Paradox Interactive just held their own announcement show, and there will be quite a few interesting upcoming games, so here's a round-up.
First up, no doubt many are excited at the idea of it, Cities: Skylines II is official although they did not show off any gameplay it just had a fancy trailer. So nothing to really show there, and no release date hint yet either. Even the Steam page doesn't have in-game screenshots, just screenshots from their own trailer.
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“Cities: Skylines reset the bar for city building games when it launched eight years ago, and we are incredibly proud of its impact. We built a thriving community around Cities and introduced many to city building for the first time,” said Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of Colossal Order. "Now, we’ve brought the years of experience we’ve gained to take a new step forward in the city builder genre, again, for our community and new players".
“The Cities brand has been an important part of Paradox’s catalog of games for over a decade. Cities: Skylines is a profound success, selling millions of copies, welcoming more than 5.5 million new players just last year, and setting the foundation for Cities: Skylines II,” said Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive. “With unprecedented amounts of customization and player control, Cities: Skylines II will continue to push boundaries for the city-building franchise.”
They're also now doing their own game like The Sims called Life By You, which is not a big surprise because the studio Paradox Tectonic is working with Rod Humble who previously worked on The Sims 2 & 3.
Life By You also only got a short teaser, because it's going to have its own event on March 20th.
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Harebrained Schemes, known for BATTLETECH and Shadowrun, announced The Lamplighters League, a tactical turn-based strategy game set in an alternate 1933.
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“Harebrained Schemes is all about weaving tactical gameplay that challenges your mind with narrative and characters that engage your heart,” said Christopher Rogers, Game Director of The Lamplighters League at Harebrained Schemes. “For years, we’ve been privileged to tell stories in cherished settings like Shadowrun and BATTLETECH. Because The Lamplighters League is set in a new world, it allows us the creative freedom to simultaneously create narrative that supports gameplay and gameplay that supports narrative. We love these characters and hope that players and fans enjoy getting to know them while exploring each one's unique abilities the way we did. I cannot wait to share everything we’ve been working on.”
Since it's Paradox, there were of course going to be some DLC announcements like…
Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments was announced, releasing in "late Spring":
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Europa Universalis IV: Domination was also announced:
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Then there's a few indies from their Paradox Arc publishing team.
One I'm quite excited to try is Mechabellum, a new auto-battler where you're commander of a big mechanized army, releasing May 11th. Take a look below:
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Knights of Pen and Paper 3 was also announced launching tomorrow:
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Across The Obelisk is set to get DLC with Across The Obelisk: The Wolf Wars:
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The rest of it was trailers for stuff already announced with dates like Stellaris: First Contact and Age of Wonders 4.
The full show can be seen on Twitch and YouTube.
Was there anything announced that you're particularly excited about? Let us know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Optimizations to make it less resource eating and scale better with big constructs, maybe utilizing a different engine.
Really great working controls on my Steam Deck
More optimizations.
In this field I have my eyes on ParaLives too, but Paradox and a Sims-Like game? That could be great.
Looking forward to that.
For Cities: Skylines 2 I really hope for a better engine. I am really having issues on my larger Cities with the Performance, and I'm running a 3070Ti... which should not have issues with a game like that at all being able to run games which are a lot more intensive (as M&B 2, Far Cry 5 / New Dawn, Witcher 3, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn etc.). Does not matter if OpenGL, Vulkan or via Wine/DXVK, I do have performance issues maxing at 15-20 FPS, which makes me give up again and again since it's really hard to play with that kind of experience.
Last edited by STiAT on 8 March 2023 at 8:55 pm UTC
Quoting: STiATFor Cities: Skylines 2 I really hope for a better engine. I am really having issues on my larger Cities with the Performance, and I'm running a 3070Ti... which should not have issues with a game like that at all. Does not matter if OpenGL, Vulkan or via Wine/DXVK, I do have performance issues maxing at 15-20 FPS.I haven't looked at the exact numbers, but I assume that the game is massively CPU bound. It also requires huge amounts of RAM.
I'm not convinced that a sequel will solve the issues that they haven't been able to fix in all those years.
Quoting: KlaasQuoting: STiATFor Cities: Skylines 2 I really hope for a better engine. I am really having issues on my larger Cities with the Performance, and I'm running a 3070Ti... which should not have issues with a game like that at all. Does not matter if OpenGL, Vulkan or via Wine/DXVK, I do have performance issues maxing at 15-20 FPS.I haven't looked at the exact numbers, but I assume that the game is massively CPU bound. It also requires huge amounts of RAM.
I'm not convinced that a sequel will solve the issues that they haven't been able to fix in all those years.
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X and 50 GB of RAM should be sufficient as well. The graphical detail in the trailer, if even in-game, looks like being a different engine.
But Life by You and Lamplighters? Oh yeah. I want those. The Sims could use some competition. I'm not a Sims addict, but they're fun to play every year or so. Get bored, then take a break for another year. I welcome a game like that from a Linux friendly publisher like Paradox where I don't have to launch Origin via Wine.
I know people will be cynical about DLC from Paradox for a Sims-like game. DLC that I don't have to buy doesn't bother me. I have several Stellaris DLC, but I don't own much DLC for other Paradox games. Works for me.
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