GTA 6 – better on PS5 Pro? (Picture: Rockstar Games)

The Thursday letters page worries about putting kids off from a career in video games, as one reader ponders fast travel in Spider-Man 2.

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Hardware bundle
I’m going to guess all these minor rumours about PlayStation 5 games, like a Death Stranding 2 reveal and Until Dawn on PC, means that a State of Play is a just a few weeks away now. Within 15 days I think one of the rumours said, although that may be made up.

I’m sure Sony will say the absolute bare minimum, as usual, but I would like some clarification about the PS5 Pro. It’s been an open secret for months now and yet it seems an incredibly bad idea to me. It’s super expensive and it comes at a time when Sony is releasing no new games, so there’s still been very few PlayStation 5-only games, let alone anything that needs extra power.

My theory is that Sony will say to hell with it and release it anyway, because they’re lining it up as a tie-in with GTA 6. I can just imagine them saying that only the PS5 Pro can run GTA 6 at 60fps and I can see a lot of people going for that. And after that Sony still won’t have announced any new games of their own.

Just announce the PS5 Pro now at least, so you don’t suddenly spring a £500 expense on people a month before you expect them to pay for it.
Cordite

Exclusive Ring
I’m wracking my brains for a reason why they’re being so secretive about Elden Ring’s DLC and I just don’t get it. Why would you do a shadow drop for DLC? My only thought is that it’s going to be at the Sate of Play and there’s some kind of exclusivity tied into it. But what?

It can’t be the whole thing, or fans would be crazy, but maybe some exclusive items or getting to play it a week early? That sounds like something that could happen but I don’t like it. Exclusivity is bad at anytime but even worse when you didn’t know it was going to happen later, with the DLC.

Hopefully that isn’t what’s going on but I’m struggling to think of any other explanation, unless every single one of the rumours are wrong.
The Bishop

Not all there
Sad to think that games like Splatoon 1 and Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, which were built around online play, will no longer be able to use it. You can still play the games but not in the way they were originally intended. Splatoon 1 is an important game, as the first of the franchise, but it’s basically useless without online play.

Tri Force Heroes might not be the most beloved Zelda game but I enjoyed it and there’s nothing else like it around. It’s also very unlikely to be remade or appear on a Virtual Console anytime soon. It might as well not exist, until it’s dug up in a decade or so. It’s a shame.
Lemmy

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You’ll never get to heaven with an AK-47
Palworld, now that’s a strange egg, isn’t it? Is it Pokemon? At first glance it certainly looks like it wants to be, but then there’s all the crafting, building, survival, PvP, all things I personally dislike in my games. Then there’s your Pals running round with AK-47s and shotguns. Weird.

Breeding them and using them as tools sounds more like Pikmin than Pokémon and strategy is another element that I don’t like in my games! Looking good so far. Do the Pals get an assortment of special moves, then? Or do they just run around doing their own thing? With an AK or SMG?!

I’ll press on a little more, see how it goes, otherwise its back to my laundrette/arcade.
big boy bent

Fringe benefits
Those were some very good points about working in the games industry, raised in a previous Inbox. As a father I’ve tried to steer my daughter away from certain career choices or at least have them make informed decisions and making games is one of them… Medium to long term job security is close to zero, the abuse you get internally and externally seems to be insanely high! And all of this to make a product that’s made for fun!

On the plus side, pay can be quite good and if the latest Microsoft Developer_Direct is accurate, you get to ride round the office and do cartwheels! Not sure how reflective this is of most publishers…
Rob

Ultimate reset
I do wonder where Super Smash Bros. can go from here, after how massive Ultimate became. I knew Sakurai would backtrack on not making any more himself but what can he do? He can’t make the next one even bigger or even the same size – it’d take a decade of work and the guy would probably kill himself doing it.

I’ve seen him hinting that the only way is to go back to basics with a much smaller roster, similar to the dozen or so from the original Nintendo 64 game. I don’t hate that idea, as long as there’s plenty of support characters and stuff from other games. Then it can start to get more and more bloated over the next couple of decades until the whole thing has to be reset again.

I’m okay with that though. Not knowing who’s going to be in the games is half the fun and at this point there’s only obscure or irrelevant characters left who haven’t been in it before.

That said, I would bet on a Super Ultimate edition for the Switch 2 that has a bunch of minor extras and maybe a couple of new Nintendo fighters (Waluigi, it’s your time to shine!).
Onibee

Batman: Hogwarts City
Regarding my mail yesterday, suggesting Hogwarts Legacy is a reskin of Batman: Arkham, I respectfully disagree…

Merlin trials vs. Riddler tasks

Scanning vs. Revelio

Hacking vs. Alohamora via toggle sticks

Combat parrying

Buckbeak vs. gliding

Upgrading spells vs. equipment upgrade

Spells are basically bat gadgets with different effects

Field guides vs. Riddler challenges

Combat meter, target locking

I could go on.
Hedgeman

GC: Maybe you’ve got a point. It is the same publisher, and both games were by internal developers, so they could’ve shared technology as well as just ideas.

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Manual travel
Totally agree that the director saying that fast travel is abused in recent games has got me much more interested in Dragon’s Dogma 2 than any trailer could. Starfield is the ultimate example of the concept being abused, since it basically circumvents the entire point of the game from the very start, but there’s tons of others that overuse the concept.

Dare I say even Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is guilty as by the end game you’re just zipping between shrines and barely even have to look at the world around you anymore. Especially once you get the manual fast travel spot you can lay down anywhere.

I think the point the Dragon’s Dogma 2 guy was making is that if you make your world interesting enough people won’t want to fast travel, they’ll want to see what random thing happens more and pick up more rewards.

But I also think Spider-Man 2 is a good example as I honestly don’t know if it has fast travel or not because I never used it. I think it does, but you have to unlock it? But I don’t care because travelling around is one of the best bits of the game, so you don’t want to give up an excuse to do it. That’s the way to avoid being a ‘boring’ game.
Suplex

Inbox also-rans
Episode 1 of Digitiser Series 2 is available now for any fans. I’m in the credits (!) as I was a backer on the Kickstarter for Series 2, my name goes very fast in the credits roll!
Andrew J.
PS: The Xenoblade amiibo are currently in stock and available to order on the UK Nintendo Store, as well as a few Animal Crossing and Pokémon ones.

I don’t like to encourage lawyers but add me to the list that has zero sympathy for the Palworld developers. They know exactly what they were doing and it’s very cynical.
Dobby

This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Franky, who asks what is your favourite modern video game music soundtrack?

Assuming that means any game released in the last two generations, which has been your favourite and why? How do you think the use of original and licensed music has changed in the last decade and how would you like to see it further evolve, in regard to the type of music and how it’s used?

Do you own any game soundtracks from the last two generations and how do you think they compare to older titles?

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The small print
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You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

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MORE : Games Inbox: PlayStation’s multiformat future, Starfield exploration, and PlayStation Portable love

MORE : Games Inbox: Palworld is the new Fortnite, Quake 1 vs. 2, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk soundtrack

MORE : Games Inbox: Worrying that 2024 will be a bad year for games, Hellblade 2 length, and Indiana Jones

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The Thursday letters page worries about putting kids off from a career in video games, as one reader ponders fast travel in Spider-Man 2.