The drippy, fleshy new trailer for Scorn was some of the first footage we’ve gotten to see that’s meant to be representative of the Xbox Series X – but that in-engine trailer was running on a PC graphics card, the developers have said.
Speaking with WccfTech, Scorn game director Ljubomir Peklar explained that while the footage shows what the studio expects Scorn to look like on the next generation Xbox console, it was running on consumer PC tech – specifically, an RTX 2080ti and an AMD Ryzen processor. That hardware powers a 4K, 60fps gameplay experience. Hitting 60 fps is “simply a necessity” for PC players using a keyboard and mouse, Peklar said, because “when a game runs at 30 fps you start losing the established details once the camera starts moving.”
And what details they are. Scorn looks like an entire gameworld made of quivering tripe and beetle carapaces that was built by an architect working mostly from biology textbooks on the human reproductive system. Everything oozes or drips, translucent membranes cover most surfaces, and smooth bone plating takes the place of clothes.
Here’s that demo again, in case you’d like another gander at it:
A 2080ti won’t be necessary to run Scorn at 4K at 60fps, Peklar said, but the requirements are still up there: “a 2070 Super with a mixture of settings is adequate to run the game at 4K 60 fps.”
That means, as Peklar confirms, that the PC system requirements for Scorn currently listed on Steam are out of date – they still list a GTX 970 or R9 290 as being “recommended.” Bear in mind, Scorn has been in development for a while – it started out in 2014 and ran a couple Kickstarter campaigns before getting picked up by Microsoft as an Xbox Series X exclusive on consoles.
Scorn will of course also launch on PC, where it’ll be available through the Windows Store, Steam, and GOG. It does not yet have a release date set.