roleplaying game developers, this is where BioWare has historically shined: making me have big feelings about my companions and the world they live in. This is what I crave.

Who is (my) Rook, anyway?

The Veilguard sets up your protagonist, Rook, with a lightly sketched backstory tied to your chosen faction. You pick a first name, you are assigned a last name, and you read a brief summary of an important event in Rook’s recent history. The rest is on you, and you reveal Rook’s essential nature through the dialog wheel and the major plot choices you make. Those plot choices are necessarily mechanically limited in scope and in rewards/consequences, but narratively, there’s a lot of ground you can cover.

One version of the protagonist in Dragon Age The Veilguard, with a dialogue wheel showing options

For the record, I picked “Oof.” That’s just how my Rook rolls. Credit: Marisol Cuervo

During the game’s tutorial, you’re given information about a town that has mysteriously fallen out of communication with the group you’re assisting. You and your companions set out to discover what happened. You investigate the town, find the person responsible, and decide what happens to him next. Mechanically, it’s pretty straightforward.

The real action is happening inside your head. As Rook, I’ve just walked through a real horror show in this small village, put together some really disturbing clues about what’s happening, and I’m now staring down the person responsible while he’s trapped inside an uncomfortably slimy-looking cyst of material the game calls the Blight. Here is the choice: What does my Rook decide to do with him, and what does that choice say about her character? I can’t answer that question without looking through the lens of my personal morality, even if I intend for Rook to act counter to my own nature.

My first emotional, knee-jerk reaction is to say screw this guy. Leave him to the consequences of his own making. He’s given me an offensively venal justification for how he got here, so let him sit there and stare at his material reward for all the good it will do him while he’s being swallowed by the Blight.

The alternative is saving him. You get to give him a scathing lecture, but he goes free, and it’s because you made that choice. You walked through the center of what used to be a vibrant settlement and saw this guy, you know he’s the one who allowed this mess to happen, and you stayed true to your moral center anyway. Don’t you feel good? Look at you, big hero! All those other people will die from the Blight, but you held the line and said, “Well, not this one.”

A dialogue wheel gives the player a decisive choice

Being vindictive might feel good, but I feel leaving him is a profoundly evil choice. Credit: Marisol Cuervo

There’s no objectively right answer about what to do with the mayor, and I’m here for it. Leaving him or saving him: Neither option is without ethical hazards. I can use this medium to dig deep into who I am and how I see myself before building up my idea of who my Rook is going to be.

Make your decision, and Rook lives with the consequences. Some are significant, and some… not so much.

Your choices are world-changing—but also can’t be

Longtime BioWare fans have historically been given the luxury of having their choices—large and small—acknowledged by the next game in the franchise. In past games, this happened largely through small dialog mentions or NPC reappearances, but as satisfying as this is for me as a player, it creates a big problem for BioWare.

Here’s an example: depending on the actions of the player, ginger-haired bard and possible romantic companion Leliana can be missed entirely as a recruitable companion in Dragon Age: Origins, the first game in the franchise. If she is recruited, she can potentially die in a later quest. It’s not guaranteed that she survives the first game. That’s a bit of a problem in Dragon Age II, where Leliana shows up in one of the downloadable content packs. It’s a bigger problem in the third game, where Leliana is the official spymaster for the titular Inquisition. BioWare calls these NPCs who can exist in a superposition of states “quantum characters.”

A tweet that says BioWare's default stance is to avoid using quantum characters, but an exception was made for Liliana

One of the game’s creative leaders talking about “quantum characters.” Credit: Marisol Cuervo

If you follow this thought to its logical end, you can understand where BioWare is coming from: After a critical mass of quantum characters is reached, the effects are impossible to manage. BioWare sidesteps the Leliana problem entirely in The Veilguard by just not talking about her.

BioWare has staunchly maintained that, as a studio, it does not have a set canon for the history of its games; there’s only the personal canon each player develops as a result of their gameplay. As I’ve been playing, I can tell there’s been a lot of thought put into ensuring none of The Veilguard’s in-game references to areas covered in the previous three games would invalidate a player’s personal canon, and I appreciate that. That’s not an easy needle to thread. I can also see that the same care was put into ensuring that this game’s decisions would not create future quantum characters, and that means the choices we’re given are very carefully constrained to this story and only this story.

But it still feels like we’re missing an opportunity to make these moral decisions on a smaller scale. Dragon Age: Inquisition introduced a collectible and cleverly hidden item for players to track down while they worked on saving the world. Collect enough trinkets and you eventually open up an entirely optional area to explore. Because this is BioWare, though, there was a catch: To find the trinkets, you had to stare through the crystal eyes of a skull sourced from the body of a mage who has been forcibly cut off from the source of all magic in the world. Is your Inquisitor on board with that, even if it comes with a payoff? Personally, I don’t like the idea. My Inquisitor? She thoroughly looted the joint. It’s a small choice, and it doesn’t really impact the long-term state of the world, but I still really enjoyed working through it.

Later in the first act of The Veilguard, Rook finally gets an opportunity to make one of the big, ethically difficult decisions. I’ll avoid spoilers, but I don’t mind sharing that it was a satisfyingly difficult choice to make, and I wasn’t sure I felt good about my decision. I spent a lot of time staring at the screen before clicking on my answer. Yeah, that’s the good stuff right there.

In keeping with the studio’s effort to avoid creating quantum worldstates, The Veilguard treads lightly with the mechanical consequences of this specific choice and the player is asked to take up the narrative repercussions. How hard the consequences hit, or if they miss, comes down to your individual approach to roleplaying games. Are you a player who inhabits the character and lives in the world? Or is it more like you’re riding along, only watching a story unfold? Your answer will greatly influence how connected you feel to the choices BioWare asks you to make.

Is this better or worse?

Much online discussion around The Veilguard has centered on Bioware’s decision to incorporate only three choices from the previous game in the series, Inquisition, rather than using the existing Dragon Age Keep to import an entire worldstate. I’m a little disappointed by this, but I’m also not sure anything in Thedas is significantly changed because my Hero of Ferelden was a softie who convinced the guard in the Ostagar camp to give his lunch to the prisoner who was in the cage for attempted desertion.

At the same time, as I wrap up the first act, I’m missing the mild tension I should be feeling when the dialog wheel comes up, and not just because many of the dialog choices seem to be three flavors of “yes, and…” One of my companions was deeply unhappy with me for a period of time after I made the big first-act decision and sharply rebuffed my attempts at justification, snapping at me that I should go. Previous games allowed companions to leave your party forever if they disagreed enough with your main character; this doesn’t seem to be a mechanic you need to worry about in The Veilguard.

Rook’s friends might be divided on how they view her choice of verbal persuasion versus percussive diplomacy, but none of them had anything to say about it while she was very earnestly attempting to convince a significant NPC they were making a pretty big mistake. One of Rook’s companions later asked about her intentions during that interaction but otherwise had no reaction.

Another dialogue choice in Veilguard

BioWare, are you OK? Why do you keep punching people who don’t agree with you? Credit: Marisol Cuervo

Seventy hours into the game, I’m looking for places where I have to navigate my own ethical landscape before I can choose to have Rook conform to, or flaunt, the social mores of northern Thedas. I’m still helping people, being the hero, and having a lot of fun doing so, but the problems I’m solving aren’t sticky, and they lack the nuance I enjoyed in previous games. I want to really wrestle with the potential consequences before I decide to do something. Maybe this is something I’ll see more of in the second act.

If the banal, puppy-kicking kind of evil has been minimized in favor of larger stakes—something I applaud—it has left a sort of vacuum on the roleplaying spectrum. BioWare has big opinions about how heroes should act and how they should handle interpersonal conflict. I wish I felt more like I was having that struggle rather than being told that’s how Rook is feeling.

I’m hopeful my Rook isn’t just going to just save the world, but that in the next act of the game, I’ll see more opportunities from BioWare to let her do it her way.

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How Valve made Half-Life 2 and set a new standard for future games

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From physics to greyboxing, Half-Life 2 broke a lot of new ground.

This article is part of our 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 series. Credit: Aurich Lawson

It’s Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2—a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day up through the 16th, we’ll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.

There has been some debate about which product was the first modern “triple-A” video game, but ask most people and one answer is sure to at least be a contender: Valve’s Half-Life 2.

For Western PC games, Half-Life 2 set a standard that held strong in developers’ ambitions and in players’ expectations for well over a decade. Despite that, there’s only so much new ground it truly broke in terms of how games are made and designed—it’s just that most games didn’t have the same commitment to scope, scale, and polish all at the same time.

To kick off a week of articles looking back at the influential classic, we’re going to go over the way it was made, and just as importantly, the thought that went into its design—both of which were highly influential.

A story of cabals and Electronics Boutique

Development, design, and production practices in the games industry have always varied widely by studio. But because of the success of Half-Life 2, some of the approaches that Valve took were copied elsewhere in the industry after they were shared in blog posts and conference talks at events like the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC).

The cabals of Valve

Valve is famous for influencing many things in gaming, but it was most influential in its relatively flat and democratic team structure, and that played out even during Half-Life 2’s development in the early 2000s. While many studios are broken up into clear departments big and small for different disciplines (such as art, level design, combat design, narrative design, AI programming, and so on), many parts of Valve’s Half-Life 2 team consisted of a half-dozen multi-disciplinary small groups the company internally called “cabals.”

Each major chapter in Half-Life 2 had its own unique four-to-five-person cabal made up of level designers and programmers. These groups built their levels largely independently while frequently showing their work to other cabals for feedback and cross-pollination of good ideas. They all worked within constraints set in a pre-production phase that laid out elements like the main story beats, some of the weapons, and so on.

A resistance soldier shoots at a Strider in the streets of City 17

Each major chapter, like this battle-in-the-streets one toward the end of the game, was designed by a largely independent cabal. Credit: Valve

Additionally, similarly sized design cabals worked on aspects of the game’s design that crossed multiple levels—often made with representatives from the chapter cabals—for things like weapons.

There was even a “Cabal Cabal” made up of representatives from each of the six chapter teams to critique the work coming from all the teams.

Ruthless playtesting

Many game designers—especially back in the ’80s or ’90s—worked largely in isolation, determining privately what they thought would be fun and then shipping a finished product to an audience to find out if it really was.

By contrast, Valve put a great deal of emphasis on playtesting. To be clear: Valve did not invent playtesting. But it did make that a key part of the design process in a way that is even quite common today.

The Half-Life 2 team would send representatives to public places where potential fans might hang out, like Electronics Boutique stores, and would approach them and say something along the lines of, “Would you like to play Half-Life 2?” (Most said yes!)

A group of game developers sits on couches and takes notes while a PC gamer plays Half-Life 2

A photo from an actual early 2000s playtest of an in-development Half-Life 2, courtesy of a presentation slide from a Valve GDC talk. Credit: Valve

The volunteer playtesters were brought to a room set up like a real player’s living room and told to sit at the computer desk and simply play the game. Behind them, the level’s cabal would sit and watch a feed of the gameplay on a TV. The designers weren’t allowed to talk to the testers; they simply took notes.

Through this process, they learned which designs and ideas worked and which ones simply confused the players. They then made iterative changes, playtested the level again, and repeated that process until they were happy with the outcome.

Today’s developers sometimes take a more sophisticated approach to sourcing players for their playtests, making sure they’re putting their games in front of a wider range of people to make the games more accessible beyond a dedicated enthusiast core. But nonetheless, playtesting across the industry today is at the level it is because of Valve’s refinement of the process.

The alpha wave

For a game as ambitious as Half-Life 2 was, it’s surprising just how polished it was when it hit the market. That iterative mindset was a big part of it, but it extended beyond those consumer playtests.

Valve made sure to allocate a significant amount of time for iteration and refinement on an alpha build, which in this case meant a version of the game that could be played from beginning to end. When speaking to other developers about the process, representatives of Valve said that if you’re working on a game for just a year, you should try to get to the alpha point by the end of eight months so you have four for refinement.

Apparently, this made a big impact on Half-Life 2’s overall quality. It also helped address natural downsides of the cabal structure, like the fact that chapters developed by largely independent teams offered an inconsistent experience in terms of the difficulty curve.

With processes like this, Valve modeled several things that would be standard in triple-A game development for years to come—though not all of them were done by Valve first.

For example, the approach to in-game cutscenes reverberates today. Different cabals focused on designing the levels versus planning out cutscenes in which characters would walk around the room and interact with one another, all while the player could freely explore the environment.

A screenshot of Combine soldiers fighting antlions in Nova Prospekt

Nova Prospekt was one of the first levels completed during Half-Life 2‘s development. Credit: Valve

The team that focused on story performances worked with level designers to block out the walking paths for characters, and the level designers had to use that as a constraint, building the levels around them. That meant that changes to level layouts couldn’t create situations where new character animations would have to be made. That approach is still used by many studios today.

As is what is now called greyboxing, the practice of designing levels without high-effort artwork so that artists can come in and pretty the levels up after the layout is settled, rather than having to constantly go back and forth with designers as those designers “find the fun.” Valve didn’t invent this, but it was a big part of the process, and its in-development levels were filled with the color orange, not just gray.

Finding the DNA of Half-Life 2 in 20 years of games

When Half-Life 2 hit the market via the newly launched Steam digital distribution platform (more on that later this week), it was widely praised. Critics and players at the time loved it, calling it a must-have title and one that defined the PC gaming experience. Several of the things that came out of its development process that players remember most from Half-Life 2 became staples over the past 20 years.

For instance, the game set a new standard for character animations in fully interactive cutscenes, especially with facial animations. Today, far more advanced motion capture is a common practice in triple-A games—to the point that games that don’t do it (like Bethesda Game Studios titles) are widely criticized by players simply for not taking that route, even if motion capture doesn’t necessarily make practical sense for those games’ scope and design.

And Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun, which dramatically built on past games’ physics mechanics, is in many ways a  concept that developers are still playing with and expanding on today. Ultrahand, the flagship player ability in 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, could be seen as a substantial evolution from the Gravity Gun. In addition to offering players the ability to pick and place objects in the world, it gives them the power to attach them to one another to build creative contraptions.

There’s also Half-Life 2’s approach to using environmental lines and art cues to guide the player’s attention through realistic-looking environments. The game was lauded for that at the time, and it was an approach used by many popular games in the years to come. Today, many studios have moved on to much more explicit player cues like the yellow climbing holds in so many recent triple-A titles. As you’ll see in an upcoming article this week written by someone who played Half-Life 2 for the very first time in 2024, Half-Life 2’s approach may have set the stage, but modern players might expect something a little different.

A trainyard in City 17

Environments like this were carefully designed to guide the player’s eye in subtle ways. Today, many triple-A games take a less subtle approach because playtesting with broader audiences shows it’s sometimes necessary. Credit: Valve

One thing about the environment design that Half-Life 2 was praised for hasn’t been replaced these days, though: a commitment to subtle environmental storytelling. World-building and vibes are perhaps Half-Life 2’s greatest achievements. From BioShock to Dishonored to Cyberpunk 2077, this might be the realm where Half-Life 2’s influence is still felt the most today.

A legacy remembered

Looking back 20 years later, Half-Life 2 isn’t necessarily remembered for radical new gameplay concepts. Instead, it’s known for outstanding execution—and developers everywhere are still applying lessons learned by that development team to try to chase its high standard of quality.

Even at the time, critics noted that it wasn’t exactly that there was anything in Half-Life 2 that players had never seen before. Rather, it was the combined force of quality, scope, presentation, and refinement that made an impact.

Of course, Valve and Half-Life 2 are also known for multiple memorable cultural moments, some of the industry’s most infamous controversies, and playing a big part in introducing digital distribution. We’ll explore some of those things as we count down to the “Red Letter Day” this Saturday.

Photo of Samuel Axon

Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica. He covers Apple, software development, gaming, AI, 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.

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GOG’s Preservation Program is the DRM-free store refocusing on the classics

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The classic PC games market is “in a sorry state,” according to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small games that aren’t currently selling get abandoned, and compatibility issues arise as technology moves forward or as one-off development ideas age like milk.

Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG’s catalog, and the firm hasn’t actually called itself “Good Old Games” in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making “a significant commitment of resources” toward a new GOG Preservation Program. It starts with 100 games for which GOG’s own developers are working to create current and future compatibility, keeping them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech support, along with granting them a “Good Old Game: Preserved by GOG” stamp.

Selection of games available in GOG's

Credit: GOG

GOG is not shifting its mission of providing a DRM-free alternative to Steam, Epic, and other PC storefronts, at least not entirely. But it is demonstrably excited about a new focus that ties back to its original name, inspired in some part by its work on Alpha Protocol.

“We think we can significantly impact the classics industry by focusing our resources on it and creating superior products,” writes Arthur Dejardin, head of sales and marketing at GOG. “If we wanted to spread the DRM-free gospel by focusing on getting new AAA games on GOG instead, we would make little progress with the same amount of effort and money (we’ve been trying various versions of that for the last 5 years).”

GOG Preservation Program’s launch video.

Getting knights, demons, and zombies up to snuff

What kind of games? Scanning the list of Good Old Games, most of them are, by all accounts, both good and old. Personally, I’m glad to see the Jagged Alliance games, System Shock 2, Warcraft I & II, Dungeon Keeper Gold and Theme Park, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, and the Wing Commander series (particularly, personally, Privateer). Most of them are, understandably, Windows-only, though Mac support extends to 34 titles so far, and Linux may pick up many more through Proton compatibility beyond the 19 native titles to date.

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Spotify’s Car Thing, due for bricking, is getting an open source second life

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Spotify has lost all enthusiasm for the little music devices it sold for just half a year. Firmware hackers, as usually happens, have a lot more interest and have stepped in to save, and upgrade, a potentially useful gadget.

Spotify’s idea a couple years ago was a car-focused device for those who lacked Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, or built-in Spotify support in their vehicles, or just wanted a dedicated Spotify screen. The Car Thing was a $100 doodad with a 4-inch touchscreen and knob that attached to the dashboard (or into a CD slot drive). All it could do was play Spotify, and only if you were a paying member, but that could be an upgrade for owners of older cars, or people who wanted a little desktop music controller.

But less than half a year after it fully released its first hardware device, Spotify gave up on the Car Thing due to “several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues.” A Spotify rep told Ars that the Car Thing was meant “to learn more about how people listen in the car,” and now it was “time to say goodbye to the devices entirely.” Spotify indicated it would offer refunds, though not guaranteed, and moved forward with plans to brick the device in December 2024.

It was always open source, just not publicly

Enter Dammit Jeff, a YouTuber who dove into his device and shows off some alternative software ideas for it (as we first saw on Adafruit’s blog). He even likes the little thing, noting that its wheel feels great, and that the four buttons on the top—originally meant for favorite playlists—present a lot of possibilities.

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Amazon’s Mass Effect TV series is actually going to be made

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Confirming previous rumors, Variety reports that Amazon will be moving ahead with producing a TV series based on the popular Mass Effect video game franchise. The writing and production staff involved might not inspire confidence from fans, though.

The series’ writer and executive producer is slated to be Daniel Casey, who until now was best known as the primary screenwriter on F9: The Fast Saga, one of the late sequels in the Fast and the Furious franchise. He was also part of a team of writers behind the relatively little-known 2018 science fiction film Kin.

Karim Zreik will also produce, and his background is a little more encouraging; his main claim to fame is in the short-lived Marvel Television unit, which produced relatively well-received series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones for Netflix before Disney+ launched with its Marvel Cinematic Universe shows.

Another listed producer is Ari Arad, who has some background in video game adaptations, including the Borderlands and Uncharted movies, as well as the much-maligned live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell.

So yeah, it’s a bit of a mixed bag here. No plot details have been released, but it seems likely that the show will tell a new story rather than focus on the saga of Commander Shepherd from the games, since the games were all about the player inhabiting that character with their own choices. That’s only a guess, though.

Amazon is currently riding high after the smash success of another video game TV series, Fallout, which impressed both longtime and new fans when it debuted to critical acclaim and record viewing numbers earlier this year.

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Sega is delisting 60 classic games from Steam, so now’s the time to grab them

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Sega has put dozens of its Master System, Genesis, Saturn, and other console titles onto modern game stores over the years. But, like that Dreamcast controller stashed in your childhood garage, they’re about to disappear—and getting them back will cost you a nostalgia tax.

Those who have purchased any of the more than 60 games listed by Sega from Steam, Xbox, Nintendo’s Switch store, and the PlayStation store will still have them after 11: 59 pm Pacific time on Dec. 26. But after that, for reasons that Sega does not make explicit, they will be “delisted and unavailable.” Titles specific to the Nintendo Switch Online “Expansion Pack” subscription will remain.

As PC Gamer has suggested, and which makes the most sense, this looks like Sega is getting ready to offer up new “classics” collections on these storefronts. Sega previously rearranged its store shelves to pull Sonic games from online stores and then offer up Sonic Origins. The title underwhelmed Ars at the time and managed to pack in some DLC pitches.

Sega already offers a few bundles and collections in Steam, like the Mega Drive and Genesis Classics and Dreamcast Collection. As with individual titles, buyers will retain access to them, even after Sega comes back around with new bundles.

First-person RPG screenshot showing a character named

Shining in the Darkness might be the turn-based retro RPG missing from your collection (for 99 cents). Credit: Sega

So if you’ve felt like you wanted to reclaim some Sega moments now, piecemeal, while you still can, the Ars writers can suggest a few places to look. These are links to the Steam store, and are mostly Windows-only, though they can often work through Proton on Linux or Steam Deck, and some work with older mac OS versions. Xbox has a smaller list, while PlayStation and Nintendo offer only the Mega Drive Classics at the moment.

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The PS5 Pro’s biggest problem is that the PS5 is already very good

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For $700, I was hoping for a much larger leap in visual impact.

The racing stripe makes it faster. Credit: Kyle Orland

In many ways, the timing of Sony’s 2016 launch of the PS4 Pro couldn’t have been better. The slightly upgraded version of 2013’s PlayStation 4 came at a time when a wave of 4K TVs was just beginning to crest in the form of tens of millions of annual sales in the US.

Purchasing Sony’s first-ever “mid-generation” console upgrade in 2016 didn’t give original PS4 owners access to any new games, a fact that contributed to us calling the PS4 Pro “a questionable value proposition” when it launched. Still, many graphics-conscious console gamers were looking for an excuse to use the extra pixels and HDR colors on their new 4K TVs, and spending hundreds of dollars on a stopgap console years before the PS5 served that purpose well enough.

Fast-forward to today and the PS5 Pro faces an even weaker value proposition. The PS5, after all, has proven more than capable of creating excellent-looking games that take full advantage of the 4K TVs that are now practically standard in American homes. With 8K TVs still an extremely small market niche, there isn’t anything akin to what Sony’s Mike Somerset called “the most significant picture-quality increase probably since black and white went to color” when talking about 4K TV in 2016.

Front view of the PS5 Pro. Note the complete lack of a built-in disc drive on the only model available. Kyle Orland

Instead, Sony says that spending $700 on a PS5 Pro has a decidedly more marginal impact—namely, helping current PS5 gamers avoid having to choose between the smooth, 60 fps visuals of “Performance” mode and the resolution-maximizing, graphical effects-laden “Fidelity” mode in many games. The extra power of the PS5 Pro, Sony says, will let you have the best of both worlds: full 4K, ray-traced graphics and 60 fps at the same time.

While there’s nothing precisely wrong with this value proposition, there’s a severe case of diminishing returns that comes into play here. The graphical improvements between a “Performance mode” PS5 game and a “Performance Pro mode” PS5 game are small enough, in fact, that I often found it hard to reliably tell at a glance which was which.

Is it just me, or does the Ps5 Pro look like a goofy puppet from this angle? The sloped mouth, the PS logo eye… you see it, right? Kyle Orland

The biggest problem with the PS5 Pro, in other words, is that the original PS5 is already too good.

Smooth operator

In announcing the PS5 Pro in September, Sony’s Mark Cerny mentioned that roughly three-quarters of PS5 owners opt for Performance mode over Fidelity mode when offered the choice on a stock PS5. It’s not hard to see why. Research shows that the vast majority of people can detect a distinct decrease in flickering or juddery animation when the frames-per-second counter is cranked up from (Fidelity mode’s) 30 fps to (Performance mode’s) 60 fps.

The extra visual smoothness is especially important in any reflex-heavy game, where every millisecond of reaction time between your eyes and your thumbs can have a dramatic impact. That reaction advantage can extend well past 60 fps, as PC gamers know all too well.

But the other reason that Performance mode is so overwhelmingly popular among PS5 players, I’d argue, is that you don’t really have to give up too much to get that frame rate-doubling boost. In most games, hopping from Fidelity mode to Performance means giving up a steady 4K image for either a (nicely upscaled) 1440p image or “Dynamic 4K” resolution (i.e., 4K that sometimes temporarily drops down lower to maintain frame rates). While some gamers swear that this difference is important to a game’s overall visual impact, most players will likely struggle to even notice that resolution dip unless they’re sitting incredibly close to a very large screen.

For the PS5 Pro, Sony is marketing “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution,” its buzzword for an AI-driven upscaling feature that adds further clarity and detail to scenes. Sony’s original announcement of “Super Resolution” heavily used zoomed-in footage to highlight the impact of this feature on distant details. That’s likely because without that level of zoom, the effect of this resolution bump is practically unnoticeable.

Tracing those rays

The other visual upgrade often inherent in a PS5 game’s Fidelity mode is support for ray-tracing, wherein the system tracks individual light rays for more accurate reflections and light scattering off of simulated objects. Having ray-tracing enabled can sometimes lead to striking visual moments, such as when you see Spider-Man’s every move reflected in the mirrored windows of a nearby skyscraper. But as we noted in our initial PS5 review, the effect is usually a much subtler tweak to the overall “realism” of how objects come across in a scene.

Having those kind of ray-traced images at a full 60 fps is definitely nice, but the impact tends to be muted unless a scene has a lot of highly reflective objects. Even the “Fidelity Pro” mode in some PS5 Pro games—which scales the frame rate back to 30 fps to allow for the ray-tracing algorithm to model more reflections and more accurate occlusion and shadows—doesn’t create very many “wow” moments over a standard PS5 in moment-to-moment gameplay.

On the original PS5, I never hesitated to give up the (often marginal) fidelity improvements in favor of a much smoother frame rate. Getting that slightly improved fidelity on the PS5 Pro—without having to give up my beloved 60 fps—is definitely nice, but it’s far from an exciting new frontier in graphical impact.

Which is which?

When testing the PS5 Pro for this review, I had my original PS5 plugged into a secondary input on the same TV, running the same games consecutively. I’d play a section of a game in Pro mode on the PS5 Pro, then immediately switch to the PS5 running the same game in Performance mode (or vice versa). Sitting roughly six feet away from a 60-inch 4K TV, I was struggling to notice any subjective difference in overall visual quality.

I also took comparative screenshots on an original PS5 and a PS5 Pro in as close to identical circumstances as possible, some of which you can see shared in this review (be sure to blow them up to full screen on a good monitor). Flipping back and forth between two screenshots, I could occasionally make out small tangible differences—more natural shine coming off the skin of Aloy’s face in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, for instance, or a slight increase in detail on Ratchet’s Lombax fur. More often than not, though, I had legitimate trouble telling which screenshot came from which console without double-checking which TV input was currently active.

I’m a single reviewer with a single pair of eyes, of course. Your impression of the relative visual improvement might be very different. Luckily, if you have access to a PS5 already, you can run your own visual test just by switching between Fidelity and Performance modes on any of your current games. If you find the individual screens in Performance mode look noticeably worse than those in Fidelity mode (putting frame rate aside), then you might be in the market for a PS5 Pro. If you don’t, you can probably stop reading this review right here.

Barely a bang for your buck

Even if you’re the kind of person who appreciates the visual impact of Fidelity mode on the PS5, upgrading to the PS5 Pro isn’t exactly an instant purchase. At $700, getting a PS5 Pro is akin to a PC gamer purchasing a top-of-the-line graphics card, even though the lack of modular components means replacing your entire PS5 console rather than a single part. But while a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti could conceivably keep running new PC games for a decade or more, the PS5 Pro should be thought of as more of a stopgap until the PlayStation 6 (and its inevitable exclusive games) hit around 2028 or so (based on past PlayStation launch spacing).

If you already have a PS5, that $700 could instead go toward the purchase of 10 full, big-budget games at launch pricing or even more intriguing indie releases. That money could also go toward more than four years of PlayStation Plus Premium and access to its library of hundreds of streaming and downloadable modern and classic PlayStation titles PS5 titles. Both strike me as a better use of a limited gaming budget than the slight visual upgrade you’d get from a PS5 Pro.

Even if you’re in the market for your first PS5, I’m not sure the Pro is the version I’d recommend. The $250 difference between a stock PS5 and the PS5 Pro similarly feels like it could be put to better use than the slight visual improvements on offer here. And while the addition of an extra terabyte of high-speed game storage on the PS5 Pro is very welcome, the need to buy an external disc drive peripheral for physical games on the new console may understandably rub some players the wrong way.

Back when the PlayStation 2 launched, I distinctly remember thinking that video game graphics had reached a “good enough” plateau, past which future hardware improvements would be mostly superfluous. That memory feels incredibly quaint now from the perspective of nearly two-and-a-half decades of improvements in console graphics and TV displays. Yet the PS5 Pro has me similarly feeling that the original PS5 was something of a graphical plateau, with this next half-step in graphical horsepower struggling to prove its worth.

Maybe I’ll look back in two decades and consider that feeling similarly naive, seeing the PS5 Pro as a halting first step toward yet unimagined frontiers of graphical realism. Right now, though, I’m comfortable recommending that the vast majority of console gamers spend their money elsewhere.

Photo of Kyle Orland

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

The PS5 Pro’s biggest problem is that the PS5 is already very good Read More »

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Dystopika is a beautiful cyberpunk city builder without the ugly details

city builders, cyberpunk, dystopia, dystopian, dystopika, gaming / /

Some of my favorite games deny me the thing I think I want most. Elden Ring refuses to provide manageable save files (and I paid for it). Balatro withholds the final math on each hand played (and its developer suggests avoiding calculators). And the modern X-COM games force me to realize just how much a 98 percent chance to hit is not the same as 100 percent.

Dystopika (Steam, Windows) is a city builder in maybe the strictest definition of that two-word descriptor, because it steadfastly refuses to distract you with non-building details. The game is described by its single developer, Matt Marshall, as having “No goals, no management, just creativity and dark cozy vibes.” Dystopika does very little to explain how you should play it, because there’s no optimal path for doing so. Your only job is to enjoy yourself, poking and prodding at a dark cyberpunk cityscape, making things that look interesting, pretty, grim, or however you like. It might seem restrictive, but it feels very freeing.

Dystopika launch video.

The game’s interface is a small rail on the left side of the screen. Select “Building” and a random shape attaches to your cursor. You can right-click to change it, but you can’t pick one. Place it, and then optionally place the cursor near its top to change its height. Making one building taller will raise smaller buildings nearby. Reaching certain heights, or densities, or something (it’s not explained) will “unlock” certain new buildings, landmarks, and decorations.

Screen showing a tall, T-shaped building,, with

Hooray! I’ve unlocked the headquarters for a megacorp with a very ominous name! (Please appreciate my efforts at public transit.) Credit: Kevin Purdy

You do get to pick out “Props,” like roads and trams and giant billboards and hologram objects and flying carports, but the game is similarly non-committal on what you should do with them, or most anything. You put things down, or delete them, expand them, connect them, and try things out until you like how it looks.

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iPod fans evade Apple’s DRM to preserve 54 lost clickwheel-era games

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Dozens of previously hard-to-access games can now be synced via Virtual Machine.

Mom: We have the Game Boy Advance at home / At home: Credit: Aurich Lawson

Mom: We have the Game Boy Advance at home / At home: Credit: Aurich Lawson

Old-school Apple fans probably remember a time, just before the iPhone became a massive gaming platform in its own right, when Apple released a wide range of games designed for late-model clickwheel iPods. While those clickwheel-controlled titles didn’t exactly set the gaming world on fire, they represent an important historical stepping stone in Apple’s long journey through the game industry.

Today, though, these clickwheel iPod games are on the verge of becoming lost media—impossible to buy or redownload from iTunes and protected on existing devices by incredibly strong Apple DRM. Now, the classic iPod community is engaged in a quest to preserve these games in a way that will let enthusiasts enjoy these titles on real hardware for years to come.

Perhaps too well-protected

The short heyday of iPod clickwheel gaming ran from late 2006 to early 2009, when Apple partnered with major studios like Sega, Square Enix, and Electronic Arts to release 54 distinct titles for $7.49 each. By 2011, though, the rise of iOS gaming made these clickwheel iPod titles such an afterthought that Apple completely removed them from the iTunes store, years before the classic iPod line was discontinued for good in 2014.

YouTuber Billiam looks takes a hands-on tour through some of the clickwheel iPod’s games.

In the years since that delisting, the compressed IPG files representing these clickwheel games have all been backed up and collected in various archives. For the most part, though, those IPG files are practically useless to classic iPod owners because of the same strict Fairplay DRM that protected iTunes music and video downloads. That DRM ties each individual IPG file not just to a particular iTunes account (set when the game file was purchased) but also to the specific hardware identifier of the desktop iTunes installation used to sync it.

Games already synced to iPods and iTunes libraries years ago will still work just fine. But trying to sync any of these aging games to a new iPod (and/or a new iTunes installation) requires pairing the original IPG file provided by Apple years ago with the authorized iTunes account that made the original purchase.

Didn’t back up that decades-old file? Sorry, you’re out of luck.

A set of 20 clickwheel iPod games was eventually patched to work on certain iPod Video devices that are themselves flashed with custom firmware. But the majority of these games remain completely unplayable for the vast majority of classic iPod owners to this day.

A virtual workaround

Luckily for the sizable community of classic iPod enthusiasts, there is a bit of a workaround for this legacy DRM issue. Clickwheel iPod owners with working copies of any of these games (either in their iTunes library or on an iPod itself) are still able to re-authorize their account through Apple’s servers to sync with a secondary installation of iTunes.

Reddit user Quix shows off his clickwheel iPod game collection.

Reddit user Quix shows off his clickwheel iPod game collection. Credit: Reddit

If multiple iPod owners each reauthorize their accounts to the same iTunes installation, that copy of iTunes effectively becomes a “master library” containing authorized copies of the games from all of those accounts (there’s a five-account limit per iTunes installation, but it can be bypassed by copying the files manually). That iTunes installation then becomes a distribution center that can share those authorized games to any number of iPods indefinitely, without the need for any online check-ins with Apple.

In recent years, a Reddit user going by the handle Quix used this workaround to amass a local library of 19 clickwheel iPod games and publicly offered to share “copies of these games onto as many iPods as I can.” But Quix’s effort ran into a significant bottleneck of physical access—syncing his game library to a new iPod meant going through the costly and time-consuming process of shipping the device so it could be plugged into Quix’s actual computer and then sending it back to its original owner.

Enter Reddit user Olsro, who earlier this month started the appropriately named iPod Clickwheel Games Preservation Project. Rather than creating his master library of authorized iTunes games on a local computer in his native France, Olsro sought to “build a communitarian virtual machine that anyone can use to sync auth[orized] clickwheel games into their iPod.” While the process doesn’t require shipping, it does necessitate jumping through a few hoops to get the Qemu Virtual Machine running on your local computer.

A tutorial shot showing how to use USB passthrough to sync games from Olsro’s Virtual Machine.

A tutorial shot showing how to use USB passthrough to sync games from Olsro’s Virtual Machine. Credit: Github / Olsro

Over the last three weeks, Olsro has worked with other iPod enthusiasts to get authorized copies of 45 different clickwheel iPod games synced to his library and ready for sharing. That Virtual Machine “should work fully offline to sync the clickwheel games forever to any amount of different iPods,” Olsro wrote, effectively preserving them indefinitely.

For posterity

Olsro told Ars in a Discord discussion that he was inspired to start the project due to fond memories of playing games like Asphalt 4 and Reversi on his iPod Nano 3G as a child. When he dove back into the world of classic iPods through a recent purchase of a classic iPod 7G, he said he was annoyed that there was no way for him to restore those long-lost game files to his new devices.

“I also noticed that I was not alone to be frustrated about that one clickwheel game that was a part of a childhood,” Olsro told Ars. “I noticed that when people had additional games, it was often only one or two more games because those were very expensive.”

Beyond the nostalgia value, even Olsro admits that “only a few of [the clickwheel iPod games] are really very interesting compared to multiplatform equivalents.” The iPod’s round clickwheel interface—with only a single “action” button in the center—is less than ideal for most action-oriented games, and the long-term value of “games” like SAT PREP 2008 is “very debatable,” Olsro said.

A short review of Phase shows off the basic rhythm-matching gameplay.

Still, the classic iPod library features a few diamonds in the rough. Olsro called out the iPod version of Peggle for matching the PC version’s features and taking “really good advantage from the clickwheel controls” for its directional aiming. Then there’s Phase, a rhythm game that creates dynamic tracks from your own iPod music library and was never ported to other platforms. Olsro described it as “very addictive, simple, but fun and challenging.”

Even the bad clickwheel iPod games—like Sega’s nearly impossible-to-control Sonic the Hedgehog port—might find their own quirky audience among gaming subcommunities, Olsro argued. “One [person] beat Dark Souls using DK bongos, so I would not be surprised if the speedrun community could try speedrunning some of those odd games.”

More than entertainment, though, Olsro said there’s a lot of historical interest to be mined from this odd pre-iPhone period in Apple’s gaming history. “The clickwheel games were a reflect[ion] of that gaming period of premium games,” Olsro said. “Without ads, bullshit, and micro-transactions and playable fully offline from start to end… Then the market evolved [on iOS] with cheaper premium games like Angry Birds before being invaded with ads everywhere and aggressive monetizations…”

The iPod might not be the ideal device for playing Sonic the Hedgehog, but you can do it!

The iPod might not be the ideal device for playing Sonic the Hedgehog, but you can do it! Credit: Reddit / ajgogo

While Olsro said he’s happy with the 42 games he’s preserved (and especially happy to play Asphalt 4 again), he won’t be fully satisfied until his iTunes Virtual Machine has all 54 clickwheel titles backed up for posterity. He compared the effort to complete sets of classic game console ROMs “that you can archive somewhere to be sure to be able to play any game you want in the future (or research on it)… Getting the full set is also addictive in terms of collection, like any other kind of collectible things.”

But Olsro’s preservation effort might have a built-in time limit. If Apple ever turns off the iTunes re-authorization servers for clickwheel iPods, he will no longer be able to add new games to his master clickwheel iPod library. “Apple is now notoriously known to not care about announcing closing servers for old things,” Olsro said. “If that version of iTunes dies tomorrow, this preservation project will be stopped. No new games will be ever added.”

“We do not know how much time we still have to accomplish this, so there is no time to lose,” Olsro wrote on Reddit. iPod gamers who want to help can contact him through his Discord account, inurayama.

Photo of Kyle Orland

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

iPod fans evade Apple’s DRM to preserve 54 lost clickwheel-era games Read More »

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 accounted for 19% of Comcast Internet traffic last week

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You might think that since Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (which was released last Friday) is the 21st game in the franchise, it wouldn’t be that highly anticipated. You’d be wrong. Last week’s entry set multiple records when it launched.

Specifically, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the game set new records for Game Pass subscribers, particularly for a first-day game launch. That’s, of course, to be expected—Call of Duty was a major reason why Microsoft acquired Activision, the longtime publisher of the series.

It gets a little zanier, though. The Internet service provider Comcast says Black Ops 6 was directly responsible for 19 percent of its overall traffic the week of the launch, according to a report in The Verge.

That’s partly due to the game’s popularity, but it can also be attributed to its huge file size. A full install of Black Ops 6 can take up to just over 100GB, depending on your platform—and possibly as much as 300GB if you also install game modes tied to the previous entries in the series, like the immensely popular battle royale Warzone. That will wreak havoc on users’ data caps; Comcast imposes a 1.2TB monthly cap in many states.

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Apple silicon Macs will get their ultimate gaming test with Cyberpunk 2077 release

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Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically demanding and visually impressive games in recent years, will soon get a Mac release, according to developer and publisher CD Projekt Red.

The announcement was published on CD Projekt Red’s blog and also appeared briefly during Apple’s pre-recorded MacBook Pro announcement video. The game will be sold on the Mac App Store, Steam, GOG, and the Epic Game Store when it launches, and it will be labeled the Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which simply means it also includes Phantom Liberty, the expansion that was released a couple of years after the original game.

Cyberpunk 2027 launched in a rough state in 2020, especially on low-end hardware. Subsequent patches and a significant overhaul with Phantom Liberty largely redeemed it in critics’ eyes—the result of all that post-launch work is the version Mac users will get.

Apple has been working with AAA game publishers to try and get the games they made for consoles or Windows gaming PCs onto the Mac or iPhone, including Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Death Stranding, and Resident Evil Village, among others. But the addition of Cyberpunk 2077 is notable because of its history of running poorly on low-end hardware, and because it uses new technologies like ray-traced illumination, reflections, and shadows. It also heavily relies on AI upscaling like DLSS or FSR to be playable even on high-end machines.

Apple silicon Macs will get their ultimate gaming test with Cyberpunk 2077 release Read More »

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Apple is turning The Oregon Trail into a movie

Apple, Apple II, Apple TV, culture, Edutainment, gaming, movies, The Oregon Trail / /

Apple will adapt the classic educational game The Oregon Trail into a big-budget movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR).

The film is in early development, having just been pitched to Apple and approved. Will Speck and Josh Gordon (Blades of Glory, Office Christmas Party) will direct and produce. Given that pedigree (zany comedies), it’s clear this film won’t be a serious historical drama about the struggles of those who traveled the American West.

In fact, the report not only notes that it will be a comedy—it says it will be a musical, too. “The movie will feature a couple of original musical numbers in the vein of Barbie,” according to THR’s sources. EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul will be responsible for the original music in the film.

Of course, with a comedy, the writers are at least as important as the director. The film will be written by Kenneth and Keith Lucas—but they’re most recently best known for the 2021 drama Judas and the Black Messiah, for which they received an Oscar nomination.

That’s all we know about the film so far. As for the game, well, it needs no introduction—especially for folks who were of the appropriate age to play it at school or at home on personal computers from the 1970s through the 1990s.

The game is a major cultural touchstone for a certain generation—to the point that “The Oregon Trail Generation” has been used as a label for many of the people born in the early 1980s. It’s long been a thing to joke about the game’s morbid content, like the infamous phrase: “You have died of dysentery.”

Since the film was greenlit by Apple, it’s likely to debut on the Apple TV+ streaming service, but we don’t yet know when it will arrive or who will star in it.

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