I'd say it's a matter of preference than anything "next-gen". I really liked using a hybrid approach with the Steam Controller a few years back for some third person games with archery, but it has its own drawbacks and complexities so I could see why people would prefer the simplicity of the good ol' analogue stick.

I had to learn more about it after that short clip and found an overview page which is fun to read if your browser can translate it: https://www.dentsubo.net/circle/spe256.html

In the middle of Heavensward:
::: spoiler We learn that Nanamo is actually alive, so the dramatic death and framing sequence was all for show. I get what they wanted, but big fakeouts like that are not my thing. It felt like the consequences were walked back so I could never take the rest of the story seriously. Anything bad that happens could just be reverted. spoiler

:::

Endwalker has a point after a lot of stuff goes down where I was thinking "Yeah this is edgy and all, but they really held back from doing anything actually substantial" then we get introduced to a bunch of cuteness and silly things. It took until then to really settle with me that they mostly want to tell fun and uplifting stories, so making stuff look dark and dramatic but keeping the lasting impact down is more of an objective of theirs than a narrative flaw.

I'd go as far to say Heavensward may be the benchmark for whether people will enjoy the rest of the game. It's where the voice acting upgrades to a fairly consistent level and you see how their narrative structure works. The latter was particularly important for me, because after it turned out
::: spoiler spoiler
Nanamo wasn't dead
::: I subconsciously lost narrative tension for the rest of the story. This is not a bad thing by itself, the devs ultimately want their story to be mostly positive and uplifting, but given people hyped up how "dark" the game gets I was left quite dissapointed on that front.

I love how parkplace is literally the kind of single-minded insanity this article talks about (which is significantly longer than 2 paragraphs btw)

Like, skimming through their articles and you get stuff like this https://thatparkplace.com/wish-actor-harvey-guillen-says-he-believes-disney-will-make-a-queer-princess-in-his-lifetime/ where they relay the quotes then immediately jump to:

If this does indeed happen it’s likely to lose The Walt Disney Company millions of dollars as seen with Lightyear.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yes, it is perfectly possible that the studio's writing work might be a bit shit, I dunno. If you find they are consistently involved with writing you don't enjoy, then sure, whatever. The point of this article is the absolute insanity this kind of stuff gets taken to, like it's a massive conspiracy rather than just the work of another studio managing the struggles and interests of our age.

To quote the 2+n paragraph article:

It’s a conspiracy theory that checks all the boxes: It conveniently explains pretty much everything happening right now, ties it back to organizations of which people are understandably suspicious, links it to a much larger ongoing panic (DEI), validates preconceived notions like “go woke, go broke,” sprinkles in a few kernels of truth regarding powerful interests, and – most importantly – provides a clear and identifiable enemy. It’s also almost entirely bullshit.

While diving under the ice in McMurdo Sound, some of the team came across giant Antarctic sea spiders that appeared to be mating. So, they gently collected the animals and transferred them to observation tanks to figure out how the heck these enigmatic creatures procreate.

Rude.

LTT did that for meme purposes more than anything else. Threadrippers are not built for games. They're built for production workloads which don't translate to gaming performance.

That said; this game needs the most powerful gaming hardware (e.g. Ryzen X3D series and RTX 4090) on recommended settings to get averages above 60fps, which is wild. There's a rather dedicated fellow on reddit who does detailed performance tests after each patch.

I started with Ubuntu and slowly tried getting used to Gnome over the course of a few months (mainly using windows, every now and then hopping into Ubuntu when not gaming). I learned of KDE, tried it in Kubuntu, and it all instantly clicked for me. I switched over in about a week and haven't had much reason to boot Windows since.

It turned out that front-facing experience was incredibly important to me.

I believe we're specifically talking VRR, which for me in Kubuntu did not work properly without switching to Wayland.

VRR is fantastic for games, I really notice the difference and I use Wayland because of it.

The downside to that is (from my understanding) Wayland forces some form of Vsync on everything, so if you don't have a VRR monitor then games can become very stuttery and have noticeable input lag. There is an option to "force lowest latency" which allows screen tearing for things like games, though I didn't test how well it worked myself.

If people are interested in experimenting, then VRRTest is a great utility to see what VRR is doing and to test various settings.