I recently sat down with Defect game director and former id Software artist, Emanuel Palalic, as well as composer Mick Gordon to discuss the upcoming cyberpunk FPS. One topic I wanted to get their thoughts on was optimization: Defect looks like a heavy game, but has surprisingly lenient specs—RTX 2060 minimum—and no mandatory ray tracing like we're starting to see in some games.
The graphics arms race is proving ever more costly for devs and players, with diminishing returns: The cutting edge Metal Gear Solid Delta left me feeling cold, especially compared to the similarly photorealistic, yet more vibrant, striking, and ten years older Phantom Pain. Meanwhile, people's champions like Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6 are scoring points with players by not just running on lower-end hardware, but looking and performing well.
