Month: February 2023

Obsidian game directors are keen on the possibility of a graphical remaster for Fallout New Vegas.

Obsidian game directors Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky have expressed excitement at the idea of a Fallout New Vegas “graphical remaster”. 

Speaking in an interview with TheGamer.com concerning the unveiling of The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition’s impending release, Cain and Boyarsky said that a remastered version of New Vegas would be “awesome” (via TheGamer).

Though Cain stressed that the decision wasn’t “up to [him]”, both directors seem very keen on the idea of a “graphical remaster” for the fan-favorite classic. 

Originally released in 2011, Fallout: New Vegas tells the story of a courier’s journey through the post-apocalyptic wastes of the Mojave desert. The immersive, open-world experience sees the player negotiate a tense political standoff between several different factions as the remnants of human civilization vie for control over New Vegas – one of the few major cities to survive the nuclear war between China and the United States. 

In the same interview, The Outer Worlds production director Eric DeMilt spoke as to why New Vegas resonates so strongly with fans: “when it came out, it had stability issues, [but] it’s overcome those and now people are able to get back to that game, because those characters and stories are just rich, and people want to be in there.” 

A kick in the head

Cain and Boyarsky’s excitement comes off of the back of the recently announced The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition, a comprehensive and polished repackaging of The Outer Worlds complete with touched-up graphics, gameplay tweaks, and a complete roster of DLC for players to enjoy. 

Given that Outer Worlds is something of a spiritual successor to New Vegas, it’s only natural that discussion would veer towards Obsidian’s earlier work, too. Though nothing has been confirmed as of yet, it’s exciting to think that a New Vegas remaster might be on the cards in the future. 

New Vegas offered a distinctive RPG experience that has stayed with me to this day. However, my attempts to revisit the harsh and absurd world of the Mojave have often been stymied by the game’s dated graphics. As I made my way towards New Vegas in the game’s opening act, despite the compelling writing and immersive setting, I found the game’s relentless muddiness to be overwhelming. Despite my best efforts, I simply couldn’t stick with my playthrough. 

Though I hate to admit it, I have clearly been spoiled by modern titles. It would be wonderful to see New Vegas receive a much-needed new coat of paint. It would be a real treat for a classic title as well-regarded as New Vegas to receive much-deserved love and attention in the form of a graphical remaster.   

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We could be seeing AI implemented across platforms very soon, and we’re not sure how to feel about it.

The explosion in popularity of the ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is one to be admired and feared (just a little), and we’re seeing more and more companies scramble to include it in their products as quickly as possible. Meta and Twitter are likely to be next in the Silicon Valley Scramble for AI, and no one seems to be sure what this might mean for users.

We’ve already witnessed the breakdowns of Microsoft’s new ChatGPT-powered Bing and how quickly Microsoft had to act to try and fix the issues the chatbot was facing. A lot of the fixes that had to be made were centred around the way people interacted with Bing AI, ‘jailbreaking’ the bot, getting inaccurate answers and how the bot generally freaked out when confronted with its own existence. A relatable feeling, sure, but these are all problems that had to be dealt with swiftly because of how rushed the rollout of the product was. 

Without proper foresight, it’s likely that we’ll continue to see numerous errors (and rushed fixes) because AI-powered technology in the hands of the general public is unpredictable and at times divisive. Google’s own employees aren’t a fan of its version, Google Bard, for example.

So, it’s a bit concerning to see social media giants starting to take interest in this AI boom.

Twitter is apparently considering implementing AI into the platform by developing an alternative to ChatGPT.  Late last year Twitter CEO Elon Musk criticised OpenAI  – the developers of ChatGPT – for putting safeguards in place that would prevent the chatbot from producing responses that could offend users. 

This included the bot repeating racial slurs, sexist ideologies or drafting inappropriate content. Musk titled ChatGPT’s safeguarding measures as ‘training AI to be woke’ which, while a bizarre thing to say, could give us an insight into what his rival chatbot could be like.

Musk has reportedly recruited Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Google’s patent company Alphabets’ DeepMind AI unit, and specializes in machine learning models that power chatbots like ChatGPT.  We’re uncertain how exactly AI could be injected into Twitter, but Musk’s previous comments decrying the ‘woke’ limits OpenAI put in place, give us concern that its implementation could be offensive, derogatory, and downright toxic.  

Facebook has joined the chat 

Twitter isn’t the only social media platform eyeing up AI. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put up a post announcing a new group at Meta (Facebook’s parent company) that will be focused on ‘generative AI’ to boost its products. 

The focus seems to be on creating its own AI-powered tools in the short term (probably akin to Microsoft and Google’s attempts) and in the longer term, weaving AI more intricately into Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. This means, for the ChatGPT and AI sceptics, unfortunately, that few social media platforms are going to be safe from the clutches of rushed AI. 

(Image credit: META)

Zuckerberg’s announcement is a little vague, but some of the examples we’re given are creative filters and ad formats on Instagram and enhanced text features for Whatsapp and Messenger. Zuckerberg admits there’s a lot of ‘foundational work to do’ before any of these features are rolled out, which gives us hope that they may be more thought out than their predecessors.

One thing is for sure: it may become harder to avoid the AI influence for much longer and if there’s one silver lining here, we can only hope developers learn from mistakes and mishaps and make the contagious technology better, not quicker. ChatGPT with safeguarding measures in place is still a wild beast to tame at the best of times and is still prone to spitting out hateful language when ‘broken’ or prompted just the right way. The idea of Musk’s ‘anti-woke’ rhetoric seeping into something as complex and unpredictable as AI technology spells nothing but safety concerns for users actively participating in the emerging technology sphere of AI chatbots, and for those of us that are not. It seems like in the mad dash to do it quickly and do it better, companies have not considered how the technology will spill out into more general areas of the internet or into spaces that are not equipt for it. 

The hope is that these developers come up with useful tools that will benefit a majority of users and stay contained in their defined purpose, though we cannot be sure of it right now and perhaps bracing for the worst and hoping for the best is a more realistic strategy. 

Should we see more AI leak into our social media spheres we’ll have to be more focused on promoting transparency and safety for users not quite acquainted with ChatGPT and its emerging versions, and those of us directly affected by ‘anti-woke’ nonsense propaganda may have to gear up for a turbulent time online. 

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