NASA won't get the smooth, open surface depicted in this picture. Bennu is covered in dangerous boulders.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is on an incredible mission to study the asteroid Bennu and send samples back to Earth. The team didn’t expect that OSIRIS-REx would also contribute to our understanding of black holes. No, Bennu doesn’t have anything to do with black holes, but an X-ray instrument on OSIRIS-REx spotted a distant black hole just to the side of Bennu during a routine sweep.
The primary mission of OSIRIS-REx is to pick up a tiny sample of regolith from Bennu and return it to Earth, much the same as Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe. It’s not like we get out to orbit asteroids all the time, so NASA wanted to make the most of the trip by scanning Bennu with various scientific instruments. One of those is the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS), which analyzes how Bennu’s surface reflects X-rays and what that tells us about its composition. Guess what’s very active in the X-ray part of the spectrum? Yep, black holes.
In November 2019, researchers noted a small X-ray flare to the side of Bennu. Upon further examination, researchers confirmed that REXIS had detected a newly active black hole binary sitting about 30,000 light-years away. The object is most likely a binary system consisting of a black hole and a main-sequence star. As matter from the orbiting star falls into the accretion disk, it heats up and releases energy, mainly in the form of X-rays.
The black hole is known as MAXI J0637-430 because it wasn’t discovered by OSIRIS-REx—NASA’s asteroid explorer was a few days late to the party. Japan’s MAXI X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was the first to detect the X-ray flare from the black hole. Several days later, NASA’s NICER instrument on the ISS confirmed the finding. Just a few days later, the OSIRIS-REx team spotted MAXI J0637-430 with REXIS.
Earth’s atmosphere blocks most interstellar radiation, so the only way to reliably detect objects like MAXI J0637-430 is in space. The ISS and orbital telescopes are key parts of such efforts. However, this is the first time we’ve detected a black hole from interplanetary space.
NASA has identified a location where OSIRIS-REx will touch down in the coming months to collect its sample. The team is taking its time verifying the plan before moving forward. If successful, OSIRIS-REx will bring its sample back to Earth around the middle of 2023.
Four brands stand at the top of the annual Consumer Reports car issue. Three of them, Porsche, Genesis, and Subaru all received brand rankings of 80 or more. The magazine gives a recommended rating to every model sold by Porsche, Genesis, and the fourth-highest-scoring brand, Mazda, while every Subaru is recommended except for the WRX.
Two vehicles earned the highest overall scores: the Toyota Avalon family sedan (main photo) and the Kia Telluride SUV that won several car/truck of the year awards. Each received 93 of 100 possible points. The details are in the magazine’s April 2020 issue.
33 car brands ranked by overall score, which comprises road tests, reliability, owner satisfaction, and safety. CR says the road-test score is based on 50 different tests; reliability is based on 17 problem areas. It covers cars surveyed for the last three years.
Porsche, Genesis, Subaru, Mazda, Lexus, Audi, Hyundai, and BMW all received overall brand scores of at least 75 on a 100-point scale. The midpoint score (half above, half below) was 70. The biggest gainer was Tesla, which jumped eight spots from 19 to 11; its weak point remains reliability, which is below (but not significantly below) average. It’s not clear if there’s a statistical difference between brands rated a couple of points apart.
The 2020 Kia Telluride, tied with Toyota Avalon for the highest overall score, is one of Consumer Reports’ Top Picks and one of ExtremeTech’s 10 Best cars of the year.
Ten Top Picks (And They’re Super-Safe)
Consumer Reports has an annual Top Picks comprising the one top vehicle in each of 10 categories. To be considered, the vehicles must have received a recommended rating from the review and come standard with:
Forward collision warning (FCW)
Automatic emergency braking (AEB)
Pedestrian detection, an adjunct to AEB
CR does not, however, require blind spot detection or adaptive cruise control. The CR-required safety features can be implemented by a single, sub-$100 camera mounted at the top of the windshield. Blind-spot detection (BSD) requires multiple rear sonar/radar sensors. Some safety experts say BSD is crucial especially for older drivers who have trouble looking over their shoulders. Adaptive cruise control (ACC) makes rush-hour commutes and long highway drives less stressful and safer as well. But it, too, requires a separate front-facing radar. With forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking, you don’t know the device is working until it’s almost too late, while ACC slows you as soon as the vehicle in front slows or brakes.
CR Top Picks Per Segment
Score
Midsize 3-Row SUV: Kia Telluride
93
Big Sedan: Toyota Avalon
93
Midsize Sedan: Subaru Legacy
87
Small SUV: Subaru Forester
84
Midsize SUV: Lexus RX
80
Sports Car: Toyota Supra
80
EV: Tesla Model 3
80
Hybrid: Toyota Prius
79
Compact Pickup: Honda Ridgeline
76
Small Car: Toyota Corolla
75
These are the 19 vehicles to which Consumer Reports awards a score of 85 or higher. That’s out of 260 vehicles rated.
CR 2020 Highest Rated Cars
Score
Toyota Avalon Hybrid 2.5L
93
Kia Telluride 3.8L
93
Lincoln MKZ 2.0T
89
Genesis G80 3.8L
89
Audi A4 2.0T
88
Porsche 718 Boxster 2.0T
88
Porsche Cayenne 3.0T
88
Subaru Legacy 2.5
87
BMW M240i 3.0T
87
Subaru Outback 2.4T
87
Hyundai Palisade 3.8L
87
Lexus ES350 3.5L
87
Lexus GS350 3.5L
87
Mazda Miata MX-5
86
Mazda CX-9 2.5T
86
BMW 740i 4.4T
86
Subaru Crosstrek 2.5L
85
Toyota Camry 2.5L
85
Kia Cadenza 3.3L
85
Score of 85 or higher (of 100 points).
Interesting Factoids (to Us, at Least)
Consumer Reports, April 2020.
The top individual-model rankings (above, those rated 85 and higher) are skewed toward Japanese, German and Korean automakers:
Japan: Toyota/Lexus 4, Subaru 3, Mazda 2
Germany: BMW 2, Porsche 2, Audi 1
Korea: Kia 2, Hyundai 1, Genesis 1 (all part of Hyundai)
US: Lincoln 1
Among the overall brand ranking, the biggest loser was Acura, which fell eight places from 16 to 24 among the 33 brands. Lincoln and Volkswagen each fell five places, from 8 to 13, and from 11 to 16. The eight automakers at the bottom, scoring below 60 points, remained the same, and CR noted:
The bottom brands are an unchanged club, with Fiat [lowest scoring, 43], Mitsubishi, Jeep, Land Rover, Cadillac, Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, and GMC again falling short. We tested a total of 36 models from these brands, and we recommend only the Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Among small cars, Consumer Reports picked 33 best used vehicles under $20,000. They have to have performed well on tests when new and have above-average reliability. That includes:
Toyota, 13 models
Lexus, 6
Mazda, 4
Honda 3
While Honda and Toyota both sell a lot of vehicles, the recommended-used-cars differential is more than 4-1 (13 Toyota, 3 Honda). Mostly because of the $20K price cap, there are only two premium-brand European cars cited, the Volvo Xc70 and BMW i3. And in what may be an ominous sign for the US-flagged automakers, among recommended used cars, not a one is from GM, Ford/Lincoln, or Dodge/Chrysler/Ram.
Much of Consumer Reports car coverage is behind a paywall. But it does make freely available safety news (recalls) and some top lines on cars on the site if you don’t want to lay out $39 a year for digital access.
Voice assistants are supposed to make your life easier, but they might also make it easier for a determined individual to steal your data. A group of US-Chinese researchers devised an attack dubbed SurfingAttack that uses ultrasonic waves to trigger Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby. The team was able to request personal information and place phone calls without physical access to the phone.
In the past, security researchers have shown that ultrasonic waves and lasers could trigger voice assistants in the right conditions. However, the devices needed to be positioned in certain ways, and the equipment was conspicuous. SurfingAttack is a much more subtle approach because the hardware hides under a table.
When the target device is placed on the surface, a $5 circular piezoelectric disc on the underside can transmit commands to the phone. It can use the trigger phrase to wake up the assistant and then ask for information or initiate calls. The team used a laptop with text-to-speech software to send the desired commands to the ultrasonic array via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The disc is only 17 inches away from the phone, but the tabletop conceals the hardware from the target. In addition, the ultrasonic waves are outside the range of human hearing.
The researchers were able to take photos, read out text messages, and place calls to any phone number — an attacker could use this to swipe two-factor authentication codes or make people call premium rate phone numbers.
The target might have no idea their phone is leaking information if they’re not directly looking at it. However, the team needed to record audio output from the phone to steal data, and the sound would surely tip off anyone sitting near the phone. The solution was to tell the voice assistant to set audio output to the minimum level. A sensitive microphone under the table could record the assistant’s responses without alerting nearby people.
SurfingAttack works on almost all devices with a voice assistant enabled. The team tested phones from Apple, Google, Samsung, Motorola, Xiaomi, and Huawei — 17 models in all, and 15 of them were vulnerable. The best way to protect yourself from ultrasonic attacks like this is to keep your phone or disable the assistant trigger phrase.
Ongoing human rights violations in China were a significant topic of discussion at the end of 2019. The country has sought to block criticism of its policies towards Tibet, the still-ongoing Hong Kong protests, and its imprisonment of a million or more Uighurs and other ethnic minority groups in forced re-education camps. A new bombshell report from Australia indicates that the Uighurs and other minorities aren’t just being subjected to forced re-education — they’re being used as slave labor after completing their terms of “study.”
The paper, by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, doesn’t use the term “slavery,” preferring to rely instead on the euphemism of “forced labor.” Here’s how the situation is described (Uighur and Uyghur are two different ways of spelling the same word):
It is extremely difficult for Uyghurs to refuse or escape these work assignments, which are enmeshed with the apparatus of detention and political indoctrination both inside and outside of Xinjiang. In addition to constant surveillance, the threat of arbitrary detention hangs over minority citizens who refuse their government-sponsored work assignments. Most strikingly, local governments and private brokers are paid a price per head by the Xinjiang provincial government to organise the labour assignments…
The Uyghur workers, unlike their Han counterparts, are reportedly unable to go home for holidays… Uyghur workers are often transported across China in special segregated trains… Multiple sources suggest that in factories across China, many Uyghur workers lead a harsh, segregated life under so-called ‘military-style management’. Outside work hours, they attend factory-organised Mandarin language classes, participate in ‘patriotic education’, and are prevented from practising their religion. Every 50 Uyghur workers are assigned one government minder and are monitored by dedicated security personnel. They have little freedom of movement and live in carefully guarded dormitories, isolated from their families and children back in Xinjiang. There is also evidence that, at least in some factories, they are paid less than their Han counterparts.
There’s a common perception that the difference between slaves and free individuals is that the latter is paid for their work, but the truth is more complex. This article from the Organization of American Historians is a deep dive into the history of slaves earning wages in the South. In some cases, slaveowners found it advantageous to allow slaves to earn a certain amount of money and to spend it on improving their own lives or the lives of their families. The same is undoubtedly true in China today.
If you can’t refuse a work assignment, can’t go home to see your family, can’t practice your religion, are forced to live by a schedule in which virtually every minute of your life is regimented for you, are kept under constant or near-constant surveillance and subject to the whims of headhunters who earn a bounty for delivering you to a job, and didn’t get any choice in the matter, I’d argue you’re effectively a slave. In some cases, workers’ families are also under simultaneous surveillance back at home, which provides an extra incentive for the slaves “prisoners with jobs” to behave themselves.
Image by Disney, from Thor: Ragnarok. This is one of those “I needed a bit of a joke, because the next few images are really nauseating” moments.
The ASPI estimates that up to 80,000 Uighurs have been forced into labor camps this way, some of them directly after finishing their indoctrination at Chinese re-education centers. The report includes three case studies focused on factories producing goods for Nike, Adidas/Fila, and Apple. A total of 83 companies have been identified as benefiting from these practices:
Abercrombie & Fitch, Acer, Adidas, Alstom, Amazon, Apple, ASUS, BAIC Motor, BMW, Bombardier, Bosch, BYD, Calvin Klein, Candy, Carter’s, Cerruti 1881, Changan Automobile, Cisco, CRRC, Dell, Electrolux, Fila, Founder Group, GAC Group (automobiles), Gap, Geely Auto, General Electric, General Motors, Google, H&M, Haier, Hart Schaffner Marx, Hisense, Hitachi, HP, HTC, Huawei, iFlyTek, Jack & Jones, Jaguar, Japan Display Inc., L.L.Bean, Lacoste, Land Rover, Lenovo, LG, Li-Ning, Mayor, Meizu, Mercedes-Benz, MG, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Mitsumi, Nike, Nintendo, Nokia, The North Face, Oculus, Oppo, Panasonic, Polo Ralph Lauren, Puma, Roewe, SAIC Motor, Samsung, SGMW, Sharp, Siemens, Skechers, Sony, TDK, Tommy Hilfiger, Toshiba, Tsinghua Tongfang, Uniqlo, Victoria’s Secret, Vivo, Volkswagen, Xiaomi, Zara, Zegna, and ZTE.
How many vocational schools do you know of that don’t have completely fenced-off areas and a dozen or more security checkpoints?
The report details how this massive system of relocation and forced labor has been built up under the guise of an aid program known as “Xinjiang Aid.” What appears superficially as a targeted aid program for the poor and undereducated people in the province is a relocation and reeducation program meant to destroy their culture and religious practices. Companies all over China have been encouraged to provide “industrial Xianjing aid” by building factories in the province to absorb what China terms “surplus labor capacity” or to hire Uighurs for other tasks in factories across the rest of China.
Factories are well-compensated for taking these workers and advertisements for their services have reportedly begun popping up in Chinese publications, as shown above and below:
The report details how, days before Tim Cook visited an O-Film Technology factory in 2017, the company transferred 700 Uighurs to a separate factory. In a now-deleted press release, Cook praised the company for its “humane approach towards employees.” The company reportedly continued to hire more Uighur prisoners throughout the year.
The ASPI doesn’t make any damning accusations that any specific Western company knew that its products were being built by slave labor. There are multiple diagrams attached to each case report that make it clear how intricate some of these supply chains are. When you look at the supply chains for companies like O-Film, you immediately see just how many major firms could be buying products tainted by the use of slave labor:
The ASPI does not argue that Apple or any other company has been aware of what has been going on within their supply chains. But the web of connections between these firms implies many companies have benefited from this practice and need to take immediate action to address it. Past that immediate problem, this is another area where we as a society have to choose whether we want to stay quite so cozy with a nation with an increasingly awful human rights record.
If you’ve paid attention to the clashes over issues like freedom of speech between the United States and China over the past six months, it’s become very clear that China isn’t just attempting to control what is said within its borders. In multiple instances, the Chinese have targeted low-level employees or minor embarrassments with hostility beyond all proportion to the alleged offense. This overreaction is not an accident. It’s part and parcel of how the nation is demonstrating its willingness to enforce its own cultural and social norms on others.
While it is absolutely possible for nations to have positive effects on each other, it is past time to let go of the fiction that engaging with China in economic terms will intrinsically lead the company to democratize its policies or protect the rights of its citizenry. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China has moved to curtail freedom of the press and freedom of speech. It has imprisoned 1-2 million citizens in political re-education camps and is forcing some of those citizens into what is effectively slavery to manufacture cheap goods for Western markets.
I’m Not Just a Consumer
Businesses make a lot of assumptions about what their customers will or won’t want. One of the most offensive, I’d argue, is the idea that customers are sensitive to nothing but price. Suggest that we might benefit from moving production to a country where minority workers and their families aren’t literally enslaved to provide cheap labor, and someone will instantly bring up the fact that prices would go up if anything changed. In some cases, that’s probably true. A more meaningful question that few people seem to have the guts to ask these days is, “So what?”
Over the past few years, we’ve watched smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung jack up the price of smartphones to the point that $1,000 isn’t even guaranteed to buy you a top-end product any longer. The iPhone XR starts at $600 while the iPhone 11 Pro Max starts at $1,100, but everybody knows that it doesn’t cost Apple an extra $500 to build an iPhone 11 Pro Max. For the past few years, both Samsung and Apple have increased prices simply because they could increase prices.
Somehow, however, the same MBAs who confidently predict to the Tim Cooks of the world that the market will cheerfully absorb a price increase engineered for the sole purpose of installing more gold-plated bathtubs in the C-suites would quail at the idea of refusing to do business with a reprehensible dictatorship that inflicts catastrophic human rights abuses on its own citizenry. The idea that I might be willing to pay more for an iPhone because Apple wants to spend more money propping up its own stock is treated as a given. The idea that I might be willing to pay more for an iPhone because I don’t believe the Chinese government should be rewarded for literally enslaving people? Well, that’s lettingmorality get in the way of business.
And yet, the fact remains: I would vastly rather pay an extra $50-$100 to know my phone wasn’t made with slave labor than I would to pay an extra $50-$100 so that some rich schmuck on Wall Street can make an extra million bucks in bonuses this quarter. I know I am not the only person who feels that way.
The clash of values between China and the United States isn’t going to go away. Writing in 1945, philosopher Karl Popper described what is now known as the paradox of tolerance, stating: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
I am aware of all of the reasons — literally billions of reasons — why United States’ companies seek access to Chinese markets. I am aware of the hyper-optimized supply chains and the decades of investment US companies have made in them. Any effort to shift even a small amount of manufacturing out of China would be difficult and time-consuming, and in many cases, alternatives would have to be developed from scratch. Furthermore, because the Earth’s resources are unevenly distributed, some nations have a much larger supply of valuable resources than others. The United States has most of the world’s helium. China has a huge percentage of rare earths. Bolivia has a huge chunk of the world’s lithium reserves. Even in the best of cases, we live in a global, interconnected economy. There is no way to simply wave a wand and roll the clock back to the early 20th century.
There is, however, still time for Americans to push back on the idea that access to Chinese markets is the highest value to which we, as a people, can aspire to. And since every conversation starts with someone choosing to start it, I’ll go first. I am not willing to pay higher drug prices so that the pharmaceutical industry can continue ripping off Americans with exorbitant drug prices. I am not willing to pay higher prices for goods and services so that “disruptive” companies can pocket their employees’ tips. I am not willing, generally speaking, to watch my own costs rise so that people who already make more money in a day than I’ll make in a year can get just a little richer.
But I would be willing to pay more for my electronics and devices if it meant knowing that the countries and companies where these devices were manufactured weren’t enslaving their employees, driving them to suicide, exposing them to poisonous toxins, or otherwise destroying their lives, particularly when one of the benefits of doing so is knowing that my fellow citizens will not be subject to being fired for the crime of accidentally liking the wrong tweet.
If Tim Cook wanted to demonstrate the courage Phil Schiller claims Apple possesses, he could declare that Apple would take a leadership position in certifying that the workers employed at every company in every part of its supply chain were ethically treated and that none of the profit from its raw material purchases would be used to finance wars or conflict around the world. It would be an enormous challenge — one befitting a trillion-dollar company with enough yearly revenue to qualify as the 42nd-largest economy in the world. If the other companies named in this report joined him, they would collectively represent enough purchasing power to force even China to the bargaining table, if backed up by the US government.
The very concept of the “marketplace of ideas” is that people are allowed to bring their thoughts and ideas to the metaphorical table for everyone to peruse them. The connection between China deploying slave labor in factories and, say, the protests in Hong Kong, is that China doesn’t want anybody talking about any of this, and it’s already proven its own willingness to use extraordinary measures to clamp down on dissent, even when that dissent comes from other countries. We ignore these trends at our own peril.
Doom Eternal has taken a bit longer to materialize than we’d hoped it would, but developer id says the new game engine is a major leap forward. The new shooter will have more effects and crisper textures, and you’ll be able to render a lot more frames. Lead engine programmer Billy Kahn claims that Doom Eternal’s engine will support up to 1,000 frames per second. That’s more of a theoretical ceiling, though.
Doom Eternal picks up where the 2016 rebooted Doom leaves off. You are the iconic Doom Slayer, battling the forces of hell with all manner of awesome sci-fi weaponry. There will be more demon types in the new game, along with enhanced character upgrade mechanics. That’s all well and good, but Doom is about fast-paced hacking and blasting, and this game will be fast indeed.
The id Tech 6 engine in the 2016 Doom supported frame rates as high as 250 per second. The id Tech 7 engine is ready for the future with a 1,000fps cap. You will, of course, need the right hardware to hit those insane frame rates. It’s unlikely the GPU in your computer can manage that, but Kahn says you might be surprised how many frames you can get. Test hardware used around id during development has hit 400fps in some scenes, and that’s without final game optimization.
For PC gamers, this could mean Doom Eternal remains playable for years to come. Currently, most high-end gaming monitors max out at 144Hz, so any frames beyond that are unnecessary and can actually cause tearing without FreeSync or G-Sync to link the GPU and monitor. Even the id Tech 6 engine could hit that limit. However, we know 360Hz monitors are happening, and manufacturers won’t stop there. Someday, you might have a GPU and monitor fast enough to take advantage of Doom Eternal’s insane max frame rate.
Higher refresh rates aren’t common on game consoles, at least in the current generation. The id Tech 7 engine will still benefit console gamers in other ways, though. Doom Eternal will be able to generate more particles on the screen while maintaining high frame rates. The developers have also streamlined the engine’s CPU usage. While id tech 6 used all the CPU cores, id tech 7 drops the requirement of reserving one core for job scheduling. That makes the whole package more efficient.
Doom Eternal launches March 20th on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. There’s no word on a Nintendo Switch port, but the last Doom did eventually make its way over.
Ever since Final Fantasy VII Remake was announced, fan enthusiasm and interest have run high. We’ve seen teasers and leaks for the game — impressive trailers and an entire suite of leaked demo music — but there’s always been the question of how well the game would actually play. It isn’t that hard to piece together good gameplay bits or CGI sequences, particularly when a remake has as much cultural cachet and nostalgia value as this game does. Now there’s a new demo available for the PS4 — and simultaneously, a number of publications have gotten hands-on time with the game and reported back with their own experiences.
The demo is available to anyone with a PS4, which means you can play through the opening chapter of the game and “the events of the iconic Make Reactor 1 bombing mission.” I’d be curious to know if this is a straight demo of the game or if it follows the convention of the actual demo Sony shipped for FF7 back in the day. For those of you who didn’t play it, the demo version of Final Fantasy VII that shipped on at least some discs gave you access to monster summons and abilities that you didn’t actually have at that point in the title when you played the game normally. The demo listing is here (no word on any PC version thus far, though we’ve gotten hints that there might be a PC version of FF7R on the way).
As for how the game plays, both Kotaku and Polygon spent three hours with it. For those of you who aren’t aware, Final Fantasy VII Remake isn’t the full game. It’s only the first 5-10 percent of the title that occurs in Midgar. Typically, you exited Midgar within 4-6 hours in the original FF7. Rather than ship anything that short, Sony expanded the Midgar section of the story to bring it up to typical RPG length.
Image by Square Enix
Kotaku writes that the game systems definitely make it feel like an all-new title, with an overhauled combat system, expanded materia system, additional cut scenes, and weapon skill trees. The game’s story has obviously been extended with new primary and side quests as well. The Square Enix demo Jason Schreier attended allowed him to face off against multiple bosses, but while the game played well, he had questions about how gamers who loved the original will perceive the remake:
This whole sequence, which is Chapter 7 of the game, is certainly cool. The combat is excellent, the dialogue is snappy, and it’s all a lot of fun to play. But the transformation of a tutorial boss into a Shinra superweapon is also a reminder that by the end of this first episode of Final Fantasy VII Remake, we’ll have only seen a piece of the game’s sprawling plot. The original game has more than 30 bosses—if the second one is now an elite robot beast that needs to be tampered with before you can defeat it, just what is it going to look like when we get to Jenova, or Ruby Weapon, or even Sephiroth? How many years is it going to take before we can play the entire game?
What was once rushed in an attempt to invest players in the story of Cloud and his compatriots in Final Fantasy 7 is explored fully in Remake… The early hours of Final Fantasy 7 Remake offer much better characterization and storytelling than the 1997 original. It’s also a gradual tutorial of the remake’s dense combat system, a mix of real-time action and tactical command-based inputs.
The classic battle system is also available in the final game, but wasn’t available in the demo.
The question of how long it will take Square Enix to remake the game, and the overall attention to detail it’ll receive, is an interesting one. It frankly seems impossible for the company to literally give each chunk of the game this much of a makeover. If you expanded every 4-6 hours of Final Fantasy VII into a 30-40 game in Final Fantasy VII Remake, you’d be expanding the basic story from roughly 40 hours (based on HowLongtoBeat) to a 240 – 300-hour game. The typical completionist time for FF7 is 83 hours, 55 minutes. Are there people who would spend 500 – 700 hours in Final Fantasy VII? I’m sure there are. There are people who’ve sunk years into games like Skyrim and World of Warcraft. But I can’t imagine Square Enix targeting that kind of length as a typical investment into the game.
Final Fantasy VII Remake has been in development for five years. Announced relatively early in the PS4’s life cycle, Part 1 will launch as the console nears the end of its life. If the full game followed this schedule, it would literally take decades to remake the entire game. That’s obviously not tenable, and it seems unlikely that Sony would want to stretch this out into a three-generation affair. It’s one thing to launch the first part of the remake on the PS4 and then provide the others on PS5 (possibly with a native PS5 version in co-development with the PS4 flavor right now). It’s something else entirely to spread a remake across three different product generations.
It seems unlikely that Square Enix will target the entire game unilaterally for such upscaling. What seems more likely is that we’ll see some targeted expansion in specific areas. Midgar was a natural fit, since it kicks off the base game, but the pace will have to pick back up to something approaching the original in later titles, unless Sony thinks it can literally milk the game to 5-10 parts across multiple platforms and over a decade.
As for Part 1, the early feedback looks pretty good. If you try the PS4 demo, let us know your thoughts on it.
AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X processor is one of the fastest CPUs on the market today with a dozen cores clocked at 4.6GHz and 70MB of cache. For a limited time you can get this blazing fast processor marked down from $499.00 to $418.95 from Amazon.
Running Android 8.1 this TV Box is capable of far more than just streaming your favorite TV shows and movies. The system also has sufficient processing hardware to run low-end Android games and emulators. Currently you can one from Walmart marked down from $59.99 to $29.99.
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