loopgru

Came here to say this. The new player experience is an awesome upgrade in terms of getting people into the world and narrative, but you're still thrown into an ocean of systems and content without a map. If you're not following a guide or piecing things together from the wiki it's very easy to get totally overwhelmed.

Always nice to meet another dad.

I would look at some of the tech demos for Unreal Engine 5 and its capabilities. We're at the point now where the engine itself, with sufficient art assets, can look photorealistic more or less out of the box.

Where this is still hardest- and likely always will be- is in faces, because our brains are so thoroughly wired to spot micro-expressions and subtle facial and body language as social animals.

That said, for a game like Doom or Path of Exile, sure, I think we're way past the point of diminishing returns. But for games where you're actually experiencing a story and interested in the relationships and characters involved? Things like Death Stranding, RDR, Cyberpunk 2077, or more recently BG3? All of those same nuances of expression can definitely add to the experience- it's the difference between a mediocre actor and a good or great one.

This right here is how you wind up with Tenochitlan in Texas.

Seconding this. Garuda has been great, all of the advantages of aur and bleeding edge with some fool proofing and ease of use features. It's like pop_os for folks who don't want to jump on the Ubuntu train.

This is 100% the way.

Pine hides their hobby-grade hardware behind in-development software. I owned both a PBP and PPP and much as I'd like to say otherwise, really can't say anything to recommend either.