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Enlarge / Are we certain this famous Valve promo image wasn't generated by an AI? (credit: Valve)
Last week, we shared an anonymous report that Valve was blocking from Steam at least some games that make use of AI-generated artwork. Over the weekend, Valve confirmed that report, telling Ars in an e-mailed statement that the company is blocking games that use AI-generated content unless developers can prove those AI models were trained with data that does not "infringe on existing copyrights."
"The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show that a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music," Valve spokesperson Kaci Boyle told Ars. "In particular, there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models. It is the developer's responsibility to make sure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game."
Boyle stressed in the statement that Valve's "goal is not to discourage the use of [AI-generated content] on Steam" and that the company's "priority, as always, is to try to ship as many of the titles we receive as we can." Generative AI is "bound to create new and exciting experiences in gaming," Valve continued.
Scandinavian design is most often associated with a minimalist aesthetic, one emphasizing natural materials as a carefully considered employment of form following function. Wood often plays prominently, as does a subdued palette meant to evoke nature’s colors, with metal only used sparingly as accents. It’s all pretty much the antithesis of the PC gaming aesthetic and ethos, where gaming rigs tend to lean strongly into gaudy LED-illuminated showmanship.
Now imagine if Alvar Alto or Arne Jacobsen as an avid gamer today, and if they put their creative genius towards designing their very own gaming machine for their COD or Minecraft addiction. You might very well see something similar to Fractal Design’s North and Terra PC cases.
Fractal’s North is available with either a mesh or tempered glass side panel design. Either option includes two 140mm fans to keep air flow performance at a maximum within, while wood and metal combine into a handsome mid-century presence on the exterior side.
Fronted tastefully with a real oak or walnut paneled face, embellished with a faux leather tab, and sleek steel or brass detail buttons and ports, Fractal’s North PC case stood out enough from the crowded realm of audaciously outfitted PC gaming designs to earn the Gothenburg-based company a Red Dot Design Award 2023.
An integrated pull tab allows for easy access into the case for maintenance or upgrades.
Fractal’s Terra is a similarly conceived approach to PC gaming, featuring a smaller case option made with anodized aluminum panels and a CNC-milled, FSC-certified solid walnut front face.
Three front USB ports, including one USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C with fast charging support and speeds up to 10Gbps, are available on the exterior; seven bridgeless expansion slots within maximize the customization and upgrade options down the line.
Noting hardware upgrades play prominently in the PC gaming experience, North has designed the Terra case to be easily accessible from the side and top using an integrated tab.
An aluminum power button and two USB ports for connecting devices are integrated into the walnut wood detailing. The sum of the design makes it an ideal aesthetic candidate for a living room media PC or gaming machine connected to a home theater system.
Founded in 2007 in Sweden, followed by Fractal Design outposts opened in Dallas and Taipei, Taiwan, the company has distinguished itself by designing gaming accessories aimed at PC customers seeking an understated presence on their desktop. The company’s North and Terra cases epitomize this understated aesthetic displaying an almost architectural attention to detailing.
Fractal Design’s North PC case retails for $140 here, while the Terra PC case is available for $180 here.
This post contains affiliate links, so if you make a purchase from an affiliate link, we earn a commission. Thanks for supporting Design Milk!
Enlarge / An AI-generated image from an #aicinema still series called "Vinyl Vengeance" by Julie Wieland, created using Midjourney. (credit: Julie Wieland / Midjourney)
Since last year, a group of artists have been using an AI image generator called Midjourney to create still photos of films that don't exist. They call the trend "AI cinema." We spoke to one of its practitioners, Julie Wieland, and asked her about her technique, which she calls "synthography," for synthetic photography.
Last year, image synthesis models like DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney began allowing anyone with a text description (called a "prompt") to generate a still image in many different styles. The technique has been controversial among some artists, but other artists have embraced the new tools and run with them.
While anyone with a prompt can make an AI-generated image, it soon became clear that some people possessed a special talent for finessing these new AI tools to produce better content. As with painting or photography, the human creative spark is still necessary to produce notable results consistently.
Enlarge (credit: Andrew Cunningham/Google)
Google announced today that it would enable WebGPU support in its Chrome browser by default starting in version 113, currently in beta. In development since 2017, WebGPU is a next-generation graphics API that aims to bring the benefits of low-overhead APIs like Microsoft's Direct3D 12, Apple's Metal, and Vulkan to web browsers and other apps.
WebGPU support has been available but off by default in Chrome for a while now, because the API wasn't finalized and things could break from update to update. Google says that Mozilla and Apple will eventually support WebGPU in Firefox and Safari, and browsers like Microsoft Edge and Opera that rely on the Chromium browser engine can presumably choose to switch it on just as Google has.
Chrome 113 supports WebGPU on Windows, macOS, and ChromeOS to start, with "support for other platforms" like Linux and Android "coming later this year." This browser version should roll out to all Chrome users sometime in May.
Enlarge / It was nice while it lasted... (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
Back in 2020, we reported that emulator developers were using a hole in the Xbox Store's app distribution system to get around Microsoft's longstanding ban on emulators running on Xbox consoles. This week, though, many of the emulators that were distributed through that workaround have stopped working, the apparent victims of a new crackdown by Microsoft.
Xbox emulator makers and users can't say they weren't warned. In the "Gaming and Xbox" section of Microsoft's official Store Policies, section 10.13.10 clearly states that "products that emulate a game system or game platform are not allowed on any device family."
Microsoft's enforcement of this clause has historically focused on removing emulators published as "private" UWP apps to the Xbox Store. Those apps could be distributed to whitelisted users via direct links accessed on the system's Edge browser, getting around the usual approval process for a public store listing.
Disney+ has released the first teaser trailer for its forthcoming Star Wars series, Ahsoka, starring Rosario Dawson.
Star Wars Celebration Day kicked off with the release of an extended teaser for Ahsoka, the latest interconnected series in the Star Wars franchise set to debut this summer on Disney+. Written by Dave Filoni, the series stars Rosario Dawson in the title role.
The Jedi Padawan of Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka was first introduced as a supporting character in 2008's animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the subsequent animated series. The character returned in the sequel series Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018) as a member of the Rebel Alliance, operating under the codename Fulcrum, and made numerous other cameo appearances in the extended Star Wars universe. Dawson's live-action version made her debut in The Mandalorian's second season. We last saw Ahsoka briefly in The Book of Boba Fett, when she passed on a gift of chain mail to Grogu after warning Mando/Din Djarin that his presence would be a distraction from Grogu's Jedi training. We all know how that turned out: Din and Grogu reunited and went on to share even more adventures in The Mandalorian S3, which will wrap later this month.
The official premise for Ahsoka is short and sweet: "Set after the fall of the Empire, Ahsoka follows the former Jedi knight Ahsoka Tano as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy." In addition to Dawson, the cast includes Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren, a young Mandalorian warrior, graffiti artist, and former bounty hunter; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera Syndulla, a former pilot for the Rebellion; Eman Esfandi as Ezra Bridger, a former con artist and thief who trained as a Jedi; and Ray Stevenson as Baylan.
Enlarge / Archaeologists have discovered the first physical evidence of the so-called "gold of honor" ceremony in Ancient Egypt, in which the severed hands of defeated foes were presented to the Pharaoh in exchange for a collar of golden beads. (credit: J. Gresky et al., 2023/CC BY 4.0)
There is evidence that ancient Egyptian soldiers would sever the right hands of foes and present them to the Pharaoh. That evidence comes in the form of tomb inscriptions of prominent warriors, as well as inscriptions and iconography on temple reliefs. Archaeologists have now discovered the first physical evidence of such a trophy-taking practice, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. The severed right hands of 12 individuals were excavated from pits within a courtyard of a 15th Dynasty palace in northeastern Egypt.
The 15th Dynasty (circa 1640-1530 BCE) rulers were known as Hyksos ("rulers of foreign lands"), although they did not control all of Egypt from their seat of power in the city of Avaris—the pharaohs of the 16th and 17th Dynasties ruled from Thebes during the same time period. Historians disagree about whether the Hyksos came to Egypt as invaders or gradually settled in the Nile Delta before rising to power. But by the late 17th Dynasty, the Hyksos and the pharaohs were at war, leading to the former's defeat by Ahmose I, who founded the 18th Dynasty.
But the Hyksos nonetheless left their mark on Egyptian culture in the form of certain technological advances and customs, including the practice of presenting the severed right hands of defeated foes in a so-called "gold of honor" ceremony in exchange for a collar of golden beads. Per the authors, the Egyptians seem to have adopted the custom during Ahmose I's reign at the latest, based on a relief showing a pile of hands in his temple in Abydos. Tomb inscriptions and temple reliefs from the 18th to the 20th Dynasties "consistently depict hand counts on the battlefield following major battles," the authors wrote. However, there was no physical evidence of the custom beyond iconographic and literary sources—until now.
Enlarge / Just because you're still alive in a retro-futuristic-post-apocalyptic Commonwealth doesn't mean you're necessarily witty. (credit: Bethesda / ProfMajowski)
Modders can change many things inside their favorite games, but dialogue from professionally voiced characters hasn't been one of those things—at least until recently. AI voice generation could open up new modding avenues for some games, as it has already done with one Fallout 4 mod package.
Roleplayer's Expanded Dialogue (RED) is listed in the NexusMods catalog as a "Massive expansion of vanilla dialogue," adding more than 300 entirely new lines of dialogue to the game. Those lines aim to solve an issue near to the hearts of fans of Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas: role-playing. If you're playing as a ruthless jerk, a brilliant nuclear scientist, or a strong but dimwitted dolt, you'll see more dialogue options that reflect this. Mechanically, the roll-the-dice speech "checks," which are based solely on your charisma level in the default game, can now be unlocked using related traits or skills.
If you're going to let a player be a cannibal, let them talk about it, too. (credit: Bethesda / ProjMajowski)
They're not just new labels on existing dialogue, either. RED, created by NexusMods user ProfMajowski (and first seen by us at PCGamesN), says it used ElevenLabs voice AI to generate its more in-character lines. The results can sometimes "sound a little 'emotionless,'" the creator writes, but "otherwise they basically sound like the real thing." Nothing your character can newly say now will change the game's mechanics or reactions, but it should sound a bit more in character.
Enlarge / Sony's PlayStation 5. (credit: Sony)
UK regulators reviewing Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard reversed their stance on a key question today, saying they no longer believe Microsoft would remove the Call of Duty franchise from Sony's PlayStation consoles.
Last month, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) tentatively concluded that a combined Microsoft/Activision Blizzard would harm competition in console gaming. At the time, the CMA said evidence showed that "Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision's games exclusive to its own consoles (or only available on PlayStation under materially worse conditions)." The agency also raised concerns about the merger affecting rivals in cloud gaming.
The preliminary finding was a victory for Sony, which has consistently expressed doubts about Microsoft's promise to keep putting Call of Duty games on PlayStation. But Microsoft argued that the CMA's financial model was flawed and was able to convince the agency to reverse its conclusion. In an announcement today, the CMA said it "received a significant amount of new evidence."
Enlarge / Sometimes, building better Wordles means building the same Wordles... (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO—When The New York Times acquired daily puzzle mega-hit Wordle at the beginning of 2022, there were plenty of skeptics who were sure it signaled the end of the game's incredible viral rise. Apparently, those skeptics included some of the people at the Times itself.
At a presentation at the Game Developers Conference Thursday, Times game producer and industry veteran Zoe Bell said the new owners expected Wordle's daily users "would just immediately decline" after the acquisition. Partly that was out of fear that some players would recoil from the "huge corporate behemoth" that now owned the indie hit. But it was also a simple recognition of the usual cycle for viral "zeitgeist" games: "How long can exponential growth go on?"
Just over a year after the acquisition, though, Bell said the company's efforts at "preserving Wordle as an Internet treasure" have paid off. That's largely thanks to a patient, "first do no harm" strategy that didn't seek to directly monetize the game or introduce a lot of half-baked changes to the game's successful formula, she said.
Enlarge / Frostpunk, an alternate history survival city building simulation game. (credit: GOG.com)
Several staff members are big fans of the GOG games marketplace, primarily for two reasons: the games are DRM-free, and there are many classic DOS games from the '80s and '90s.
GOG has been running its annual Spring Sale for a few days now. This time around, we worked with GOG to curate a list of Ars Technica picks. These are discounted games chosen by Ars staffers Samuel Axon and Lee Hutchinson that we think Ars readers might enjoy—assuming you haven't played them already.
If you haven't, discounts during this sale range from 20 percent to as much as 75 or 80 percent. Since most of them are classics, they generally weren't too pricy to begin with.
Enlarge / The view is pretty great... (credit: HBO)
New episodes 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 every Sunday evening. 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.
Does Ellie believe Joel?
In this episode, Joel and Ellie make it! They're in Reno, and they find the doctors they've been trying to find this whole time. They just need to let the doctors run a few tests, and then they can ride off into the sunset together, their surrogate father/daughter bond intact and healthy and totally great. Right?
But yes, backing up a bit, I like how this episode gets back to some quiet time between Joel and Ellie, who get to joke around and feed giraffes and be generally wistful about their journey together. They have obviously and fully become a surrogate father/daughter pair to each other, which is saying something, given how reluctant they were to even be in the same space back at the beginning of the series.
What did you do, Joel, and why did you do it? (credit: HBO)
Unlike just about every other group of people we've run into in The Last of Us universe, there doesn't seem to be anything especially sinister about the Reno Fireflies. Yes, they decide pretty quickly that the only way to study and transmit Ellie's immunity is to remove her brain (This is explained somewhat in yet another episode-opening flashback where we meet Ellie's mother and do in fact learn the incredible true story of how Ellie got her knife, a joke I made a few recaps ago that ended up coming true).
But they are not, as far as we know, a community of sadistic evangelical vigilante brain-removers. They are, to borrow a phrase, putting the needs of the many ahead of the needs of the few. And it's not that I don't feel deeply for Joel, who is clearly not ready or willing or able to lose another daughter. But his response to the situation...
It leads me to my question: is Joel the bad guy? Have we, the audience, been hoodwinked by Pedro Pascal's dadly charms into rooting for a monster?
The only way to come to the opposite conclusion is by being hopelessly sentimental about the whole thing. And Joel's actions are made even worse because, as Marlene points out, Ellie would pretty clearly be willing to sacrifice herself for that greater good.
That said, I think both the game and the show do a good job of threading the needle between not defending Joel's actions but still explaining them. By the time we get to these final scenes, we understand how and why a very broken Joel would essentially sacrifice the human race for this girl he met relatively recently. You don't have to agree with it to understand it from Joel's point of view, and I think that's an amazing narrative feat.
What wouldn't you do to protect this face? (credit: HBO)
But getting back to your initial question, I think the most monstrous, selfish thing he does is lie about it to a girl who has huge trust issues and who relies on him for everything. Maybe you can understand why Joel is doing what he’s doing, but it’s an unfathomable betrayal of this person who he claims to care about.
But then there's those last few seconds of the season—that tight close-up on Ellie's face—where you can almost see the gears turning in her head. Does she just trust Joel so much that she just puts any doubts aside? Is she convincing herself to believe Joel for the sake of her own sanity? Or does she know Joel is lying and is just pretending to accept his story to protect their relationship?
I was thinking about how this game came out in 2013 and how a decade ago we were still very much in the middle of an anti-hero era in movies and TV. I'm mostly thinking of The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and their many imitators. These shows asked viewers to explore the psyches of (mostly) white (mostly) men who were doing bad things, but who could still elicit sympathy and understanding because of some combination of good writing and great, charismatic performances.
The problem was that sometimes those shows were too good at what they were doing, and at least some viewers went from understanding and sympathizing with those characters to rooting for them in ways that could be uncomfortable. Walter White was ultimately a manipulative drug kingpin, a murderer and a serial liar, a megalomaniac addicted to power and its exercise. A non-trivial portion of the show's fanbase spent most of the series upset at his wife for being "an annoying bitch" who was insufficiently supportive of his criminal enterprise.
I really liked what The Last of Us finale accomplished insofar as it subverted my expectations. I went in ready for a mostly heartwarming tale of found family in an apocalyptic setting, and the season does deliver that. But this episode's haunted, desperate Joel, too eager to project his dead daughter onto Ellie and too willing to go on a killing spree in the interest of "protecting" her, adds an uncomfortable layer on top of their dynamic.
How I feel about season two will depend on whether the show wants to acknowledge and explore that discomfort or whether it wants us to think that Joel is a flawed badass who was "right" to do what he did just because he did it for sympathetic reasons.
So that's my season-ending mini-essay. As a game player who has some idea of what's coming next, how did the finale leave you? How are you feeling about this season as a game adaptation?
Mother, victim, knife donor... (credit: HBO)
Part 2 aside, I feel like Part 1 has one of the best-presented endings in gaming, which carries over quite well here. These final scenes paper over a lot of the narrative's weaker moments. And that close-up on Ellie's face—with all the vagaries in every slight twitch of her eyes and chin—was even more impressive in a 2013 game, where motion-captured performances tended to be much broader and more over-the-top.
The show finale includes almost shot-for-shot remakes of many of the key scenes at the end of the game, right down to the music cues in many instances. But there is one subtle but important narrative change I noticed, which goes all the way back to the first episode.
Remember when that '60s talk show panelist suggested that a fungal outbreak wouldn't just be society-destroying but that a cure wouldn't even be possible?
In the game, while it's not 100 percent clear that the doctors will succeed in turning Ellie's brain into a vaccine, there's nothing explicitly suggesting it's a foolish effort. In the show, that one line at the very beginning of the first episode kind of changes the entire calculus.
If that panelist was right, then maybe Joel was (accidentally) right to save Ellie? Was that line an effort to soften Joel's decision in the end and make his actions more forgivable?
This is one of the things about this season that feels too rushed. We know that “smearing Ellie’s blood on an open wound” doesn’t fix anything, but that’s also not how medicine works unless you’re a kid who doesn’t know anything about medicine. So the show’s immediate jump to “the only way to get a cure is by harvesting Ellie’s brain!” feels a bit fast, even by the standards of post-apocalypse frontier medicine.
Regardless, I’m not sure the talk show does much to redeem Joel because it seems pretty unlikely that he would be thinking of one throwaway line from one talk show that would’ve aired when he was a kid. And if we’re going off that line, are we supposed to be shouting, “This whole mission is stupid! A cure is impossible!” at our screens this whole time?
Sitting and waiting for season two... (credit: HBO)
I'm not trying to suggest Joel had arcane medical knowledge driving his decision. But in the context of a TV show, it's hard to see why the creators would throw in a line like that for any reason other than adding a bit of "maybe Ellie's death would have been in vain"-type doubt nine episodes later...
My last question for you: as a video game adaptation, do you think The Last of Us is better or worse than the current best video game adaptation, Super Mario Bros. (1993)?
Joking aside, this adaptation made me think a lot of the 2009 Watchmen movie, which I think suffered from being way too faithful to the source material. Here we had just the right amount of faithfulness with (mostly) useful additions/changes for the new medium.
The source material provided a good starting point, but if they had just ended with that starting point, I think the conversion wouldn't have worked nearly as well.
I’m looking forward to season two, but I need to fire up a change dot org petition to get us back to 13 episode seasons, please and thanks.
And that, I think, is “the last of us” talking about this season!! Ha ha ha!
With the impending release of Street Fighter 6 promising to potentially deliver one of the greatest fighting games ever produced, the excitement shared by fans of the fighting genre grows daily. And if receiving the next installment of Cacpom's flagship fighter wasn't enough, fans also have the release of Tekken 8 and Mortal Kombat 12 to look forward to. — Read the rest
(credit: Sony)
Sales of vinyl records have been on the rise for years, but according to the RIAA's 2022 year-end revenue report for the music industry (PDF), record sales hit a new high last year. For the first time since 1987, unit sales of vinyl albums outpaced those of CDs, vindicating all the people who have spent decades of their lives talking about how vinyl "just sounds better."
Although vinyl unit sales only surpassed CDs last year, revenue from vinyl records has been higher than revenue from CDs for a while now. In 2022, the RIAA says that vinyl albums earned $1.2 billion, compared to $483 million for CDs. The growth in vinyl was more than enough to offset a drop in CD revenue, helping overall physical media revenue climb 4 percent over 2021 (which was already way up over 2020).
Growth in vinyl revenue was more than enough to offset a drop in revenue from CDs. Vinyl unit sales have surpassed CD unit sales for the first time since 1987. (credit: RIAA)
Streaming services still account for the vast majority of all music revenue in the US—84 percent, up from 83 percent in 2021. The RIAA says there was an average of 92 million streaming music subscriptions active in 2022, which, together with digital radio and ad-supported sites like YouTube, generated $13.3 billion. The growth of streaming services and physical media comes at the expense of paid digital downloads, which accounted for a mere 3 percent of all music revenue in 2022.
Enlarge / Cross-platform voice chat has arrived on the PlayStation 5. (credit: Samuel Axon)
This week, Sony rolled out Discord voice chat support for PlayStation 5 consoles, marking the first time a third-party OS-wide game voice call option has been available on Sony's consoles.
Previously, PlayStation 5 users could display what game they were currently playing on their Discord profiles, but they couldn't communicate with other players without using their phones, tablets, or computers.
The rollout follows a similar one on Microsoft's Xbox consoles last fall. Discord voice calls had long been available on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. The only major gaming platform outlier is Nintendo's Switch.
Regardless of the medium, art exists at the intersection between passion and precision. Whether it's summoning the appropriate technique or implementing the proper tools, crafting a masterpiece is almost always an exercise in exactitude. Few mediums capture the profundity of art's dichotomous nature as potently as video games. — Read the rest
Ironton, a late 19th century shipwreck, has been located in NOAA's Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
In 1894, a schooner barge called Ironton collided with a Great Lakes freighter called Ohio in Lake Huron's infamous "Shipwreck Alley." Ohio's wreck was found in 2017 by an expedition organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Now the same team has announced its discovery of the wreck of the 191-foot Ironton nearly 130 years after its sinking, so well-preserved in the frigid waters of the Great Lakes that its three masts are still standing, and its rigging is still attached. Its discovery could help resolve unanswered questions about the ship's final hours.
Schooner barges like Ironton were part of a fleet that helped transport wheat, coal, corn, lumber, and iron ore across the Great Lakes region, towed by steamers. At 12:30 am on September 26, 1984, Ironton and another schooner, Moonlight, were being towed unladen across Lake Huron by the steamer Charles J. Kershaw when the steamer's engine failed. The weather was rough, and strong winds pushed the two schooners perilously close to the disabled steamer. Fearing a collision, Moonlight's crew cut Ironton's tow line, setting Ironton adrift.
Captain Peter Girard and his crew tried to regain control of the ship, but the wind blew them onto a head-on collision course with the Ohio, which was carrying 1,000 tons of grain. According to the account of surviving crew member William Wooley, it was too dark to spot the Ohio until it was too late, and Ironton struck the steamer with its starboard bow, tearing a 12-foot wide hole in Ohio's hull.
Enlarge / The Meta Quest Pro.
When we reviewed the Meta Quest Pro headset less than five months ago, we balked at the device's $1,500 price point, which represented a whopping 275 percent price premium over the Quest 2 (with much less than a 275 percent increase in quality). Meta is already taking steps to scale back that massive asking price, though; as of Sunday, the headset is now available for $1,000 in the US and Canada (a similar price drop will take place March 15 in other Quest Pro countries).
The price drop puts the Quest Pro in line with other high-end headsets, including the untethered $1,100 HTC Vive XR Elite and the $1,000 Valve Index (which requires tethering to a gaming PC). That said, for practically the same money, you can get a $550 PSVR2 and the $500 PlayStation 5 to tether it to. And the Quest Pro is still 150 percent more expensive than the cheapest Quest 2, which supports almost all the same software and delivers a sufficient VR experience for most users.
Speaking of the Quest 2, Meta has also announced a 14 percent price drop for the 256GB version of that headset, from $500 to $430. That price drop brings that expanded-storage option almost all the way back to the $400 that Meta was charging for it before last year's unprecedented price increase.
Enlarge / He looks nice... (credit: HBO)
New episodes 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 every Monday morning. 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.
In the games, we get a quick cut from the events of episode 6 to Ellie hunting wild game in the snow. As we take direct control of Ellie for the first time, we don't even know if the unseen Joel is alive or dead.
We also don't know anything about the mild-mannered stranger named David that Ellie stumbles upon while hunting. He even seems like a plausible Joel replacement at points during the early, amenable parts of their in-game team-up.
Seeing everything from Ellie's perspective really heightens the tension and mystery of David's whole arc, and I feel like the show kind of ruined that pacing here.
David suffers the most. It’s like the show needed to stuff him full of red flags to make sure that viewers really didn’t like him or feel bad for him, but it also makes him into a cartoon character in a show where most of the antagonists have already been a little flat.
We are in need of a more interesting characterization... (credit: HBO)
But I did not believe for even one fraction of one second that Ellie was in any danger of joining up with this creepy fundamentalist/mushroom cultist/child-hitter/cannibal guy, and it makes it weirder that the last sequence between them is framed as this big emotional showdown.
And also... this community had a lot of other people in it? Where did they go? A more organic and satisfying version might have had David’s own community seeing what a creep he is and turning on him, rather than a big dramatic one-on-one confrontation between David and Ellie in the world’s most flammable restaurant. It doesn’t sound like that’s how it goes in the games, but it also sounds like the character is just handled fundamentally differently.
Just hanging out... (credit: HBO)
Here's my main question for someone going in fresh: Did you ever feel like David was potentially just a nice guy and someone that Ellie could justifiably trust and/or let down her guard in front of? I feel like the game went to great pains to push the player in that direction for a while before the heel turn, and it just didn't work for me here. Then again, I knew some of David's dark secrets from the get-go...
The first scene where David and Ellie meet, on the other hand—I could see it! David (played by Scott Shepherd, a fairly prolific character actor who has one of those “what have I seen him in?” faces) has a certain reassuring avuncular charisma to him. Unfortunately, we’ve already seen too many Bad Guy markers from him, even before you find out that he’s been reading To Serve Man.
That gun looks a bit heavy, Ellie... (credit: HBO)
And you’re right that Ellie’s butchering of David at the end of the episode goes on just a bit too long for comfort. I’m just not sure what to make of it. Surely Ellie has been traumatized as much as she could possibly need to be for story purposes. It’s not as though David was close enough to her to really betray her. Between the two of them, Joel and Ellie do enough violence this episode to sour their tearful reunion a bit. Which is not really where I wanted to be heading into the season finale of a show I have otherwise mostly liked.
Who doesn't love a good stealth section? (credit: HBO)
All that death has been building toward the big finale, though. Without getting too spoilery, I wonder if you even remember what Joel and Ellie are trekking for/toward at this point, and if you have any big predictions for the final episode?
Oh yeah, Troy Baker is here, too. (credit: HBO)
I would love to be pleasantly surprised! Maybe the show has settled into this predictable rhythm to make it especially mind-blowing next week when all the scientists end up being super chill and professional.
Enlarge / It took a lot of work for Ellie and Riley to play Mortal Kombat II in The Last of Us—and somehow just as much work, if not more, to be able to film it. (credit: HBO)
The Last of Us' HBO series went to great lengths to re-create a 2003 mall arcade for a recent episode. Two of the arcade enthusiasts hired on for that scene have detailed the triumphs and technical limitations they encountered, at length, in an arcade history forum thread.
In the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us, a cordyceps outbreak overtakes the world in 2003, leaving things much as they were in the 2023 world through which Joel and Ellie struggle. In episode 7, a flashback shows Ellie and a friend powering up and exploring an early-aughts mall, complete with a beautifully neon-lit arcade, left just as it was during the first George W. Bush administration.
The arcade scene in episode 7 of The Last of Us.
Production designer John Paino told Variety that "Raja's Arcade" took its name and frontal appearance from the game's Left Behind DLC, but otherwise the production team built it from scratch. All the games had to actually work because creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann demanded it, according to Paino. But the original games would have had cathode-ray tube (CRT) screens, which—as anybody using a camera back then would remember—can be difficult to capture. "We rebuilt them on LED screens," Paino told Variety.
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