Here’s the thing: I don’t want games to keep improving, at least, not in that way. It doesn’t mean anything to me that the game includes ultraHD textures and looks stunning on an 8K monitor because I’m still rocking a 3070 with a 1080 120 Hz. The fact that it takes them three years to make a game look this good, which is meaningless to a majority of gamers who can’t afford that kind of hardware, is especially frustrating. And now they’re telling us for the pleasure of waiting so long for them to put the finishing touches on what is effectively marketing material, I have to reserve not just 100+ GB, but all that space on an SSD because the game loads too damn slow otherwise? That’s like an eighth of the available space on your average m.2 drive, for one game, for something most people won’t even be able to enjoy because their hardware just isn’t made for that kind of output.

I don’t want sixteen times the detail, I want an optimized game with serviceable assets and a gameplay loop that doesn’t feel like a second job. And granted, this is getting beyond the graphics argument, but I like games that aren’t afraid of not appealing to the broadest audience. I want my Fallout in Space to have more than four dialog options that all point the same direction. I want to make meaningful choices and play a character that has real opinions and can act accordingly, instead of endless modifiers on the gear of a voice-acted talking doll that exists to service a mostly linear plot. I don’t want F4, I want FNV. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if the reviews come out and it ends up being as meaningful as I want it to be, but I’m not holding my breath, and in all likelihood I’m not jumping through the hardware hoops to play a game I probably won’t like.